Basic Trope: A character feels troubled over the fact they share only one parent with another character.
- Straight: Alice hates the fact that she and her brother, Bob, only share a father, Christopher.
- Exaggerated: All of Alice’s misfortunes in life — from her mother’s abandonment, her failing marriage, her loss of several jobs and homes — result from her being only a half-sister to Bob.
- Downplayed: Alice is initially annoyed that she and Bob can’t be full siblings but later gets over it.
- Justified:
- Bob is the legitimate son to a wealthy billionaire Christopher and is included in a will granting him billions upon Christopher’s death. Alice, being Bob’s older paternal half-sister born out of wedlock, is either not in the will or written out completely, causing her to be angry at the unfair situation.
- Christopher is a billionaire who lives in a society where rigid and classist values prevail. His relationship with a woman of a lower class when he was young resulted in Alice’s birth, but he couldn’t be involved in her life because of their differing social statuses. However, Christopher married a woman of equal class and had Bob with her. When Alice grew up and learned the truth, she felt she was unloved by her father.
- Alice lives in a Stepford Suburbia where only nuclear families are tolerated while those who don’t fit into that mold (i.e. a half-sibling) are ostracized.
- Christopher favors Bob, while ignoring Alice, possibly because Bob looks like him and Alice doesn’t.
- Christopher makes it clear he doesn’t think that, as an illegitimate daughter, Alice will ever be up to the challenge of being a true family heir, causing Alice to lash out against him and those who believe him.
- Alice and Bob had a close relationship until it was revealed that they were “only” half-siblings, causing an estrangement, which made Alice angst that she could never be “fully” like Bob.
- Bob blames Alice for ruining his parents' marriage because she had been the result of Christopher's affair with her mother. Alice, being a young child, believes this for a while.
- Alice is a Wangsty teenager who thinks that her father hates her since he had her half-brother Bob with her stepmother.
- Alice is a six-year-old girl who’s still getting used to the idea of a younger half-brother, thinking that he’s replacing her as Christopher’s favorite child.
- Inverted:
- Alice has angst for being the full sister of Bob.
- Alice is relieved not to be Bob's full sister, because he has qualities she'd hate to see in herself.
- Subverted: Alice doesn’t care that Bob is simply her half-brother...
- Double Subverted: ...at first until she learns that Bob stands to inherit millions while she gets nothing when their father dies.
- Parodied: Alice is the happiest person in the universe until the moment she learns that she’s only Bob’s half-sister, at which point she assumes the role of the most angsty person of this universe and the next.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice doesn't have a good relationship with Bob at first because they're half-siblings and he stands to inherit their wealthy father Christopher's millions when the man dies while she gets nothing. Eventually however, Alice decides to befriend Bob when she realizes that she's fine without the money and, as a change of heart, Christopher wants to include Alice in the will. However, this action pisses Bob off to the point of pushing Alice away, but Christopher dies in an accident before he can include her. Nevertheless, Alice's relationship with Bob is permanently strained afterwards.
- Averted:
- Enforced: The network decides to make Alice and Bob half-siblings to give Alice some more drama and stakes after the conclusion of a previous storyline.
- Lampshaded: "Like I don't understand why he doesn't like me, we have the same father." "Half-siblings, eh?"
- Invoked: Alice is a method actress whose character is a woman who Wangsts over her status as a half-sister rather than a full sister.
- Exploited: Alice’s Evil Uncle David, knowing Alice’s angst over her half-sibling status, uses her to get back at Christopher and sue him to get them into the will.
- Defied: Christopher tells his children from a young age that even if they don’t have the same mother, they’re still equally loved and are siblings regardless.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Alice is told from the moment she was born that she would never be a true member of the family because she’s the illegitimate daughter while Bob is the legitimate son and heir to the family fortune. This eventually causes her to resent her family and her status as a half-sister.
- Reconstructed: Eventually, Alice decides that her family’s emotional abuse is too much and decides to cut them off and live with her Family of Choice who actually cared about her. Years later, when she has two children through two marriages, Alice decides to treat them with equal love and gets over her previous hang-ups regarding her half-sibling status.
- Played for Laughs: Alice indulges in Comical Overreacting upon finding out that she and Bob aren't full siblings.
Back to Half-Sibling Angst.
