Don’t get me wrong, I love a good ship as much as the next fangirl. But the most rewarding relationships in my adult life have been those rooted in platonic love. (Outside my husband, who still counts—we’re first and foremost BFFs after all, *hi Dave*.) And yet, these meaningful platonic relationships I’ve built my entire social framework around are conspicuously missing from most of the media I consume.
(Disclaimer: Platonic relationships come in all flavors, but for the purposes of this rant article I’ll be focusing on: SFF, Male/Female, non-familial, significant story/character development impact.)
Why No Love For Platonic Love?
The concept of “shipping” has firmly established itself as a staple of fandom culture, which is itself becoming intrinsically tied to genre fiction and SFF in particular. And again—I get it, I really do, I have plenty of ride-or-die OTPs of my own: Lexa & Clarke (The 100), Adama & Roslin (Battlestar Galactica), Hawke & Anders (Dragon Age 2), Fitz & Simmons (Agents of SHIELD), the list goes on.
However, romance and friendship aren’t mutually exclusive endeavors—a fact society only seems ready to accept when that friendship serves as a precursor to an eventual romance.
I’m here to rally against that assumption, and I think we can begin in a couple ways. First and foremost by not pitting romantic love and platonic love against each other. These two types of relationships can—and should—coexist in any well-rounded narrative. However so much of the time, the platonic side gets left behind, whether due to inherent author biases, reader and genre expectations, or both.
Additionally, instead of relegating these friendships to subplots or backstories, we can make a concerted effort to place them at the forefront and show just how impactful platonic relationships can be in the lives of our fictional characters. The strongest relationships are those that stem from a place of mutual respect, and this is a dominion in which friendships shine. I’ll never tire of seeing two characters treating each other as equals, understanding each another’s strengths and weaknesses, and supporting each other unconditionally, without any expectation of something “more.”
A romantic relationship is so often treated as a thing won or lost—a goal to be attained by one or both parties. This not only has the potential to corrode the roots of the romance itself, but can have the (rather harmful) consequence of undermining and devaluing the “worth” of “only” a friendship—placing it on a lower tier of relationship status. (While we’re on the topic, I’d love to see a reframing of language such as “just friends” or “friend-zone” which exacerbate this issue by implying a lesser value on the concept of friendship as a whole.)
Normalizing these relationships not only eases the social burden on people like me who just want to have close friendships with the people she cares about (who happen to be men) without having to field ongoing suspicion and condescension, but also opens the doors for the future. Just like with any stigma, by conscientiously reflecting in our literature what we already know to be true in real life, we can help break down the false assumptions society has built up around opposite-sex relationships.
And besides, platonic love opens a floodgate of possibilities for unique relationship dynamics in storytelling. My personal favorite formula is when the two characters are somehow both opposites, and yet cut from the same cloth. At their core, they’re the same—made from the same cosmic material, if you will—but their upbringing, experiences, relationships, and life circumstances have put them on very different paths. When the story brings them together, they just click; it’s like two long lost pieces of a whole coming together—no kissing required.
Examples, Please?
Sure! Here are my top four favorite M/F platonic soulmate pairs! (And yes, only four because I couldn’t find even ONE more that met the criteria laid out in the disclaimer (and on which I knew enough to speak articulately).)
Dutch & Johnny (Killjoys)
These two are the premier example of platonic love I’ve seen to date, and the standard to which I hold all other friendships in media. It’s impressive alone for its sheer duration, as well as the fact that there’s never once a lingering subplot or undertone of “will they/won’t they.” (Though I’d ask you please ignore the pointless false-memory-marriage subplot from the final season.)
By establishing early on that these two are in it for the long haul, we get a fantastic portrayal of how a true, perennial platonic friendship looks and feels, complete with its ups and downs.
But mostly ups—not only because Killjoys is an overwhelmingly optimistic adventure romp, but because Dutch and Johnny already know each other, and have a functional, long-standing, brimming over with true love friendship from the get-go. It helps that they possess a natural chemistry that makes you absolutely love the crap out of both of them, and the unconditional way in which they actively support and protect one another is not only the backbone of the entire show, but is downright heartwarming and truly refreshing to watch.
Clarke & Bellamy (The 100)
Bellarke fans just sit down please because the ship isn’t canon (in the show at least) and I’m so here for this delicious post-apocalyptic BFF action.
