[Cherry_Lover]

Originally Posted by Ricky Controversy

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

Well, you know what I meant. The point is that there is (hopefully) no sexual attraction there.

Just because they in the legal sense step-siblings is no reason to insist they'd just up and fall into that relationship.

Yes, it does, because that is how Shirou thinks.

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.

However, Shirou is not asexual, so I'd imagine that he does have an interest in having sex with his romantic partners (FSN certainly lends credence to this...). Also, I'm not sure how a non-sexual romantic relationship differs from a plain frendship.

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.

That doesn't change their fundamental personalities, though.

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.

This will matter to Shirou, and doubly so given the situation. Shirou sees her as a little girl he needs to protect (he has already gotten that impression from their first meeting), and I find it very hard to see him going past that, especially when he finds out that she is Kiritsugu's daughter. I know that it doesn't in theory matter one bit since he is adopted, but Shirou won't see it that way.

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.

Getting into any kind of romantic relationship requires maturity, especially if you want it to actually last, and doubly so when the other person is an adult.

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.

However, I'd say that it's not good for her.

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.

Well, you can have an emotional connection to someone without sex, but I honestly can't see how that differs from a close friendship or, indeed, a familial relationship. In fact, this is almost exactly how people feel for close members of their family (strong emotional connection but no physical attraction).

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.

This is true, yes. However, he quickly comes to see Ilya as a little child who needs affection and to be protected, and thus takes up a "big brother" role even before he knows their true relationship. Plus, whilst he does indeed seem to consider his 'true' family to be the people who he is closest to (Taiga and Sakura), he is also quite clearly a strong believer in the idea that you should care for your true family, hence why he pushes Rin and Sakura's relationship in HF (who are pretty much a perfect example of two people who are family by birth but not by their connections, and yet still care deeply for one another), so I would see him treating Ilya as a little sister.

Originally Posted by RadiantBeam

I'm not going to comment much on the romance thing, but I will toss this out: CL, if the thought of Ilya possibly ending up with Shirou in Chaos Theory bothers you so much, why not just write your own fic where he doesn't end up in a romantic relationship with her? That would resolve the problem rather nicely, I think.

Well, I am writing several fics, in fact, although none of them are remotely Ilya-centric (I do intend to give her a good end in the ones where she is not already dead at the beginning, though, if I can). However, I'm not going to clone Mozco's fic just because I don't like the way that he's taking it (if he does indeed go for an Ilya x Shirou relationship), so this is a somewhat meaningless statement.