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is a persistent sibling unity.

(Btw, I'm at a relative's place. Internet sucks. I won't be around often.)

It's as messed up as it gets. It's not in the life issues section because I just want to blow off steam. I highly doubt I could get advice from anyone outside my family, let alone Gaia's limited demographic.

Mom-induced:
It really is, because mom loves my younger brother (18-year old) more than me. This is a traditional Chinese thing. I can accept that. What I cannot accept is the result from this love. It led to my brother telling me that he felt "brainwashed" by my mom. I had received the same brainwash from her to a lesser extent, because she didn't love me as much. It boils down to making the both of us super-go-getters at big-name universities in foreign countries, with superstar degrees and thousand-dollar scholarships. I was in one, hated it, dropped out. He's in prep school and is starting to understand the motivations behind my past actions. For all my academic potential, greatly exceeding that of my brother (who was extremely street-smart instead of academically bright), I threw it back in her face. My brother just wants to get university done and over with, but even this is emotionally draining for him already. She gives permission to learn how to drive a car. She denies permission to spend a free week camping with friends. She is the fussy emotion-dictator. All work and play only what I want you to play, or else I'll talk your ears off on the phone and make you feel horrible for weeks. My manipulation rules all.

Rivalry is a ******** FACADE:
Ever since I hid all my academic abilities to purposely drop out, I've been deemed worthless in terms of potential by my mother despite returning to university afterwards. The situation turns into praising my brother constantly during my phone conversations with her. She still babies him everytime we return to Hong Kong to visit our family. He's flunking certain classes because his English is weak. She still praises him: at least he's trying to get into working for the Salvation Army. It gets on my nerves. I know my brother doesn't like it when she praises him like the next best thing since sliced bread. Heck, I didn't like it when she used to praise me either. He's not telling her that he's thinking of buying a vehicle for himself (OMG! My son is so independent even though he's so young). I've stopped telling her about my sailing endeavours (She's so good at an elite sport and blah blah competition blah...). To him, she fusses about how I'm such a difficult daughter. The two-faced thing is that she STILL praises me in front of others even though she steps on me in private.

Unity:
We both hate it. Period. Neither of us have the desire to be superstars and one-up our superstar cousins. After seeing what the world is really like, we don't want any of that elitist s**t from our well off upper-middle class background. We complain to each other about mom. We share similar feelings for the really ******** but intact marriage between mom and dad. We confide in each other on a regular basis. He tells me about his later decision to get a motocycle instead. I tell him about my funky economics s**t. We're stuck in the same boat where mom plunked the captain's hat on his head and we both want to throw the stupid hat overboard. Dad still loves mom very dearly and has always been loyal. But he has given up. He prefers to simply give us freedom (as long as we're not doing something incredibly moronic like snorting coke) and we're grateful for that. But it also means my brother and I are in this alone, supposed spies against each other to fuel mom's separation between us... when we're actually on the same team.

We're equals. It has been that way ever since he was able to crawl.

lol. Not offended at all. What kind of asian are you?

College is definitely a good distraction... as long as you don't spill too many of your beans to your mother dearest. No matter how well you're doing, there are always holes to be found and magnified, I've found.

But you are right that we'd probably end up more spoilt if we didn't have heaps of parental pressure (and peer pressure by extension) to deal with on a regular basis. It definitely trains one to cope with toxic social situations.

I'm not too sure if praise in public is such a good thing in my perspective.... maybe honesty and directness has a higher priority for me. Either she likes what I'm doing and shows it OR she doesn't like what I'm doing and shows it. Being two-faced reeks of insincerity.