Where Dutch and Johnny are a great fit but actually intrinsically quite different, Clarke and Bellamy are very much in the aforementioned category of “cut from the same cloth.” That mixed with constant struggles of evolving survival needs and shifts in leadership make complicated scaffolding for this Gordian knot of a relationship. These are two who—under any circumstances other than “dystopian post-apocalyptic wasteland survival”—would likely not have even been friends, never mind (platonic) soulmates. Theirs is a trust born of (hard-earned) mutual respect, and thereby a willingness to accept their own shortcomings and understand when to step back and let the other take the reins.
A unique feature to mention here is how very slow-burn of a vibe they have. They take their sweet time finding their footing together, and even once you think things are finally settled, complications abound. They relapse into frenemy or even enemy territory multiple times—but those rough patches and backslides are just as critical to feature as the positive bits. You can’t craft any relationship that feels truly realistic and earned without throwing a few spanners in the works.
Damon & Bonnie (The Vampire Diaries)
This one might get me killed too, but I’m here to firmly support the writers’ decision to remain platonic. These two Very Troubled Souls™ manage to dredge up a striking platonic relationship out of the weeds of deep shared trauma. Their natural chemistry effortlessly morphs from enemies to frenemies to #FriendshipGoals in a matter of a mere handful of well-executed montages. After that, the two trade sacrifices like Halloween candy, but the true headliner is in how they manage to challenge one another—intentionally or not—to become better people. Damon changes Bonnie for the better, and Bonnie changes Damon for the better (in a relative sense given the morality spectrum of TVD), and in the end that’s—to continue with my weird candy analogy—the key ingredient in the sweet gooey center of platonic love.
Murderbot & Mensah (The Murderbot Diaries)
THESE. TWO. (I know, I know—Murderbot is agender—but I’m counting it anyway.)
The key salience here that’s not seen often and thus why I wanted to include it: Murderbot’s not expected (by the narrative or Mensah) to sacrifice its happiness or well-being in support of the relationship. It’s important to Mensah that Murderbot choose its own path, regardless of her own wants or needs, and it’s perfectly fine for Murderbot to be “““selfish””” in that respect, and it doesn’t inherently undermine the strength of the relationship. Refreshing AF.
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Honorable mentions:
- Black Widow & Hawkeye (The MCU version, at least.)
- Arya Stark & Sandor Clegane (Game of Thrones — It takes a minute, but they get there.)
- FemShep & Garrus (Mass Effect — They’re platonic BFFs and I’ll go down with this lack-of-ship, don’t @ me.)
Who Are You to Judge?
Well, no one probably, but it’s shameless plug time.
I gleefully discovery-wrote my way through my debut novel The Last Watch, but one of the few things I knew before I even put a single word on the page was that I wanted to use it first and foremost to showcase a strong, healthy, overwhelmingly positive M/F platonic relationship—one not without its struggles, mind you, but one that starts from a good place and only has the best intentions along the way.
Enter main characters Adequin Rake and Cavalon Mercer, tired spaceship commander and disowned trash prince respectively. Before I’d even fully realized it, this relationship quickly became more than just the emotional core of the story, it became the impetus of the plot itself. Without getting into spoilers, let’s just say there would be no “big picture” conflict if these two hadn’t met (an ironic twist of fate used to gleefully taunt the villain later in the series.
And I ship Adequin and Cavalon (hard)—just platonically. When I first started drafting, I’d scramble back to my computer every day to write because I couldn’t wait to see the people these two would become now that they met, and as the series progresses that excitement only grows.
Though they remain the focus of my zeal, I’ve also made a concerted effort to avoid turning them into a “token” by showcasing multiple platonic relationships of all different flavors. Both main characters build strong nonromantic relationships with others throughout the series, and each one is an opportunity for me to showcase a different way platonic love can look and feel, and it’s loads of fun to write.
Please inform me of any well-constructed, not-romantic-ever-once platonic loves I’ve missed in fiction, because I need more in my life please.
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J.S. Dewes is an author, cinematographer, and video editor with a degree in film production from Columbia College Chicago. Jenny cut her narrative teeth writing scripts for award-winning feature films and shorts which have screened at festivals and conventions all across the United States. A creative a heart, she enjoys video games, drawing, photography, graphic design, Pinterest, and all things visual.
Rodger and Dodger from Middlegame qualify.
