[Ricky Controversy]

Originally Posted by Cherry_Lover

Except that this is not entirely true. He was attracted to her prior to the VN, he was just in denial.

If we go there, then he developed an attraction for her at the same time he felt she was family, which makes your original argument even more of a non-issue.

Ilya is obviously cute, in the same sense as my little sister or my pet dog/cat is cute. She's not 'pretty'. She's too young for that.

Pretty: Pleasing to the eye as by delicacy or gracefulness. So, yes, she is pretty.

The thing is, whilst all this is true, he can protect Ilya as a brother far more easily than he can as a lover. It's a far more natural development, and neither of them have any reason to make it go a different way.

Far more easily? What do you mean by that?

As for it being a far more natural development, how do you back that up? They don't have a pre-existing brother/sister relationship. Shirou is unaware of her before the events of F/SN, and Ilya sees him as a target of wrath. Any sort of positive bond they may have starts from the same point: square one. Just because they in the legal sense step-siblings is no reason to insist they'd just up and fall into that relationship.

You can't have a romantic relationship without sexual attraction, especially not with someone who can very naturally be considered to be 'family'. Take Sakura, for instance. Shirou clearly cares deeply about her from the very start, but it is only the fact that the circumstances of HF force him to realise how attractive he really finds her that allows an actual romantic relationship to develop.

Excuse me, no. Speaking as an asexual, I'll tell you it's entirely possible to have a romantic relationship without sexual attraction, and I don't imagine that a sexual person always has their romantic impulse triggered by a desire be sexual with a person. Sometimes, you're just plain in love with someone. But, unfortunately, if you genuinely believe romantic love can't exist without sexual attraction, then there's no way for either of us to gain any traction here, since I adamantly disbelieve that.

Yes, and Ilya doesn't want one either....

You're ignoring the whole point of this story, then, which is a 'for-want-of-a-nail' story, in which Ilya and Shirou's way of relating to each other is changed at the very beginning. The possibilities are wide open.

Even if we were inexplicably binding ourselves to strict canon, on what grounds do you say that? Ilya is characterized primarily as wanting to 'possess' Shirou in some way, and how specifically she wants to possess him is not ever really addressed. The degree to which she becomes interested in him makes any case you want to make viable, and all you're really working with to make the siblings-only case are...

A) That they happen to be adopted even though this has never actually had any bearing on them in their entire lives and
B) That she calls him "Onii-chan", which is a term young children use to describe young-adult men affectionately. For full adults, it's often "Oji-san", and for elders "Ojii-san." Doesn't actually mean anything else given that she's trying to kill him for a good part of the time she's calling him that.

Well, getting into a romantic relationship with Shirou would force her to be a lot more mature than just being his little sister would.

Where are you getting that assumption from? Presumably it's something about Shirou that you feel demands greater maturity on her part? But I don't see it. Shirou matures a bit in each route, but remains largely a straightforward man in the extreme, and his relationships with the three heroines in the game are defined by single-mindedness. I just don't see it being enough of a complexity for it to force Ilya into anything.

Even if we cede that thought and say "Yes, Ilya will be forced to grow up faster", why is that not a story worth telling? It'd basically make the story the same theme for Ilya as it ultimately is for Shirou: coming of age. If we're going to complain about people being very suddenly forced to grow up, then we probably shouldn't be in the F/SN forums at all.

I don't buy that. The whole point of romance is that it is sexual in nature (that doesn't mean that you have find your partner stunning, but you still have to be willing to actually have sex with them, ultimately). Otherwise it's called a friendship. True, it is possible for a couple to remain together after their sex life disappears, but in that case they're more like close friends with a strong commitment to each other than they are a romantic pairing.

And I don't buy that at all, unless you want to tell every asexual person on the planet that they're not capable of romance just because they're not concerned with sliding some external organs together.

The fact that Ilya looks like she is ten and acts somewhat like a little girl isn't enough for you?

In the context of F/SN, no. Given the range of things Shirou ignores for romance with Saber, Rin and Sakura, your only grounds for complaining about the issues with Ilya is your own sense of squick. Speaking from a literary analysis standpoint of Shirou's character, there's nothing in Ilya that makes romance with her beyond reach.

She never shows any signs of wanting him romantically. To me, they make far better siblings than they do lovers.

She never shows any specific signs of wanting him to be her brother, either. All we are shown is that she has a very strong want for him that starts off as wanting to 'possess' him in some way, and if it is to mature either way, either the sibling path or lover path is wide open, but neither is favored in terms of what is shown about her character.

Like I said, Shirou is not a lolicon. Ilya looks too young, acts too young and there is too high a barrier in Shirou's mind in terms of romantic feelings towards her.

And you get this where? Even if I make a concession to your idea that sexuality has to be involved, he sure seemed riled up enough when she was straddling him in the chair in the castle in one of the bad ends. You appear to be reading your own feelings into Shirou quite a bit.

I mean, it took him over a year to realise how he felt about Sakura, and she is a) more sexually attractive that Ilya (not being a child) and b) less obviously "family" (even though Shirou and Ilya are not blood-related, she is still the daughter of his father, and so he will see her as a sister).

Except that Sakura is actually MORE family, given that prior to all of this, Shirou and Ilya never had any kind of relationship at all, regardless of how they are abstractly connected. Shirou is very clearly presented as someone whose sense of family is rooted in the nature of his connections with people. Kiritsugu became his genuine father because he was able to look up to that man and model him in the way a son does a father. Taiga and Sakura became family to him because that's the way they relate to each other day to day.

Ilya's slate is blank at the outset, and the events of the Holy Grail War will be the first say in how they grow together, if at all.