Found Family

There's a weird hermit living at the edge of a street. Rumours fly about him and what he does all day, whether he's a criminal or a psychopath. People don't go near him or his property and any interaction is minimal. Until a young vagrant kid stumbles, exhausted, at his porch when he happens to be out there for a smoke.

The man hates the intrusion, but the kid is visibly sick, so he takes him in. Just for tonight. He leaves tomorrow.

And thus begins an odd, mismatched team that isn't really a team as much as it is …a family. A found family.

This trope has a very special allure to it because its basis hinges on seemingly mismatched characters being thrown together and somehow meshing together with strong bonds of love and friendship. Not just simple friendship: the bonds are strong as parents-children or siblings. The characters come to care for each other with a viscerable loyalty that manifests especially when facing highly threatening situations.

It also focuses on characters' multiple layers of personality and past experiences: most found family stories are about people that start off without a social network or anyone to rely on. They may be misfits, marginalized, traumatized, on the run, or anything else that exempts them from being integrated in a social safety net of any sort.

So for the found family trope to work at all, at least two characters in the story need a pretty solid character arc and character development: the hermit slowly comes out of his shell and shows a side of him that is more vulnerable and more nurturing. The kid on the run becomes more invested in protecting someone other than themselves. Both of them learn to communicate and cooperate, slightly changing their original behaviors to do so- and in the process, they become family.

Found family also has the advantage of being, in a way, true family: its members are invested in each other, constructively want to help each other, and they are a power unit that functions better together than when its members are apart. It is also likely to be emotionally and mentally healing for its members (as opposed to regular families that can be toxic, alienated, or just dysfunctional).

I believe that this latter quality it has is what makes it so popular and alluring to audiences: having people that have your back is priceless and rare, and getting immersed in this experience is peak escapism, even if the setting in which the found family is acting is dystopian.

I am very fond of this trope so I don't want to rush through discussing the workings of it, so let's consider this post an introduction to found family, and the next one a discussion of what usually one expects as members of a found family group.

Have you written any found family story for your webcomics?

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