Cisco and Killer Frost/Caitlyn are close, close friends, but never a romantic couple on the Flash.
Wheel of Time
Perrin/Egwene (esp. in tEotW)
Moiraine/Lan
Rand/Egwene (can be thrown out if your criteria demands that they were never a love interest – I didn’t see that in there but possibly I missed it)
Birgitte/Mat (*maybe* not actually love and just really strong affection/friendship, so possibly doesn’t count)
Agents of SHIELD
Coulson/Daisy
Daisy/Fitz
Daisy/Mack
Firefly
Kaylee/Mal
Jayne/Vera
(Stormlight Archives – spoiler) I would say Kaladin and Shallan qualify. At first there is some romantic tension, but then they realize they were just confused by societal expectations and the fact that neither have ever had much experience with friendship, much less one with the opposing gender. The moment Kaladin realizes this is really quite heartwarming.
Heartily agree that there is not nearly enough of this in media of any stripe.
I’ll throw out a few more:
Mal Reynolds and Zoe Washburne of Firefly. They tease a bit about everyone assuming there was a level of romance there at some point, but unless I’m misremembering something their relationship was always 100% camaraderie, trench-buddies. And if there was ever a ride-or-die pair, it’s these two.
… Shoot, I thought I had more.
I was going to say Book version of Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Lannister, but that’s probably going to degenerate into dirty hate sex stuff just like the show, bleh.
I have always found it sad that some fans seem incapable of understanding that some relationships don’t involve sex. As humans, they seem profoundly broken.
The greatest platonic love of them all: Fitz and the Fool.
Folks interested in this post really need to check out the novels of Nicole Kornher-Stace, like ARCHIVIST WASP and LATCHKEY (https://www.amazon.com/Archivist-Wasp/dp/B07SY8RT3C) and the forthcoming FIREBREAK (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08LDWS95B/).
Gimli and Galadriel
#8 zdrakec is spot on!
One of the things I absolutely love about the new wave (newer wave, newest wave) of LGBTQ-inclusive SFF is that stories that can deal with LGBTQ relationships in an honest and forthright manner–without playing subtext games in the service of a later “big reveal”–appear to me to have much better non-romantic relationships going on.
A great example of this is in Steven Universe. Lars moving out of town to do his own thing separate from Steven and Sadie is a big emotional deal for Steven. Since the show had been honest about its “romantic” and “platonic” relationships for at least a few seasons, it’s a relationship that has its own space to breathe. Pose is also great for showing how gay men and trans women have a wide range of relationships. If two characters really are romantic, we can trust the writers to develop it openly rather than drop hints from subtext.
I think Star Trek:TOS was explicitly built around a service camaraderie over romance theme that was common to service dramas at the time. Kirk, Bones, Spock, and even Scotty and Chekov are all given brides/lovers who must be left behind in order to serve the Enterprise. While we can queer that up after the fact, I honestly feel that those relationships have a lot more to do with romanticizing WWII/Korea/Vietnam service obligations than gay subtext.
The Aussie idea of “mates” is fairly common, and in these non-binary days probably counts.
I’m trying to write a novel manuscript that was originally meant to have a pair like this as secondary characters, and their friendship is crowding out the rest of the intended story because of how tight these people are and how much history they’ve shared. I might have to surgically excise them from this project and let them have their own book at this rate, but the idea charms me, so okay!
My own circle of close friends contains at least three gender categories, with at least two in each of those boxes last I checked. One of my most profound friendships is a M/F pair with two cis-het people but no history of ever even trying anything nonplatonic. It’s still a really freakin’ big deal!
The male protagonist has a female best friend in Patrick Ness’s The Rest of Us Just Live Here. Highlight after this sentence to reveal minor spoiler. It doesn’t entirely count, because they do make a short, abortive attempt at a relationship, but still.
I’m rereading Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Lots of platonic partnerships there- Jenks and Kizzy, Ashby and Sissix, and for a friendship that includes sex- Sissx and Rosemary.
If you love science fiction about aliens that are truly alien, please allow me to recommend Julie Czerneda’s Web Shifter books—which are true gems that are often overlooked. The central relationship is between main character Esen-Alit-Quar (a shape-shifting alien), and her human best friend Paul Ragem. Their relationship is charming, hilarious, and fascinating. The series is Czerneda at her best, and the final book in the second trilogy just came out!
