DE: Lean on me

[bjornwilde]

 Let's talk friendship today.

Here's a few questions to get the topic flowing. Feel free to answer them or not.

How does your character feel about friendships? Are they vital or just something to make the time pass? Are they a chore? Do they provide strength when there is none? Do they have friends? Do they wish for more friends? Do they wish they had more time for their friends, or is it the friends who don't have time for them? Do they even understand friendship? How far would they go for a friend?

Apologies in advance to the ponies.

Comments

[silveraspen]

Answering in part quickly from work, with hopes to come back and add more later --

Friendship is absolutely critical to more than one of my characters, but most especially for James Buchanan Barnes. The friendship between him and Steve Rogers has literally made all the difference in his world.

How far would he go? To the end of the line.

Currently James thinks that he doesn't deserve Steve's friendship (or Natasha's, although that's a little more complicated and yet weirdly simpler for Cold War history reasons; they've worked out several of the issues there). Will he admit that? He's tried, but Steve's not having it - and James knows at some level that Steve's right about that, but he still feels that he doesn't deserve it. Then again, he's also always been pretty certain that Steve's a better man than he is, so that's a factor too.

He would not be opposed to more friends, and would probably like having more friends, but for (fairly obvious) reasons he doesn't trust easily at all. That said, I am watching as past-and-current encounters are starting to build toward new friendships for him... and where that happens, deep loyalty will follow. When he commits, he commits all the way.

[misslucyjane]

Aw, Bucky. *hugs him forever*

[genarti]

...Would you prefer that Enjolras provide his paean to the transformative power and vital necessity of friendship in the form of a Broadway musical number (with backing chorus!), a succinct yet fervent statement, or an impassioned speech from the top of a barricade? Because, uh.

[clayforthedevil]

SONG CUE!
(We love you too, Enjolras. Do we need sheet music? I can get sheet music.)

[genarti]

(...sadly the hilarious 19th century O PATRIA song does not, to my recollection, mention friendship, and neither does the Les Mis musical in so many words, massed voices of THE PEOPLE or not. Which means that I have made an empty threat unless you do, in fact, provide me with a song cue. I mean, er, provide Enjolras with sheet music.)

[clayforthedevil]

Challenge Accepted. XD
Here's a few, take your pick.

(Or, you know, there's always this.)

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Enjolras, of course, knows none of these song options. And has no great interest in singing, although he's willing to if there's a reason.

...So you know what that means. DEMON KARAOKE TIIIIIIIME

Together, together, together everyone!

[clayforthedevil]

Together, together, come on let's have some fun!



(bahahahah, perfect. Thank you for the mental image, Gen.)

[silveraspen]

I want you to know that as a result of this comment, I spent the last couple of minutes cleaning spilled tea from my desk.

*is still laughing*

[genarti]

SUCCESS

[wings_of_a_swan]

OOC: *snickers wildly*

IC: *earnestly provides backup singing for musical number*

[adiva_calandia]

Nita makes friends pretty darn easily, although I think as she's grown up in Milliways she likes having a smaller group of very close friends and a wide group of people with whom she's friendly. Still, the more friends the better! And she will unhesitatingly go to the ends of whatever planet she's on right now for her friends.

Just, uh, be careful if she gives you a nickname. That doesn't seem to end well historically.

I think Beverly is pretty friendly, in a "let's have a mutually enjoyable conversation" kind of way, but she doesn't let people get close that easily -- in part because she has a weird macabre job (and a weird macabre sense of humor about her job) and in part because she prefers to be self-sufficient. To those people who do get close to her (Will, Jimmy, Zeller, Crawford), she is fiercely loyal to the point of foolhardiness.

[bjornwilde]

Jess is very select in the people she calls friend. In my head the list is Carol, Logan, Lindsey McCabe, Clint, and now Natasha. These are the people she would die for and will always trust, though Clint is on shaky ground. She does have lots of other allies or acquaintances, and she will do a lot for them, but they don't see the deeper Jess. She sees it as more not inflicting herself on the world than mistrusting the world btw.

Hank only has a few friends and he really wants more. His lack of friends is due to his hiding his mutation as he doesn't feel any normal friend would stay around long if they found out why his shoes are so big. Once he gets friends, his confidence will grow, though at first he invests too much in their opinions.

Quinlan has few friends he is completely honest with. It's not so much he doesn't trust people as it's acknowledging the Empire's influence. His family are his primary friends. Does he wish he had more friends? Yes. But that's not going to happen until the Empire is not the dominating force of the galaxy.

Asajj does not have friends. She may have allies, but not friends. Friends are weaknesses that can be exploited or that may need exploiting, or so she has been taught the past decade or so. I don't think she consciously desires friends, but I suspect she wouldn't be opposed to the idea nowadays.

To Sam the world is filled with friends he hasn't met yet. He thrives off friendship.

[varadia]

X-23: She considers people friend really easily. If she likes them, if they need her help, if they are the kind of terrible that maybe sometimes doesn't want to be so terrible possibly they think if they think about it -- it is a pretty low bar for her to call you her friend. That doesn't mean it's meaningless, but she went without friends for so long that she kind of compulsively reaches out in that way because it's important to her. And so are you. She has a closer tier (or tiers) of people, and those are the people she will talk to about the things that hurt. Everyone else gets the stuff that doesn't hurt. Now, some people would be surprised by what doesn't hurt her vs what does, but those people are probably not in the inner circle really.

