In the story I’m working on the character [name_m]Alec[/name_m] (as named by nameberry, thank you again!) and another character ends up as friends later in their teen years (will they stay friends tho? No one knows). And when I was figuring out their friendship origins, I got curious: Which kind of friendship do you like more?
The ‘we just clicked’ friendship, the ‘rival/dislike to friends’ friendship, the ‘I don’t really care about you before but now I care’ friendship, or what else?
I think it depends on the characters and their eventual relationship together? Because not all friendships look the same and people have different connections based on how they became friends, if that makes sense. I’ve seen well-written “rival to friends” friendships and I’ve seen poorly written ones; same with all the others. When written well, I do like the friendships that come out of “rival to friends” because it’s often competitive and fun, although as I’m writing this I’m realizing that none of my characters’ friendships look like that lol.
I personally feel like there are far too many ‘rival friendships’ and FAR too few ‘we just clicked friendships’. ‘I don’t really care about you before but now I care friendships’ are also underrepresented and in fact my favourites.
My favourite friendship tropes are two used by [name_m]Rick[/name_m] [name_m]Riordan[/name_m]! There’s [name_u]Percy[/name_u] and [name_f]Annabeth[/name_f], where [name_f]Annabeth[/name_f] at the start refused to be friends with [name_u]Percy[/name_u] simply due to their parentage, though look at them now!
The other one I really, really like is [name_u]Percy[/name_u] and [name_f]Clarisse[/name_f]. They have that enemies-to-friends-to-still-pretend-to-hate-each-other-for-fun kinda friendship, I wish we saw more of [name_f]Clarisse[/name_f] as she’s a wonderful character.
Of what you said, though, I definitely like the ‘we just clicked’ one! There needs to be more of those!
We just clicked. But if the driving force of the story is whether they stay friends, a conflict-based friendship may work better.
I love colleague-friends, as in people who work together or attend school together just becoming friends. I feel like a lot of friendship tropes are overdone, and the end up seeming like someone who’s constantly snarky (a little bit worn out).