1) Male!Hawke & Anders is one of my rare pair (romantic) OTPs
2) Natasha/Clint is my current (platonic) otp, I will write that onto all of my marvel fics, darn it!!
3) another platonic ship for the list (that’s obscure as heck) – Tina Chen and Gavin Reed, originally from the game Detroit: Become Human** but transformed by the fandom into fully realized characters
(**yes that game is racist/ableist/sexist, like all of David Cage’s work, but the fandom was – is? – good)
anyway as a lesbian, I’m always frustrated with the idea that “a man and a woman can never be just friends” so I try to combat that as much as possible in my writing.
Legend of Korra – there was an attempt at romance in early seasons, but the series ends with such a wonderful promise of friendship by Mako to Korra.
@6 – yes!
I’d definitely include Brienne and Jamie even if, in another story (and perhaps in this one as well), their love could well end up nonplatonic.
In Wheel of Time, Mat and Birgitte are perfection. .
#2: Vera is an inanimate object. Calling Jayne and Vera an example of a platonic M/F relationship is nonsense. Also, if you’re talking Firefly, Mal and Zoe are the obvious example of a friendship with no romantic undertones at all.
As soon as I read your introduction, I was thinking of Dutch and Johnny. I love their relationship SO MUCH. So glad to see it recognized here!
Although they’re only tangentially genre – author Peter O’Donnell believed in psychic powers and fitted some of his villains out with them – one of the best examples of a Platonic pairing has to be Modesty Blaise and her inseperable sidekick Willie Garvin. They trust each other with their lives, they can finish each others’ sentences and almost read each others’ minds – they are partners in every conceivable way… and never lovers.
@18
For Murderbot, do you mean Murderbot is asexual? I don’t see what being agender has to do with its platonic relationship with Mensah.
I highly recommend Patlabor. There’s Noa and Asuma, who fit the trope roles for each others’ romantic interests in any other anime, but not here. Here they are exactly as they interact. Friends who shout at each other but also got each others’ backs. Although Asuma is definitely a jerk, which says quite a bit about anime romance tropes.
There’s also Goto and Shinobu. Mostly. You can read a romantic interest in there, but that’s subjective. Otherwise, they’re just work friends.
Warehouse 13’s Pete and Myka were just friends and partners until the last couple episodes of the final season when the writers decided they should be a romantic couple after all. I think they should have left them at just friends like they started out to be. Claudia and Steve were also friends, but I’m not sure it counts because they made Steve a gay man . The writers couldn’t ship that relationship. Smallville also had Clark and Chloe as a strong friendship. I can’t remember those two ever having a romantic shipper vibe unless Chloe had a crush on Clark at one point. It’s been a long time since I watched the show. The third one I can think of is from Leverage between Parker and Spencer. Theirs was more of a sibling bond but they were friends and not a romance in sight.
One from my childhood: Dandin and Mariel from Redwall. I love those two. Always have, always will.
I haven’t watched the show but, If it follows the books, I’d offer Amos and Clarissa from The Expanse. Also Elida and Isaac from Vagrant Queen.
From gaming Cyberpunk 2077 allows you to become friends with any or all of the four main NPCs and romance them or not romance them and just be friends.
In books but not in any SFF TV shows or movies that I can think of there is a third category – non romantic sex with friends (for a myriad of reasons) .
When Avatar: The Last Airbender was still airing and the shipping wars were raging unchecked, I was rather put off the idea of Zuko and Katara as a pairing because of all the fandom stuff… until they actually started interacting more in the third season of the show and I realized that I loved them as friends.
Becky chambers’ shipmates in ‘to be taught, if fortunate’ and Elizabeth bear’s Dr Jens and colleagues in Machine come to mind.
All right, we’re getting to one of my greatest pet peeves with western society in general and the need for fandoms (and people in general) to assume that any two characters who are close must want each other in that way because monogamous romantic relationships are so often seen as the correct “end game” for people and that’s the only relationship that really matters.
Why should we devalue close, tender friendships?
My FAVORITE types of stories tend to have characters who are just friends (which, argh is an awful phrase, and to go on another rant ‘friend’ encompasses too much – your casual acquaintance is a friend, the people who you see at the bar and who notice when you’re not there are your friends, the people you know in your life but wouldn’t really have over to hang out, friends, the people you know in your life and they do come over, friends, that person who should be your best friend but kind of can’t? friend. There are all these different levels but we just say ‘oh, I’m friends with them’ for all of them).