Raven: He loves people. He also thinks they need to learn things, so while he is friendly to everyone there's always the possibility for horrible things to happen. Like, he adores Coyote unreservedly and she's the longest-running most important person in his life, and yet they do horrible things to each other. Usually more coming from him than her, but. I mean. Even Moiraine and Ace -- he loves them and they are family, but they are also people and sometimes they need to learn stuff. (That doesn't mean he has to teach, but he has to LET them learn. So no overprotective brother here. It just doesn't . . . work, most of the time.)

Dean Winchester: Dean . . . . has Charlie as a friend, from canon? Everyone else is either family, dead family, or someone on the outside that he's gotta protect. If he thought about it he'd probably like more friends, but he . . . doesn't think about it. Especially lately. Booze helps.

Ysalwen Surana: Ysalwen loves making new friends and meeting new people, if you call it 'making new friends' when you're basically developing a basic friendly interaction pattern and maybe some kind of acquaintance rapport with people. She'd like for them to end up being friends, though. It'd be great! She's open with her anger and frustration but not her hurt, and her circle of friends back home is small. She'd like to have a larger one, and Milliways is really good for that. No one cares about that Hero of Ferelden stuff here. It's great.

Michael the Archangel: She has, like. One friend that is more frenemies out of frustration, and one brother. And then people she views as her charges. It's weird. Friendship is not one of her primary virtues, I guess.

Nynaeve al'Meara: She is the prickliest hedgehog and she likes it that way. She has her small circle of people and that's pretty much good enough for her. Do not ask me how you become her friend, it usually just happens. There's like a threshold, but it changes depending on the series of situations. *hands* It's mostly that she doesn't trust people to be as careful of her as they really need to be, and she's also in denial of how careful that is, so. Fewer friends is best.

Galadan: He has three important people -- Mary Lennox, Gabriel Tam, and River Tam. If you are not one of those three people, he does not care, and the chances that he will care are so marginal as to be nonexistent. Unless he has another crisis of conscience and complete re-evaluation of his entire existence, but that is . . . unlikely at this time. People are useful objects to move around a chessboard to achieve his goals, and he will care about their well-being so long as the three people he cares about are invested in this idea. This may outlast their deaths. It would be nice to think so, wouldn't it? Even the andain -- he cares about them a great deal, but not really for themselves, as such. Maybe he's learning. Probably he's not.

Wonder Woman: She is the friendliest most warm-hearted person in the world, or possibly in the multiverse. It's easy for her to make friends, and it's easy for her to care about people and pull them into a friendship, and she's more willing than most to open herself up to strangers if it can help them. She'd always like more friends.

[i_am_your_host]

...It's complicated.

The Master of Ceremonies likes people well enough to give them his time and advice and blowjobs whatever they need from him. He won't turn anyone away. If he can, he'll stand up for those who can't or take the brunt for them. And people will no doubt like him for that, sometimes a lot. And they'll think of him as a friend. But he still maintains a certain amount of emotional distance, even with those he considers friends (which are just a step up from acquaintances) because he doesn't want to depend on anybody for anything. Which is why it frustrates him when he starts to break down and have feelings for people, especially for those who he knows he shouldn't.

This isn't to say that he thinks his relationships are completely meaningless. But when he was growing up, the majority of people went in and out of his life fairly quickly, so friendships were short and he had to survive that, emotionally. He meets new people every single night at the club, people who think they want to get to know him, and he has to deal with that, too. But he can't be everyone's friend. Thus, the distance. It's there, and the other person might not even know it, but it's there.

The people who he cares about and thinks of as his current family, the boys and girls at the Kit Kat Klub, well, he actually does love them in his own way. He would protect them like a mother hen.

[runningred]

And Jay's been super helpful with the 'not feels' this week! :p

[no_vampires_plz]

FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC, BITCHES.

[genarti]

Okay, setting Enjolras and his MY FRIENDS ARE AWESOME FRATERNITY IS A BEDROCK OF HUMAN RIGHTS HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT HOW AWESOME MY FRIENDS ARE TODAY shiny eyes aside:

Most of mine are extremely loyal people. Friendship tends to be pretty important to them, whether they have many friends or only a rare few.

Thor is another people person. He loves people! Loneliness is not a thing he'd deal with well for any length of time. He makes friends fast. He also is deeply loyal to the people he loves, and for his dearest friends (and even more for family) he'll let that trust run out a long, long way -- but he'll keep caring about them long after he stops trusting them, too. (HI LOKI.) Anyway, yeah, Thor is totally up for hanging out being bros with a wide range of people, and under the right circumstances will get close to people relatively fast, too.

Cosette... would like more friends. She had friends at the convent, but sometimes they'd leave to go back to their families, and then she and her father left too, and since then it's basically been her with her father and their servant Toussaint and now also Marius. (And sort of his grandfather and aunt, but... only sort of, there.) She'd like more friends! Milliways is awesome for that! She's very open-hearted and willing to be friendly acquaintances with a lot of people, but she hasn't had the time to become really close friends with anyone in Milliways yet. Both she and I have hopes, though.

Clare doesn't really understand friendship, but she values it. She... had one canonical friend, and then had to kill her. Um. Now she has two friends in Milliways! Ambriel is her Milliways BFF. (Ambriel did what you pretty much have to do with Clare, and said "you're my friend" in so many words, and Clare said OH OKAY and got all shyly pleased about it.) The other person she'd consider something like a friend is, god help us all, Grantaire.

(Then there's Raki, who's sort of a self-appointed ward/pet/sidekick, and then there's Teresa who's in her own category. Clare would go to the end of the earth for any friend. For Teresa, she'd do honestly just about anything, without a second thought.)

...and writing just this has taken most of my day because work has been keeping me ridiculously busy, so, uh. I'll come back for Trowa and River and Regan later, maybe!