Commonality Connection / Literature

Commonality Connections in Literature.

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By Author:

• P. G. Wodehouse:
  • In Uneasy Money, Elizabeth is reconciled to Bill as a house guest when he turns out to know how to handle bees, and is positively interested when he explains how he, like she, wants to live the Arcadian life.
  • In Hot Water, Packy sets out to help Jane and Blair Eggleston out of fellow feeling another pair of lovers.
  • This is how Mike and Psmith fall in with each other: both violently dislike the Boarding School to which they have been transferred.
    • Exploited by Psmith as well. When he and Mike get a job at the bank, he purposely pokes around to discover his supervisor's hobby (the Manchester United football team), learns all he can about it and uses it to become friendly with him (and in the process, making the supervisor a Defrosting Ice King).
  • In Something Fresh, Ashe and Joan bond over the fact that they're both reluctant magazine hack writers, and—in the American edition, Something New—both displaced Americans living in London.

By Title:

• 4 Kids in 5E and 1 Crazy Year: The popular, outgoing Willie muses that one of the reasons he and angry loner Max get along so well is that they both have absent fathers who they have mixed feelings about and have traveled around through lots of neighborhoods and attended lots of schools while their families struggle to find a permanent home.
• Accidental Detectives: Joel befriends paraplegic former fighter pilot Mad Eddie due to his fondness for kite flying, with Eddie understanding what it's like to want to fly while being unable to do so except from the ground.
• The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi: When Salima is trying to hire Amina, an Action Mom and retired pirate, to rescue her kidnapped granddaughter, she appeals to Amina's maternal instinct to coax her into taking the case. Subverted when she then threatens Amina's young daughter, stunning Amina with her callousness.
• Alan Alone:
  • Miss Tijah, Alan's housemaid, encounters Teacher Takara, Alan's teacher, at the storm shelter, and they only both realise they both know Alan when Miss Tijah shows him a picture of the boy she's searching for. The true commonality connection comes from Teacher Takara relaying to her that he understands the feeling of losing someone of that familiarity, since his flight to Japan to see his only son got cancelled, and he states that he'd help Miss Tijah find Alan.
  • Downplayed between Alan and his Robot Buddy Dede when the former finds out he's a cyborg, since they're already buddies, but this revelation strengthens their bond. Alan ecstatically tells Dede how they're of similar strengths among other things, while Dede replies that Alan is a robot with a heart who can eat.
• Andersonville: Coral Tebbs ends up befriending Nat Stricker, an escaped Union prisoner, largely because they're both war amputees.
• Apparently, Disillusioned Adventurers Will Save the World: The basic premise behind the formation of the main characters' party is that its members, Nick, Sem, Tianna, and Karan, all experienced betrayal, and seem to be comfortable in a party with others who suffered the same pain. After all, who better to trust than someone who's been stung by betrayal before?
• The Ballad of Black Tom: Suydam says that he hired Tommy because it was obvious from his phony simple-minded guitar man act that he was familiar with illusion and artifice, like Suydam.
• In Barbara Robinson's The Best School Year Ever, the narrator deduces that perhaps Imogene looked out for little Howard and made sure no one took his blanket away because someone had taken her blanket, just like his, away when she was little.
• In The Black Fox of Beckham, the fox Arabella and the humans Silviana and Fi connect because they're all mistreated for being different — Arabella for her coat color, Silviana for being Roma, and Fi for being autistic.
• Both Can Be True: Zoey, Olivia, and Jordan, the members of the band Tyrannosaurus Rocks, became best friends in sixth grade because they all like punk, hate country, have an older brother and a younger sister, and are good at math.
• In A Boy Made of Blocks, Alex's autistic son Sam gets along well with Sid, who Alex realizes is also autistic.
• Can You See Me?:
  • Tally connects to Rupert, a three-legged dog her family takes in after his owner is placed in a nursing home, because she's autistic and knows what it's like to be seen as defective.
  • In Do You Know Me? Tally befriends Jade, another autistic girl, and Gregory, an anxious, hyperactive boy who's seen as weird and annoying by everyone else. Due to Tally's own problems with anxiety, she knows how to use logic to calm Gregory's fears.
  • In Ways to Be Me, Tally goes horseback riding and is paired with the "spirited" horse Peaches. Tally gets along well with Peaches, who she feels is nice but misunderstood, like herself.