Frodo and Sam? Friends. You can have really deep connections with people and still have it be platonic.
Kat and Ezra from STARLESS SEA? Well it may be a one sided friendship since it’s Kat who seems to have made it her mission to befriend the not really social Ezra, but she turns out to be a fiercely loyal friend.
Not at all SFF but one of the best pieces of media I have seen in a while about friends? FIRST COW because Cookie and King Lu share a bond, and have a tenderness about them that could be mistaken for romance but isn’t – it’s friendship.
Historical movie – AGORA, featuring my favorite trope of a character who is romantically interested in another character, is rejected by them and instead of being bitter about it decides to be their friend.
Yes yes yes and YES! THANK YOU so much for talking about this. I may be biased because I’m acespec, but the devaluation of platonic love in favor of romantic love is one of my biggest peeves in fandom.
An interesting thing I’ve noticed is more fics with queerplatonic relationships. I wonder if sometimes writers are using the QP label to validate intense friendships.
@22: It’s because the article was specifically listing m/f pairs.
Maybe I missed it, but Max and Furiousa!! Their relationship changed it all for me. Their story, and the overall plot of the film, would have been significantly diminished if there was any romance.
Well said! Why can’t two human beings (or elves, aliens, etc) simply have someone they trust, respect, and enjoy the company of? Why do they need to have the desire to rub their bits together? Is that really the pinnacle of the human experience? I don’t think so.
Thanks for writing this article. Cheers.
Well, to add controversy – Xena and Gabrielle from the X:WP tv show. There was strong support from many female fans to keep that relationship as female platonic friends because it valued friendship so highly, and you rarely see that on TV. Of course, the difficulty with a TV show is that it has a lot of writers. In different episodes the relationship was written and played in different ways, depending on the writer and director of the day.
Umm, OK, I mean, it was never shipped in the books even once… Harry/Hermione…
On the adult side, because I just finished A Desolation Called Peace: Three Seagrass / Twelve Azalea, and Nine Hibiscus / Twenty Cicada.
So many books made into movies or TV series seem to insert a romance where one was never intended (or necessary). The worst recent offender that raised my hackles was Good Omens.
In the book Crowley and Aziraphale were specifically asexual without the slightest hint of romance. They were just BFFs. But the TV version made it into a romance with transfer into each other’s bodies (which didn’t happen in the book) as a substitute for sex.
I just watched Cloak and Dagger from Freeform and feel that this fits with these examples as well. I think the original comics have also had them as friends since they were created but that could have been more from the time they were released it was taboo to put them together. Ultimate comics did make them a couple though so it hasn’t always been that way.
I agree wholeheartedly. Maybe I am just an old fuddy duddy, but I get sick of everybody trying to inject sexual aspects into every friendship portrayed in fiction.
One of the great moments I remember is at the end of Pacific Rim, where after defeating the kaiju, Raleigh and Mako don’t kiss at the end. As opposed to Rise of the Skywalker, where I went “ewww” when Rey and Ben kissed.
Great points here.
I’ve got one: David Drake’s RCN series. Daniel Leary and Adele Mundy are close friends and allies, but never shipped. (This becomes clearer when you note that they’re based on Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin from Patrick O’Brian’s historicals, as Drake explicitly points out.)
The Doctor and his Companions, minus Rose, of course, but for the most part, it’s platonic straight through.
As mentioned earlier, Esen and Paul, who have one of the most enduring and sacrificial friendships in pretty much anything.
Edward and Anita from the Anita Blake series, which I admit I haven’t finished, but to the best of my knowledge those two are the closest thing either of them have to an actual, real, friend.
Ben S. Dobson’s Magebreakers series. No romance between the detective and his (female half-orc) sidekick, but a great friendship/colleague/ally dynamic.
I’ll add my name to the chorus of “we need more friendship of all sorts” in all our stories, in all media. @29 Ducky–the best way I’ve found to say “we’re just friends” without devaluing the friendship is to say “it’s sheer friendship.”
As a cis/het woman, I’ve been friends for half a century with a cis/gay man. In Lillian Rubin’s big study of friendship patterns for her book on the topic, she found that the longest lasting, most mutually satisfying cross-gender friendships were between gay men and straight women. This sort of friendship does appear in media, but too often it’s portrayed in stereotypical ways.
