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Does your character have friends? Do you think your character needs them?

Personally, yes. On both parts. Sometimes there are those people we don't usually rely on which seem most important to a plot line. At times, characters need to go it alone, but with friends there's sometimes no issue as to why.

Thoughts?

[EDIT: #56 is the number of the question from the site which I found. I don't have a problem finding it on the forum then ^_^]

I agree with Erika; pretty much everyone ever has someone they depend on or talk to or even just see on a regular basis, whether that's their family or their mentor or their lover or their gigantic group of homies. Even an enemy could fall into this category.

Unfortunately all the examples I can think of right now come from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so.

Friends are also good for foils. You can say a lot about your character based on how they feel about their friends/acquaintances, especially if you write in first-person. Just for one example, in John Cheever's short story "Goodbye My Brother," the narrator resents his brother for not drinking, not gambling, and not dancing, among other things. This doesn't tell us as much about the brother as it does about the narrator.

@Itzpapalotl: Chronicles of Riddick=WIN xp

Lessee.... the Brain Damage Party doesn't count, for reasons that (given their nickname) should be obvious- they're too damaged to actually be friends at the moment. The Snarky Party + 1/2 (Kenzie) has... well, there's Kita and Feragel, but they have Arrangements, and... I wouldn't call it friendship, as they hate each other, and the bit with Feragel and Indio... it started out as friendship, but that's not where it ended up. (oops)

So the only friendships in that are between Kita and Indio, and she's a bit of a mentor to him, and Kita and Kenzie, and it's hard to tell who's more in denial about being completely not at all dependent on the other, but they don't really pick at it, seeing as Kenzie's like this close to being emotionally catatonic.

Sum of All Desires is about the classic five friends, but... they've managed to turn what could only be called friendship into a five-way-static-semi-romantic mush. Seriously. They wouldn't look out of place in Oneida, except it's age-appropriate.

I guess I have problems quantifying the two-person relationships in my stuff because in my brain, relationships come predominantly in threes. Eg: Kita-Feragel-Kenzie, Kita-Feragel-Indio, Claire-Felix-George, Allemande-Lucile-Mikah. The two-person interactions, taken alone, can be a bit dull, I find it's the triangulation that adds interesting friction.

Main Character and her Blindly Supportive Best Friend really irritate me when it comes to books. Particularly when the Blindly Supportive Best Friend suddenly decides to be a complete b***h for no justifiable reason other than that the author needed an excuse for more drama. This is why I don't read YA novels anymore.

To be honest, I think I've only written one story recently that had to do with A Character and Her Friends, and that was my shitty short story with Deeper Meaning for last semester's English course. Aside from the fact that The Character's friends were just gender-swapped Vitae and Nathan, because I was lazy and didn't want to have to put effort into throw-away characters. Even while writing the story, I kept wondering why the Friends still associated with the Main Character, she was such an overdramatic little b***h. Though Vicky kept giving off the vibe that she was within an inch of tossing either Mal or Nora out of the car.

As far as friends go in MOSI, Vitae used to have friends, once upon a time, but they're all dead now. And most of the time he would ignore the fact that they were friends anyway, with a general vibe of, "Don't ask me why I associate with these people, they just stormed my apartment today and dragged me to a pub." And as far as loyalty goes, he'd probably have taken a bullet for any of them, but he'd also sell them out in a heartbeat if it meant earning brownie points with his superiors.

I'm inclined to say that Sabine has no friends her own age (discounting Jericho, who's never around), as she spends most of her time either with her mother, Nathan's parents, or her mentor. My classmates in Workshop went as far as to say she's introverted, and I'm still trying to decide if I agree.

Nathan is only ever friends with people if it happens to be fashionable. So, yes, he has a lot of petty, shallow mage friends out there, and they're all just waiting for a chance to stab each other in the back.

Jericho has a lot of acquaintences, but I don't know about close friends or "best" friends. He's possibly one of the most sociable of my characters, and in a much more sincere way than Nathan.

And then there's Yinda, who goes into Tiny b***h Mode when faced with an unfamiliar adult, but will make friends with nearly anyone once she decides they're safe.

The deeper theme here obviously being something generally negative about friendship. NOBODY HAS FRIENDS. GRAWR. mad Despite the fact that I seem to purposefully design characters in pairs (Jericho-Yinda, Nathan-Sabine, Adelaide-Ethelyn, Marius-Brother, Sebastian-Blair, Meru-Cerise) in order to emphasize Vitae's role as the odd man out.

Long post is long. sweatdrop

One good thing to remember is that the world will rarely align in any given character's favor. This means a lot of things, but mostly what I'm focusing on here is the fact that each character, important or not, has their own agenda, and this won't always line up point-for-point with the main character's goals or plans. So sometimes even their allies won't be in support of them, though that doesn't necessarily make either party Evil or wrong. It just creates tension.

Ah, you must be assuming I know what I'm doing. xd

Honestly, though, I'm actually kind of flattered that you thought I did that on purpose. Now I'm thinking I should probably follow through on this particular character trait.