Friendship, in life and fiction
Or, the result of me loving my friends
Friendship, in life and fiction (an essay)
Media Review
Anisa’s Writing Corner
Conclusion
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It is August, was July, the sun is high and spinning, and I am thinking deeply about friendship.
I recently read The Poppy War trilogy in four sleepless nights, and it was good enough to put me in the worst book hangover of my life.1 Out of all the themes that stuck out to me, though, friendship was one of the subtle ones that kept coming back to my consciousness. Rin. Nezha. Kitay. Venka. But most importantly, Rinkitay. If you’ve read the series, you know what I mean. They were astounding.
“She glanced to her right. “Kitay?” She needed to hear him speak before she could continue. She wasn’t waiting for his permission—she’d never needed his permission for anything—but she wanted to hear his confirmation. She wanted someone else, someone whose mind worked far faster than hers ever would, to assess the forces at play and the lives at stake and say, Yes, these calculations are valid. This sacrifice is necessary. You aren’t mad. The world is.” - THE BURNING GOD by R.F. KUANG
Friendship, I think, is a theme often neglected in modern media. A film would rather follow the arc-en-ciel of a boy-meets-girl kind of story, would rather trace trystic tensions, meet-cutes, lovers' spats, and dizzying romantic resolution. Friendships, in such a context, exist to support a “greater” love, to watch and aid the ludus as it stretches like a cat into “a Sunday kind of love.”2
As such, the friendship between Fang Runin and Chen Kitay caught me entirely off guard in a subtle way. I am so used to seeing relationships like theirs turn romantic, like a “gotcha!” moment or a hidden card beneath a deck. It is so rare for the friends to not become lovers, to say “I love you” and mean it only one way, and in a book that split me in half for many reasons, the quiet ruin of their arc was one of the strongest.
Maybe it’s because almost everyone has a friend, and not everyone has a lover, so friendships in fiction feel less like escapism. But I think true friendship, like true love, is more easily represented on page or on screen than in the throes of real life. Philia is a lot like any other kind of love—it has its passions, and its jealousies, its tender tides and cresting waves, and like any kind of care it contains multitudes.
PASSIONS:
The appeal of fictional romantic love is a kind of blurring of identities. Of x-and-y being Siamese twins, conjoined at the heart, and called as such. Friendship does not let you dissolve. No matter how much it binds you to another person, you are forced to be your own, for that is the gift you offer each other; the only seal on the unwritten exchange. The case has been made that friends are “one soul in two bodies,”3 and I think that’s true in a small way, but it misses the mark just a little. It turns the image of friendship into a magazine print—soulmate theory! How neat!—but removes a choice element that I think exists.
I hoard memories, dragonish—linguistics homework till the sun rose with Alina, Stephanie Garber with Suz, Russian with Sophia, moodboard-ing with Megan, media discussions with Eve, history and religion talks with YY, Dallas in the summer with Angie, writing dates with Maya, movie and the mall with Khi—and upon reflection, each of these depends on some point of connection, but we are very different people, my friends and I. There are meet-cutes in friendship that revolve around “me-too’s!”4 but then you learn of differences, and then you choose to stay.
And friendship—I think this is forgotten, sometimes—but friendship can be so exuberant. I try to tell my close friends often in what sounds like Tumblr language: Like Bruno, I would catch a grenade for you, but I also want to go grocery shopping with you and I want to help you move and I want to help you with all the miserable tasks no one wants to do on their own, and I want to split an orange with you—I’d peel it if you’d like—and I want to hear your wildest dreams, your fondest memories. I want to hear the strange thoughts, the ones you welcome, the ones you’re afraid of, and I want to laugh until I cry with you. You are something special to me, home away from home, galaxy and world entire, friend. My friend. I love you to the point of sheer embarrassment.
How many stories are about friendship in the end? Aren’t all of them? Vicious, The Little Prince, Klara and The Sun? Wasn’t the Secret History less about a warped love square and more about Bunny being the only person who could make Henry laugh? Most of all about how a thing like that could sour?5
JEALOUSIES:
“Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.”
There is much that has been said this summer about jealousy in friendship—I’m sure no one, at this juncture, wants to read another essay about girl so confusing—but there is something taboo about it still.
It can be classed into several types, I think: envy of a friend’s success, or envy of a friend’s other friends. There’s friendship envy that occurs when you want in on a friend-group, and friendship envy that occurs when you feel like you’re being pushed out of another one.
All of it feels tied to a non-romantic want. It feels melodramatic to say that in seeking friendship or success, you are shamed, but friendship is so devoid of desire that even the lookalike feels odd. Wanting to be friends, wanting to belong, wanting to be as good as your friends…all of it feels like Eve in the garden, stained fingertips, mouth red.
But all types are fun to work with in literature—please, instead of a love triangle involving an old flame, give me the friends that love each other but want the same thing very much. Instead of a boy and his crush, give me a protagonist that feels insecure about their place in a friend group. There is so much that can be done thematically with envy in relationships, and yet the spotlight always lands on romantic relationships.
One of the reasons The Secret History was a fun read was its refusal to shy away from jealousy as the underbelly of admiration, its keen interest in the aesthetics of friendships, what it takes to make them break. More of that in fiction, please?
