found family is “i have endured the fucking horrors with these guys. i would both kill and die for them. i would rip my own bones out to make splints to heal theirs. there is no name for the bond we share”
found family is NOT “this guy is so dad-coded and these guys are so sibling-like and—”
ALT
just saw this tag and i figure it’s only right to give a genuine answer for all wondering, at least from my perspective as the person who didn’t make the original post.
i think the main issue is that, when you make a found family using the second method, you’re just reinventing the “nuclear family” in a framework that isn’t made to support that. found family has nothing to do with who’s in what role; it’s not a game of house, it’s a support system. rigidly defining who’s who in the system is just putting shiny paint over outdated ideals of what a family is supposed to look and act like, and those ideals also tend to come pre-packaged with gender roles. you know that phenomenon of people taking the only major woman in a cast and dubbing her the “mom friend” or “responsible older sister”? that’s the exact same problem as this.
by it’s very name, a family of choice is one that is uninterested in or defiant of the traditional picture of a family, especially because (both in real life and in fiction) they’re often comprised of people who were explicitly failed by that picture in some way. a found family can just as readily be made up of a dozen people in their fifties as it can be a couple ragtag teens and their disgruntled adult caretaker with optional animal sidekick, but the first one won’t get recognized as often because it doesn’t fulfill the roles people are looking for like the second one does.
i don’t care if you think a character acts paternal or if you think a group of characters behave like siblings. i also don’t care if unrelated characters refer to each other with familial terms. but there’s a difference between performing the role and actually being supportive. too much emphasis on the former creates “found families” that are just regular families with a sparkly filter overlaid on them.
ALT
Discussion ¬