Rubin’s study excluded friendships among siblings; I have a couple of cis/het brothers who are among my closest friends. That’s also a relationship that is extremely rarely portrayed in the media: the friendship of adult mixed-gender sibling pairs. In Hollywood in particular, adult siblings come in same-sex sets. I can name only about a dozen movies that feature an adult sister-and-brother relationship in any significant way. Children in media are allowed to have mixed-gender friendships and to be close to siblings of a different gender, but once you’re past puberty, apparently you can’t relate meaningfully to anyone of another gender other than by pairing up with them romantically (and then, possibly, breaking up with them). Interestingly, in a few of the movies where an adult woman is shown to be friends with her brother, the brother is gay: again, I think this shows that writers don’t know how to write relationships that don’t fall into certain pigeonholes, and they think they know how to write conversation between a straight woman and a gay man.
Doreen Green, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, has a couple of guys among her circle of close friends. I’ll second the motion for Becky Chambers’ books.
Hermione and Harry in Harry Potter, which I was glad to see didn’t go the predictable route of romance.
Lady Katsa and Prince Raffin in Kristin Cashore’s Graceling. Cousins, but magnificent and close friends, too.
Ender and Petra in Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, war games are better than romance! At least in the book it is platonic, the film does the predictable thing, bleh.
Nita Callahan and Kit Rodriguez in So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane, although I haven’t finished the series, but I have heard it changes to romance in the later books :(
Tamora Pierce’s books heavily value friendship, for people of any age and gender (and sapient species). They collectively include some adult human m/f friendships that don’t become romantic or sexual, though those are semi-rarely in the foreground because the centermost protagonists are most often children or teenagers.
Sweetest topic in a while :)
#35 I have to object to this interpretation of Crawley and Aziraphale, even in the show.
You can’t say that the show-writers insert a sexual relationship by having them change bodies as an substitute for sex. This is the ENTIRE problem with trying to represent a platonic loving relationship – even viewers that don’t want there to be romance/sex will see sex where there is no sex to be seen.
Crawley and Aziraphale Love each other. Their relationship is stronger and more loving than most marriages, it also does not involve sex in any way, that doesn’t make it less. They are not homosexual icons in subtext, they are Ace icons in text. They are exactly the type of pair that the OP is asking for more of. But people find that type of relationship so unusual, find it so impossible that two people could love each other without wanting to fuck, that they project sexual attraction where there is only platonic love.
This is exactly the reason that we don’t see more platonic loving relationships in literature. Because most people can not accept it.
#34 and #42 I was almost going to say Harry and Hermione; but they were never a duo, it was always the trio of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. And they did have Hermione and Ron fall in love (as unconvincing as it was). So I don’t think this one counts.
Your definition of platonic love seems to differ from mine. For me platonic love isn’t friendship. It is Love – though for one reason or another totally non-physical and preferrably at a distance. Often one-sided as well.
Great article!
Well maybe except the bit about Anders. I don’t recall the specifics because it’s been probably about 10 years since I last played it, but I do recall pairing Hawke and Anders together because it SEEMED like a good idea, and then tending to side on one of the factions, and then at the end he does a complete personality 180 degree reversal with zero telegraphing. I was so mad at the writing at this point that I think I broke character to do the very explicit murder and finish that run.
And it wasn’t a Spike/Buffy “your hate just means you love that much harder”. I went into another run (different class) and this time I did everything possible to completely sideline and eliminate Anders from the story. One of the worst plot developments in game history (IMHO of course, everyone else is quite welcome to love him for whatever other reasons you might have! :D )
@37 – omg YES. I’m so irked when ppl ship Raleigh and Mako, it’s such a beautiful example of purely platonic love for ONCE between a man and a woman (obviously there’s other examples but that’s the clearest I can think of that I’ve seen up on a big screen).
@45: As to whether it was the show-writers who inserted the scenes to push Crowley and Aziraphale in a new direction, I can’t say but I can see Gaiman thinking about how he might update the book.
You make a good point about people who don’t accept it. In SFF, fandom (like us) and fanfics have become a way for the public to discuss how books or shows could be ‘improved’. Many seem to want more than is there. This often seems to stem from their own desires and the hope for a ‘one true love’, as in The Princess Bride, is a perennial. Show-writers for better or, often, worse take note of this.
Great article! I couldn’t agree more. There is something so satisfying about a friendship fraught with challenges and trust and platonic love.