• In Catseye (1961), Rerne tells Troy that a rider of Norden is always welcome at the Rangers' hearth. Troy denies; he's just a refugee now.
• Crest of the Stars: one of the big things main characters Jint and Lafier bond over is their shared discomfort with their noble status (royal, in Lafier's case) making it difficult to form ordinary friendships. Almost as soon as they meet, they agree to drop all formality between each other and just treat each other normally.
• Darkship Thieves:
  • In Darkship Thieves, Athena and Kit bond when she assures him of her having to deal with Obstructive Bureaucrats and finding it no fun at all.
  • In Darkship Renegades, one reason for Thena's feeling hostile to Zen is that she has been widowed — as Kit had been, giving them a connection.
• Discworld:
  • In the short story "Troll Bridge", Cohen the Barbarian goes to fight a troll. They end up grumbling about Young People Today together instead. In the end, Cohen leaves without fighting the troll but going to fight three other trolls the first troll had problems with.
  • Angua, Cherie, and Sally, despite being a werewolf, a dwarf, and a vampire and the complicated history between those races, find enough in being all women to bond over. They even connect with Tawneee on the same grounds in Thud!.
  • In I Shall Wear Midnight, Tiffany ends up bonding with Roland's fiancee Letitia over having read the same book of fairy tales, and having similar negative reactions to it trying to dictate their roles in life based on hair colors. The brown-haired Tiffany wanted to be more than a sidekick or background character, and the blond-haired Letitia wanted to be more than a boring old Princess Classic or Damsel in Distress.
• Divergent: In Allegiant, Christina and Uriah become very close because both of them lost someone important to them.
• In Andre Norton's Dragon Magic, four boys each find a jigsaw puzzle, make one corner — and so one dragon — of it, and get shifted to an ancient era to experience something related to it. This, and their attempts to research the facts, draw them together at the end.
• Dragonriders of Pern: In Dragonsinger, when Menolly is caught in a fight during a fair, another girl, jumping to join her side, calls for a boy to join in because Menolly comes from a sea hold. It works. Robinton rebukes him because his father had sent him to be fostered where he was to broaden his mind.
• In The Four Loves, discovery of commonality is how friendship arises.
  ''Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one."'.
• In Sarah A. Hoyt's Draw One in the Dark, Tom knows he can't leave Kyrie to fight alone, because she helped him, and because they are both shifters.
• In Andre Norton's Dread Companion, Kilda's mentor at the creche became so because they both desired to do things they couldn't.
• In Rebecca Lickiss's Eccentric Circles, Africa, Piper's blue-eyed blond cousin, and Sherlock, her black husband actually got to Meet Cute over this. He invoked trope on their anti-Meaningful Names, explaining that "Sherlock" means "the blond one."
• This is the trope behind many things in the plot of Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte.
  • The Witch of Yore possesses Lieselotte because both see themselves as having an unrequited one-sided crush towards the person they love. This is why Lieselotte is able to avoid this in the novel's timeline.
  • The reason it's Endo and Kobayashi who got into the God mode instead of Kuon is their relationship is similar to Lieselotte and Siegwald, in that both sides have a Cannot Spit It Out problem.
  • The reason Kobayashi is fixated on Lieselotte is due to them both being Insecure Love Interests; in Kobayashi's case it's due to being Always Second Best to her older sister Chiyono.
• Attempted in Every Shiny Thing. Sierra is in foster care after being taken from her alcoholic mother, and her foster mother tries to connect with her by telling her that she grew up taking care of her own alcoholic mother.
• The Evolution of Emily:
  • Emily and her Love Interest August enjoy running together, pushing each other to go faster.
  • When Emily introduces Miles to her autistic sister Olivia, the two immediately connect over their interest in science. They do chemistry experiments in the backyard and look at things through Olivia's microscope.
  • Emily invites Sam Wilson over to her house. She's always seen Sam as more popular than herself and is worried Sam will be mean to Olivia, like the last time she invited a girl over. But it turns out Sam is in special ed due to dyslexia and ADD, so she instantly understands Olivia.
• Lois from Experimental Film feels a connection with her former student, Safie Hewsen, because they both suffered from vivid nightmares of terrifying angels as children.
• In Eye Contact, Adam Miller was autistic, and Amelia Best had PDD-NOS. The two understood each other and became friends, sitting together and singing songs on the playground, up until Amelia's murder.
