Not Everyone Has To Be Related

Darth Vader is Luke’s father.

Voldemort is a distant relative of Harry Potter’s through the Peverell family.

The Joker’s mom told him he was Thomas Wayne’s bastard son(making him a half brother of Batman).

Jon Snow is a cousin of Danerys Targeryon.

I trust you get my point – far too many people in stories are related.  Some closely, some distantly, some alluded to, but they all seem to have familial ties.  Honestly, it gets old.

Not everyone has to be related.  That’s not the way the real world works.  The only way that worked in the past was when mass mobility wasn’t a thing and most folks lived their whole lives within two miles of home.  Even then, major world shattering events rarely happened within families, excepting, of course, the major houses of Europe being on the various royal thrones…and even then any twists were more akin to incestuous genetic defects rather than surprise intrigue.

However, we no longer live in the mid-1500s.  With our stories taking place in far flung fantasy worlds and across the realms of space, the chances of folks involved in such intricate plots being long lost relatives is exceedingly small.

I view using a relational plot point as lazy.  It had its place long ago when it was new.  The Darth Vader/Luke Skywalker twist worked precisely because it was unexpected.  Now, however, we all see the long lost father/son/brother/sister/mother coming from a mile away.  It lacks any impact and mostly makes us roll our eyes.  It removes the randomness, and reality, of a story and makes me think, oh geez, not this nonsense again.  I think authors fall back on this when they want to introduce something big but have no idea how to accomplish it on their own.

Let’s try to get away from the family-is-everywhere trope.  It no longer works, and it shows a simple mind that can’t figure out how to be creative.