I just finished The Last Watch and loved all of it, but especially the Cav/Rake ship. I need a Cav in my life please!
Yes! More “sheer friendships”! (thank you, Saavik!)
Years ago – well before the internet – I remember being outraged at an advice columnist. A woman wrote that her husband was possessively jealous whenever she went out for lunch or for an after-work drink with a male coworker. She asked how she could convince him that they were just friends. The columnist answered that her husband was right to be jealous; SHE was the one who was misled. That no matter how innocent she thought the relationship with the coworker was, it was a slippery slope to them having an affair.
My reaction was, “Are you saying that I should eliminate half the human race from being my friend?” It seemed totally absurd. At the time, I believed that people were innately agender, but were pressured into accepting the gender role that society assigned to them. (It took me a long time to realize that this was not the norm; that for (apparently) most people, gender is an innate part of them.)
I think a lot of the pressure to “ship” people is an honest inability of these gendered people to imagine a relationship in which gender, and for them, by implication, sex, is not a controlling part of the equation.
I just finished A Desolation Called Peace (Arkady Martine), and the friendship between Nine Hibiscus and Twenty Cicada was beautiful, deep, and pivotal.
I like fictional platonic friendships as much as the next person but I don’t know if I’d describe this trope as exactly rare… In addition to the many, many examples in the comments, I’d add the one boy, three girl found family in the Circle of Magic series, Jake and Gina from Brooklyn 99, the male-female alien/human friendship in Singing the Dogstar Blues (it’s very platonic soulmatey since she’s replacing his lost twin) and the very, very long the tvtropes page describing this trope: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlatonicLifePartners
Adult or YA books and tv shows with no romance are harder to find (and often when you look them up, you get things with a little romance which is worse, imo than a lot of romance because it feels tacked on). I’d recommend The Hollow Places, The Twisted Ones and The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher (despite the title the seventh bride has absolutely zero romance), Singing The Dogstar Blues by Allison Goodman, and Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone.
The question of why everyone is into shipping these days can feel a little homophobic, even when it’s explicitly about straight people. See all the comments complaining about queer shipping. I’ll stop shipping non-canon queer couples when writers stop deliberately inserting gay subtext into their works and start including more canon queer couples. In the meantime, I’m perfectly capable of caring about romantic and platonic relationships in fiction, just as people are perfectly capable of having both in real life.
Laurana and Sturm in the Dragonlance Chronicles develop a wonderful friendship. They are pretty much each other’s main source of support and inspiration in Dragons of Winter Night, and the strength of their bond proves critical to the outcome of the War of the Lance. Their relationship is my favorite relationship in the entire series and an amazing example of platonic love.
#45: With all due respect, reducing the qualities of care that define the diversity of gay relationships to “wanting to have sex” strikes me as kind of gross. Coming out in the Reagan/Bush era, I was institutionally and legally cut off from the relationship structures that defined my parents and grandparents. So many of my peers put in hard work to build platonic and spiritual relationships as well. And since this was happening under Reagan/Bush, our relationships that looked like Aziraphale and Crowley got many of the same kinds of exclusion and violence.
That’s setting aside how their genderqueer presentation absolutely references how many of us do gender as well.
On my more bitter days, I have issues with the concept of “gay romance.” Straight and cis people get romantic comedies, people like me get porn tags and segregated marketing imprints. Two major churches just affirmed that my relationships are less worthy of celebration than traditional marriage. “Romance” carries strong connotations of cisnormativity. And I feel like the pendulum needs to swing back from affirming that LGBTQ people can legally now have the June and Ward nuclear family dream to affirming that we can build whatever relationship structures we want or need.
Including platonic and non-sexual ones, if we want. I don’t disagree with the idea that A/C are non-sexual or asexual. But that doesn’t mean they can’t also be read as gay.
Playing devil’s advocate here a bit.
When I write fanfic (slash sex-comedies), it would never occur to me to privilege that as the way I expect other people to see the characters (although I also don’t expect the author’s interpretation to be the last word).
I always write “my versions” of the characters rather than pure original versions (if the original author has the only voice, I’d have missed several things I prefer to canon), although I try to keep dialogue and internal monologue within shouting-distance of recognisable.