• This - and possibly a Precocious Crush - is what drives Tash Arranda in Galaxy of Fear to like and trust Luke Skywalker from the moment she meets him. They're both Force-Sensitive. What's more, Luke is the first other Sensitive Tash has ever met, and the first to be kind and encourage her strange talents rather than just dismissing her as a Creepy Child.
  He winked at Tash, and she felt the Force flow between them, just as she had during their first meeting. It was a warm, electric tingle, as though she were on one end of a wire with Luke at the other. Together, they made a connection.
• Generation Kill: The Marines are originally deeply annoyed when a surrounded Iraqi soldier refuses to surrender his service weapon, until they realize he must be under the same kind of orders they are, and think abut what it would take to get them to give up their weapons. Then they start treating him with respect for his steadfast devotion to duty, even sharing their cigarettes and desserts with him.
  • On a similar note, Espera has complimentary words for the dead Iraqi soldier he finds, still clutching his RPG and with his finger on the trigger.
    He died trying to get a shot off. Discipline.
• In Victoria Forester's The Girl Who Could Fly, Piper and Sally Sue at once, because their favorite ice cream flavor is strawberry.
• Harry Potter:
  • In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix several students who lost family members to Death Eaters in the first war start getting unwanted attention after the Azkaban breakout and find they sympathize with Harry when they realize how unpleasant it is. When Susan Bones involuntarily becomes the target of gossip in The Order of the Phoenix after the Death Eater who murdered several members of her family is one of the escapees, she thinks she knows a little of what it's like to be Harry Potter — and she doesn't know how he stands it, it's horrible.
  • Downplayed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Harry notices that Regulus Black also played Seeker.
    “He played Seeker,” said Harry.
    “What?” said Hermione vaguely; she was still immersed in Voldemort’s press clippings.
    “He’s sitting in the middle of the front row, that’s where the Seeker … Never mind,” said Harry, realizing that nobody was listening.
  • In the same book, he realizes the connections between him and two men he despises.
    Hogwarts was the first and best home he had known. He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found home here....
• He Is Your Brother is about a young Rail Enthusiast bonding with his autistic little brother Orry, who also loves trains. Their sister Jane points out that Mike is a lot like Orry, but less so - not only are they both interested in trains, but Mike often needs to go off and be by himself, the same way Orry hides in the closet under the stairs.
• In John C. Wright's The Hermetic Millennia, Illiance calls on Menelaus to help him because of the brotherhood of scholars. Later, Menelaus calls on Illiance to help him with his own scholarly work.
• In How to Fly with Broken Wings, Willem and Sasha bond because their mothers both left them, and they both experience the Call of the Wild Blue Yonder.
• In The Hunger Games, Katniss and Johanna eventually somehow manage to bond over how much they hate each other.
• In I Think I Love You, Petra and Sharon's friendship forms based on their shared obsession with David Cassidy.
• Julie Kagawa's The Iron Fey: In The Iron King, Angie drives Meghan home. She talks about how they understand each other with the abuse they both get.
• John Putnam Thatcher: In Murder Without Icing, Thatcher (and later one of his banking subordinates) befriend a hockey player after discovering that the man is interested in business principles and owns several skating clubs.
• Addie from A Kind of Spark is close to her older sister Keedie because they're both autistic.
• The Lord of the Rings: When the elves of Lothlorien learn that Gandalf died leading the Fellowship through the fallen dwarf homeland of Moria, Lady Galadriel — who knows quite a bit about losing one's homeland — speaks respectfully of Moria's beauty and admits that any exiled elf would have wanted to take the same risk. It moves Gimli the dwarf to pledge renewed friendship between dwarves and elves.
  And the Dwarf, hearing the names given in his own ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding. Wonder came into his face, and then he smiled in answer.
• In Love Anthony, Beth used to think she and her husband Jimmy were soulmates because they had so much in common. They were both the only children of single parents, and they both had a fierce determination to do something they loved for a living.
• In Rudyard Kipling's "A Matter of Fact", the main characters are all journalists together.
  we were all at home instantly, because we were men of the same profession needing no introduction
• In Jennifer Crusie's Maybe This Time, when Southie meets Alice and asks her what's new, Alice says she likes nuts now. Southie, eager to bond, assures her he does, too.
• In More Than Human, Hip tells the orphaned telepath Gerry about his own history of being rejected and unwanted so Gerry will listen to him when he explains the concept of ethics.
