Setting up sibling reveal while avoiding romantic undertones

My recent creative writing work has two siblings, one in her early twenties and one in his late teens. The two were separated seven or so years prior to the story's events and they do not recall one another due to suffering Identity Amnesia and Fake Memories, respectively at around the time they were separated. I want to show them having platonic chemistry with one another prior to an endgame reveal of their relation. What I'm trying to avoid is having it come off as romantic attraction or anything like that, and I don't want to resolve the issue by making one of them have a significant other or by outright stating they don't find each other attractive.

Any advice? Technically this could be applied to any situation where one is trying to show platonic chemistry without romantic chemistry, but I feel that in this case it's especially important to avoid Ship Tease or Unresolved Sexual Tension due to the Squick value that Brother–Sister Incest tends to have.

edited 28th Apr '17 9:12:21 PM by HijackThis

In a way it's a losing battle; People to ship the before and after the reveal and there's very little you can do to prevent that (even having an SO wouldn't stop it).

So my main advice is to not worry about it.

Small things you could do is avoid touchy-feeliness and take cues off of buddy movies.

Has a Type. You're not ugly, you're just not my type. Likewise.

People have friends of the sex they're attracted to and have zero sexual interest in them. It's quite common in fact. Sure, some folks will think they should make out, but love and mutual trust isn't inherently romantic or sexual—just as sex quite often has nothing to do with love or even affection—and you can easily write it that way without spelling that out.

Explain what you mean by taking cues from buddy movies? If it's anything that involves the two interacting over a long period of time, it's not going to be applicable here as the two cross paths for a week or so and depart on mostly bad terms before reuniting under a common cause at the end, with the male character here being the protagonist and the female serving as a Chekhov's Gunman or 11th-Hour Ranger.

I'm well aware of this; my issue is conveying what you're describing.

I more meant mimicking the camaraderie and rapport.

It's hard to explain, but the way siblings and regular old best friends interact s inherently different from how lovers and people with strong romantic chemistry interact. Have them bounce off of each other really well and have an easy rapport, have whatever physical contact there is between them devoid of the implications of desire, have them simply clearly not see each other in that way. It's hard to explain on an atomic level, but the results are fairly obvious... and people are still going to ship your characters if they give a fuck, because some people read romantic or sexual subtext into everything and cannot be dissuaded. Just ignore them.

Since my advice is mostly what NOT to do

• Do not have them describe each other physically!!! If either of these characters is the POV character, of if they both are, it's imperative they do not give each other a physical description. Nothing screams "love interest" like someone doing a thorough physical examination of the person in question. If you need a description, the best thing to do is hair color or skin color, depending on what sets the described characters apart from the rest of the characters introduced so far. Stay away from eyes and clothing!!!! I swear to god, as soon as a character starts describing how well the clothing the other character is wearing fits them, people will immediately see that character as a love interest. Same with the eyes. Eyes almost always mean romance.

• Don't have them spend too much time alone. The more a boy and a girl spend time alone, apart from the group, the more the audience reads it as a romantic set up. Make them interact a lot among the group, but I'd save the times the brother and sister spend in private for when they come to the realization that they're related.

• Don't have them be the only character of their gender that the other character spends time with. A male character having just one female friend leads to the audience seeing just one romantic outcome, especially if the male character is straight. Same for the female character. Make sure you've got male and female friends for both your sister and brother. That'll allow you to set up other romantic leads and therefore bury the sibling lead a bit more.

• Don't reveal that they are siblings without any build up. If both characters have no stinking idea that they even have a long-lost-sibling, it's going to be a very surprising reveal to the audience. It'll be even harder if they DID start to ship the characters together. So maybe one character has a faint memory of playing with a young girl, or the sister hears her parents talking about something they left behind. Put that doubt in there so then it feels satisfying when it's revealed.

I read a book just this week called Tokens and Omens that did a good job with the sibling reveal. The dual 3rd person narration set it up early that both main characters had single parents and that both parents seemed to be depressed and hiding something. This made it easy for me to connect that they were related well before they were revealed as such. It also helped that the main character's names were the same - Alexa and Zander. They have the same name split into two. It's even acknowledged in the story. I thought that was very clever!

I hope this "not" advice helps XD It seems to be the easiest way for me to dispense advice is to tell someone what not to do. What TO do, some people here have weighed in, but it'll take some introspection on your part to fulfill.