Do I write sex because that’s “what I would have wanted to see in aired canon”? Definitely not! I prefer there to be some sort of liminal space to think myself into. I write sex not because I necessarily want to do the same things I choose for the characters to do, nor because I want to sellotape any actors concerned to a bed while I film them (a definite no, especially since I haven’t got a very visual imagination), and most definitely not because I think that platonic doesn’t exist. During the story I “inhabit/hear” rather than “see” my favourite characters: the characters may get undressed twice by authorial error, but usually sound roughly right.
I do it because, for me, it’s a trope, just the same as any number of other things that aren’t what I do every day but I want to read or write about (psychological suspense, ghosts, murder, weird dream-sequences, time-travel, shape-shifting…). The romance-or-relationship-expressed-by-sex gives a shape to a story, and I have terrible problems with plotting. I also love to write a bad-sex aspect to the story because I love to write sex as part of the characterisation and add to the plot
I also very much enjoy writing “unromantic” unsentimental romance where people express passionate love in a flat voice, or express their love by ignoring the other person’s fervid declarations in decent privacy because they want to find a lost technical diagram and really the other person should have taken the point when they didn’t actually tell them to piss off.
Sex, like horror or murder or romance itself, can be a heightened emotional temperature that people just…want to read (or write) because they do. If nobody cares about the murder victim (in a crime novel) or the extra victims (in a horror story) or the heroine’s ex (in a romance) because there are parts of the plot or characterisation they prefer–it happens, although the best quality relentlessly pushes you to care about everyone. Awareness of “unreliable narrators” etc can make the story more fun. Although one of the things I write fanfic for is often that I think I like a character more than the author does…
I don’t think reading or writing genres needs to be quite as grimly serious as people are suggesting. I only found my own voice as a fanfic writer (which has always been distinctive) when I finally silenced the inner critic which was telling me I had no right to write about anything because I had never experienced anything, and no right to write about things my friends and acquaintances did because that was their stories, and no right to write about stuff I read somewhere because it was hearsay.
I add aspects of myself to my stories, everyone does, but people have been writing “unauthorised versions” of things forever. Some time before a Sumerian accountant invented writing, probably, someone sat in a storytelling circle thinking about Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and it might have been a slash ship, and it might have been deep-platonic, and that was all right.
It wasn’t altogether psychologically healthy in the 1980s when practically all women seemed to admit to rape-fantasies (I went to women’s workshops in my teens when everyone except me seemed to); every single book with a romantic element appeared to involve non-con. It’s admirable that the current ideas involve enthusiastic consent.
But there should be room in fiction for a few differences. It probably shouldn’t be a straight choice between “description by experience” and “aspirational”, partly because fiction can be a safe space to play with ideas that are, well, fictional.
In the TV show “Pushing Daisies”, Emerson Cod and Olive Snook. Their budding friendship had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with common interests and goals.
@54: I second the recommendation of The Hollow Places, currently being covered in the Reading the Weird series here on Tor, for its great and very prominent portrayal of a platonic m/f friendship.
I’ll add Richard Mayhew and Miss Door in the urban fantasy Neverwhere. Neil Gaiman leaves open the possibility that they’ll end up together romantically, but they seem destined for a platonic future. Given that Gaiman rarely anchors his stories on romance, I assume that was the author’s intent.
Person of interest – Mr. Reese and Sameen Shaw
Lt. Daniel Leary and Signals Officer Adele Mundy in Drake’s series on the Republic of Cinnabar navy.
@@@@@ #24 – Pete and Myka from Warehouse 13 were my immediate thought! I spent the whole show admiring how fun and awesome their platonic, close friendship was (they even talked about platonically having a baby together and it was so beautiful!), while simultaneously dreading the day the writers would probably decide to shove them into a romantic relationship. I can’t decide if it’s worse that the romance was so clumsily shoehorned in literally during like the last 2 episodes of the show, or if that’s better because at least I got to enjoy 99% of the show depicting their wonderful friendship without romance.
In one of Edmond Hamilton’s novella a scientist is very much in love with the galactic empress but she doesn’t feel the same way. However she trusts him and needs his skills and he maturely decides that a platonic closeness will be enough. Granted the scientist tries to take the protagonist apart with his bare hand because he hurt Empress Tharanya romantically as well as betraying her politically. But when said protagonist demonstrates he’s changed and has an honest love for Tharanya the Scientist is not just willing to tolerate the romance but respect and work with the new consort. For both men supporting Tharanya and serving her as empress is more important than their personal feelings.