• In No One Needed to Know, Heidi starts dating Russell, whose older brother Alex is in the same special ed program as Heidi's brother Donald. Russell knows what it's like to have a special needs brother and isn't going to be cruel or clueless, unlike any of the other boys Heidi knows. The book ends with Heidi, Russell, Alex, and Donald all playing make-believe on the playground together.
• In Seanan McGuire's October Daye novel An Artificial Night, Toby sees May and Tybalt together, and May assures her they have much in common. Tybalt adds that a common urge to hit her over the head until she stops doing stupid things leads the list.
• In Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny manages to convince Kirsty to help the Captain when he refers to her by a female pronoun. Kirsty immediately assumes that it was sexism that turned her crew against her, and Johnny keeps his mouth shut about the Scree-Wee society actually being matriarchial. Johnny also has the habit of imagining them as human-like and so, because his imagination can change the game world, a tea cart comes around every afternoon for a snack.
• In John C. Wright's The Phoenix Ascendent, Phaethon is arguing with Atkins when he realizes that Atkins calls his ship "she." (Earlier, Phaethon had rejected an offer to avoid exile when he told a man calling it "it" that ships are called "she.")
• In L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero Regained, when Caliban says that he always knew that Miranda was an angel, Theo says he did, too, and they shared a brotherly smile.
  • In Prospero Lost, Miranda had told the winds that she had to defend her people too when leading in to the offer to free them only if they could work out how to protect mankind from the winds.
• The short stories in Psionics: The Next Stage in Human Evolution are full of this. It’s blatantly obvious that several characters would never have hung out with each other if not for the whole “esper on the run from the government” thing.
• In The Roosevelt, Emmet is autistic, and Jeremey has anxiety and depression. Emmet immediately understands Jeremey's sensitivity and confusion over what to do in social situations.
• The Ship Who...:
  • Helva and Theoda are both deep in mourning but don't feel that they can stop pushing on and trying to do good. They also both hurt each other in their initial conversation, but come around to a better understanding later.
  • Simeon and Channa are able to call a solid truce when Simeon plays a recording of Helva's Reticulan croons for her, followed by discovering a shared appreciation for classical and opera music.
• Georg from Shtum sees every word as a lie. To him, the truest language is the language of the heart, which he shares with both his best friend Maurice, who didn't speak his language when they first met, and his autistic grandson Jonah, who can't speak at all and doesn't even like using picture cards.
• In Laura Amy Schlitz's Splendors And Glooms, when Parsefall bluntly states that he thinks death masks are gruesome, Clara, whose home is engulfed with such reminds of her dead brothers and sisters, feels a connection.
• In one Star Trek: Voyager novel, Tuvok mind-melds with a Romulan scientist; the narration describes how he automatically seeks out similarities between them (they're both family men, for example) to ease the shock of the experience.
• Teen Power Inc.: Tom and Sunny have one of the closer friendships among the main cast in some books, and Tom thinks it helps that they are the only two of the six with divorced parents.
• In Touch (2017), James and Caspar have their first fight when the former believes that the latter only befriended him out of pity. James lets the issue go when Caspar starts crying, which reveals that he's wearing makeup to hide the signs of his Abusive Parents. James wears makeup to hide the Mark of Purity that he got from his own Traumatic Superpower Awakening.
• In Ruth Frances Long's The Treachery of Beautiful Things, when appealing for a Cool Sword to save Jenny, Jack tells Wayland about her. Wayland comments that she sounds like his wife.
• In L. Jagi Lamplighter's The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin, Rachel and Gaius were both admitted a year younger than normal to the school — a connection despite his being several years her elder.
• Xandri Corelel: During her time as an attoaong, Xandri successfully pairs the chatty messenger Kirchak with the withdrawn engineer Prrchik because she recognizes their shared curiosity and longing for adventure. Xandri herself feels a connection with Kirchak, even though they're almost polar opposites, because they're both considered so atypical for their species.
• In Wicked Good, Rory and Trish connect because they're both isolated and unhappy, Rory because of his autism and bipolar disorder and Trish because of her family's abuse.
• Charlie from Wish sympathizes with the stray dog Wishbone because she, too, feels like a stray nobody wants.
• In Andre Norton's The Zero Stone, Eet tells Jern that it's not just for convenience that he hooked onto him, but also because they have much in common.

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