The anatomy of a friend: a discussion thread

[pitbulllady]

Originally Posted by evilhopscotch

ok, here we go.


Now, anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE analyzing the everloving CRAP out of shows/movies/whatever, and Foster's is no exception. I have thought extensively about what life must be like for your everyday ordinary friend, and have come up with a slew of questions that I want some opinions on.

Upon reading the forum archives, it seems a few of these questions have come up before, but weren't really gone into detail for.

Here we go!!

1. The big one: How are they created?

This is NEVER explained. The wacky guy in "My so-called wife" hit it right on the head: if they're IMAGINARY friends, why aren't they invisible? (and why are all the invisible friends so RUDE? ) What is so different about the brains and imaginations of the children and teenagers in the Foster's universe that allows the creation of such friends??

2. Can adults create friends?

Most people will automatically say no, it's strictly for children and the occasional teenager. But Harvey was mentioned in one of the episodes. He was CLEARLY the "creation" of a fully grown man. And if adults CAN make friends, would they really love them? Or would they selfishly make friends only for chores and nothing else?

and on that note....

3. Do the Handy friends know what love is?

Does it bother them that they were made just for one purpose? Like Scissors, or Poindexter, or Handy, or the Mop and the Bucket, or Camera from "One wrong Movie"? It's pretty obvious that the kids who made them didn't care for them outside of their usefulness, with the major exception of WILT. His kid adored him, but he's not a "true" Handy friend.

4. What makes a "true" handy/protector/mischief/whatever friend? and what are all the types?

There seem to be some clear, defined classifications of friends, and then there are those that cross over into different categories. For example: take Bendy and Bloo. Both love causing chaos, but Bloo is not a true mischief friend because he has so many other sides to him, as opposed to Bendy.

5. Can friends marry each other/can they marry humans?

This is another big one, and the eternal burden of the Frankie/Wilt shippers. It's hinted that friends can, indeed, marry, but we never see any real examples of any kind of marital relationship with ANYONE in the show, so it's up in the air. It's clear that friends can have crushes on humans, and each other, so the ability to love and be loved in return is there. But is marriage legal for friends?

6. CAN FRIENDS DISAPPEAR?

Possibly the biggest question I have thought about, and the one that intruiges me the most. It became clear that friends do NOT disappear if their child dies, as evidenced in "Imposter's home for make-
em-up pals", but what if the kid forgets about the friend altogether? Would they live on? Possibly. And can friends die? someone once said that you can't kill a good idea, and that's what friends are technically, but they're "human" enough to experience pain and sorrow, so can they die?

7. Do you like cereal?


That should be enough for now. Start debating people!! Share your thoughts and ideas, and questions of your own!!

1. We actually DO get to see several Imaginary Friends created on the series; they just appear. literally out of thin air! As for as the really technical side of it, like how they acquire their DNA when they are not normally conceived by two parents is anyone's guess, and no, it has not been covered on the show. That would probably go way over the heads of many viewers. All we know is that somehow, through the power of a kid's imagination and will, once imagined, these beings are as alive and real as you or I. That "whacky guy" in "My So-Called Wife", Mr. Ben E. Factor, was an idiot and a scam artist, and was just showing his ignorance.

2. According to Lauren Faust-no, adults cannot create Imaginary Friends, though teenagers can(the Extremasaurs being examples of this). Exactly what the "cut-off" age is, after which an individual can no longer create an Imaginary Friend, has not been covered, either. Probably this phenomenon is due to the fact that as people grow older, their imaginations and creativity actually diminishes, for most people, anyway. AND, as you stated, there are probably a lot of adults who would create an Imaginary Friend for less-than-benign purposes.

3. There are many IF's who were created for purposes other than being a friend to a child(as one person on TV.com insists that they ALL were, that and absolutely nothing else). I suppose that many of these have not known love, or at least compassion, until they arrived at Foster's. I wouldn't consider Wilt to be a "Handy" friend, either, though he certainly IS very handy at many, many things. Wilt was more or less created to take the place of a family member, a father or caring older brother, and he naturally is good at the things that the man of the house was once responsible for, like mowing the yard or fixing up the car. You'd be very hard-pressed to find a human who is as versitile as Wilt is!

4. Many Imaginary Friends don't seem to have a specific purpose. What would Duchess, for example, have been created for? Many others turn out completely different that what their creators must have wanted them to be like. This closely parallels how human beings often do not turn out to suit their parents' expectations, and again, shows how much like us the Imaginary Friends are.

5. Apparently, IF's CAN marry other IF's, since Mr. Herriman had Coco pose as his wife in that aforementioned episode, "My So-Called Wife", and he obviously did not feel that this would be considered odd at all for two Imaginary Friends to be married. Whether or not they can legally marry a HUMAN is another topic that has not been covered, but clearly some DO have very strong feelings of desire for humans. I once brought up on the old forum the topic of whether relationships/marriages would be allowed at Foster's, where most of the IF's are up for adoption. Most families looking to adopt an Imaginary Friend are only wanting ONE, not a couple, and it would be breaking up a relationship to take one and not the other. At the same time, though, I have to wonder where all those monstrous little babies in the nursery came from, since it's difficult for me to fathom that THIS many little girls would imagine a baby MONSTER! If a girl is going to imaginary a baby IF, wouldn't it be more like a HUMAN baby, a living baby doll? I can't fathom little boys wanting to imagine a baby ANYTHING, unless it was some animal, like a puppy, so I'd guess that most, if not all, of those Imaginary babies are the products of liasons between adult Imaginary Friends living at Foster's, and are "second generation" IF's, conceived and born just as we are.

6. Lauren Faust has also stated that they did not wish to really tackle the subject of death on the show, by having a character actually die. HOWEvER, we have seen that Imaginary Friends can be KILLED, since there ARE many references to that. Terrence obviously killed the Pizza Friend when he ate it; Mr. Herriman states, "I could have been KILLED!" after falling down the stairs in "Crime After Crime", though he thought that his "stalker" was trying to kill him, and did not connect being killed with what Bloo did. Eduardo states in "Bloooooo" that the "Cannonball Ghost" was going to "kill us dead, and eat our ghosts(spirits/souls). Just how long Imaginary Friends can live, is again, anyone's guess, but I don't think that they are truely immortal. While they might live longer than we do, eventually I guess they just die, like everything else. Their parts just wear out over time. Originally, I think that the consensus was that when a human creator died, the Imaginary Friend died, too, being connected somehow to each other. That was proven wrong in "Foster's Home for Uhhhh..Make-Em Up Pals", in which Mr. Herriman thought that Goofball's creator had died and gone to Heaven, and since Goofball was(unfortunately)still there, and Mr. Herriman didn't question his continued existance, it's obviously not the case for an IF to die when his/her creator dies.

7. Not really, though I do like plain Cheerio's once in awhile. I never even liked it when I was a kid, especially not the kind with all that sugar coating.

pitbulllady