TIDES & WAVES
“You’ve known Nezha for a few years,” he said. “You met him when he’d perfected his masks and pretensions. But I’ve known him since we were children. You think that he’s invincible, but he is more fragile than you think.” - THE DRAGON REPUBLIC by R.F. KUANG
Right now, I want fiction about old friends, about friends who meet again and search for the echoed notes of history, friends who can say “I miss your mom” and mean it. Friends that don’t recognize the people they’ve become; fiction for old time’s sake.
There is a mystery unique to those that know the first of you, the you that’s nested like the littlest doll in a seven-piece matryoshka. Those friends don’t always stay, but you know that when you need them, they’ll be there like tomorrow, like the sunrise. There is something comforting about a friendship that opened the womb, before the layers of experience solidified like sedimentary rock. These are friends that know your family, friends you know “from home.”6 Friends that first met you at the origin, yours and theirs. Life will take you to different places, but all rivers wind back to their source, and there is an unspeakably deep magic in sharing a headwater. There is wizardry in the way old friends still ebb and flow in parallel, regardless of the point the waters split.
WAVES
“She leaned backward and let her fingers trail through the luminous water. She made flames trickle up her arms, delighting in how their intricate patterns were reflected in the blue-green light. Fire and water looked so lovely together. It was a pity they destroyed each other by nature.” - THE DRAGON REPUBLIC by R.F. KUANG
When I was last in Lagos, I went to Eko Atlantic while the moon was soft and glinting on the waves. In contrast, said waves were harsh and spitting, tumultuous, slamming against the rocks, cresting high. The spray descended on my skin with all the gentleness of a kiss, crowning the already vivid juxtaposition. That swirl of confusion, that wretched, furious beauty, feels to me just like the end of a friendship.
To borrow Jane Austen’s preamble, “it is a truth universally acknowledged” that loving someone doesn’t always stop them from poisoning you, and vice versa. Sometimes you have to put a close on something that started out by being beautiful. And almost always, it will hurt. However, I rarely see this truth being applied to friendship breakups, even though they pack the same punch.
Friendship beginnings and friendship ends tend to lack anniversaries; in goes the love and out again, but it takes its time both ways. There’s less comfort and more reality in that—if a partner breaks up with you, they can say or imply “it’s because I wasn’t ready” “it’s because you weren’t my type” “it’s because I wanted to build a life with someone and I couldn’t see it being you”. If a friend breaks up with you, all you’re left with is “the wound of you scabbed over and there’s no room now that I’ve healed” or “you’re going now and I can’t tell you why but the love will never leave.”
Friendship breakups can be deeply ruinous, even without the fanfare. But sometimes, they are quiet and they are gentle. I “ended” a friendship recently and it felt like leaving a garden, closing the door, letting it overgrow. Not a word was said between the other girl and I, but both of us stopped visiting. The garden plants will tower in our absence anyway. Can I say I ended it? Can I say she did? I don’t really know, but gardens run wild are beautiful too, even with no one left to watch them.
“Friendship worthy of the name is supersensuous; it is capable of penetrating distance and silence to " coincide in rest" with an absent friend. It sees, hears, and feels without the need of bodily organs, for it lives in a higher atmosphere than that of the body and can command finer forces.” - FRIENDSHIP. by LEONORA B. HALSTED
Media Review/recs but everything has a friendship sub/main plot
BOOKS:
Vicious by VE Schwab - Dare I say this book has my favorite “friendship” of all time?
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is PHENOMENAL. Clarke is my favorite authors’ favorite author for a reason.
RF Kuang’s entire Bibliography - viz., The Poppy War trilogy, Babel, and Yellowface. All of these are mostly about other things, and make sure you read trigger warnings first, but they all feature interesting and occasionally devastating commentary about friendship.
And the Ocean Was Our Sky by Patrick Ness
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (recommended once before)
The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton
The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland
Portrait of A Thief by Grace D. Li
Zoba by Esosa Daniel-Oniko
MUSIC:
I love this one because most Nigerian music is romance-oriented. Other recs: Glitter by
, Castle On The Hill by Ed Sheeran, and of course, With a Little Help From My Friends by the Beatles. I would also be a little dull if I didn’t mention Lacy by Olivia Rodrigo.ANISA’S WRITING CORNER
For the past month, I’ve been oscillating between revising Project V and waiting for my betas to finish Astericus (three of them have!) But lately, I find that I don’t want to think about the latter project at all. I think I have been working on it entirely too long—when I look at it, I see a relic of the person that I was when I began it, and that person feels so far-away. I think I’m a bit sick of it not being ready in the way that I want it to be, but I know it will be ready soon.
Usually, I find that when I get sick of thinking about one project, the other is there like a safety net to catch me. Right now, that’s what Project V is to me. I’ve fallen into a groove again while rereading from the start, and I have decided that I really really like it.
CONCLUSION
This newsletter is horribly late, but July ended and then August began in a crazy way for me. I flew across the sea and that brought with it some difficulties, but I’m enjoying (wonder of wonders) my time in the sun. I’m glad I got to get it out eventually. I hope the rest of the month is excellent for anyone reading this; be careful! Summer is dropping to the floor just like loose change!
With all my love,
Anisa
This has happened twice this year. The first was caused, with near-equal force, by TWAR by my good friend Eve (@sunsoffline).
C.S. Lewis said it first and best in The Four Loves: ““Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
Dark academia books get (often valid) criticism about being pretentious, but my favorite thing about them is that they often have so much to do with friendship. Give me a friend group with a sordid underbelly in a university setting. I will eat it up every time.
To use the Nigerian phrasing.