The Power Of Friendship / Webcomics

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• El Goonish Shive: Grace explains that the Power of Friendship is greater than the suckiness of the altered versions of the original Star Wars movies.
• In Faux Pas, Toast is deeply moved when Cindy calls him a friend.
• In Flipside, this is Blithe Spirit Maytag's entire modus operandi. She can defeat otherwise implacable villains by refusing to treat them as villains. To truly understand this, she manages to befriend a Nigh-Invulnerable, cursed monster girl while that girl is eating her.
• Homestuck:
  • This is the main theme, and it doesn't just apply to the friendship of the four main characters. Does anyone have the relevant Andrew Hussie quote?
  • "as always, friendship prevails."
  • This is even more evident in the Squiddles. In fact, a line from their theme song is "The power of friendship and The Power of Love..."
    "I think I'm having a friendship aneurysm!"
  • Karkat, the grouchy hate-spigot who once claimed that friendship counts as a disease for his species, seems to be friends of some closeness or another with all but one or two of the other trolls, and ends up being the glue that holds them together as a team (which one of the other trolls theorizes actually screwed them over because normally trolls are so combative that hatred is a form of romance which plays a key part in breeding, and they have a whole extra form of romance just to prevent regular hate from mutating into an adulterous breeding-hate). On top of that, he's the direct descendant of what amounts to troll Jesus, who actively preached that trolls could become a great species if they would only adopt a philosophy of friendship and love (it didn't work).
  • Notably at one point, Karkat settles down a rampaging troll by shooshing him and papping his face, when everybody else was gunning to kill him. Although mind you, this counts as a form of romance to trolls as well.
• Ruthlessly parodied in this strip of Oglaf. A heroine has taken up the challenge of defeating Grogol the Vast. She asks guidance from her weapon, Sword of Friendship, and the Sword reminds her that "nothing is stronger than friendship!" The heroine doesn't believe this, which leads the Sword to ask if she could pretend to believe... for friendship's sake. The heroine agrees and when she faces Grogol, the Sword shines brightly, and Grogol does a Heel–Face Turn, becoming their friend. This is when the Sword says: "Now stab the cunt", and in the next panel we see the heroine standing on Grogol's corpse yelling triumphantly: "Don't mess with friendship, bitches!" Believe it or not, this trope gets deconstructed even further in the Alt Text:
  The gauntlets of hang-on-you're-a-dick could have saved him.
• Our Little Adventure: The power of friendship apparently cures light wounds.
• Paranatural: Isaac is a very blatant Shounen archetype (he's got Bishie Sparkle, dramatic poses, and the thanks of grateful supernatural beings) but because of the dangerous misanthropic thunder-creature inside him he can't really be part of the group and he's getting quite tired of it:
  Isaac: Are you my friend or not?! I answered your questions, I showed you my secret shortcut... You OWE me! You—
  Max: Yeah OK I'm stopping you there. If that's how you're framing things I'm gonna need you to back up and try again, because that's not how being my friend or anyone's friend works.
• PREQUEL painfully subverts this. Katia is in one of her nightmares where she's being pursued by an evil King. She dreams up her friend Quill-Weave, holds her hand for courage...and then the King promptly eviscerates Quill-Weave. It's called Making A Cat Cry: The Adventure for a reason.
• In RPG World, the main character Hero's power is derived from his bond with his friends. Or at least, the two main female characters.
• Seems to be a reoccurring theme in Samurai Princess.
• Schlock Mercenary runs on it, in a twisted way. The mercenaries are amoral and violent, have to be wary of every government body, and have to treat the concept of "allies" with dubious detachment at best. But they can damn sure rely on their friends and no mistake.
• This is probably the chief reason that Davan from Something*Positive is still hanging in there. Granted, in this case it's the power of dysfunctional friendship, but they're nevertheless the strongest force in his life.
• Terror Island, of all comics, had this: the entire plot revolved around roommates Sid and Stephen trying to make the other buy the groceries. At the end, they report having found a grocery store. When asked which of them bought the groceries first, they say that they both did. They're asked how that's possible, and they respond "friendship".
• True Villains: Mia treats her Golems as friends and companions, which is reciprocated by the spirits that animate them. They go to exceptional lengths to help her out; when an enemy uses Dispel Magic on her Powered Armor Amber, Amber's spirit is forced out of the armor, but jumps right back in and continues the fight.
• TwoKinds: when Master General Alaric turns the system of his homeland on it's head, exploits every loophole in the system, and faces his own death with a steadfast determination, just to do right by his best friend.
• Unordinary: Part of Blyke's season two level-up plays into this. During his first vigilante mission, Blyke looks like he's struggling against multiple villains, but his desire to get stronger in order to protect his friends, such as Remi and Isen, leads to his ability going through a change that knocks all the villains back. It can be assumed that this was the moment his Energy Beam upgraded to Energy Discharge.
• One of Weak Hero's major themes is Gray slowly befriending Ben and his gang, and coming to realise that he's more powerful with them at his side rather than without. Gray withdrew into himself after his first friend was hospitalised by bullies, but the constant show of camaraderie and loyalty by the gang are able to draw him back out of his shell.

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