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> Lastly, the Sustainer type. These are the characters who get a lot of love. They're the gentle soul who's too good for this world, the "smol bean", the victim of reader-hugs from every quarter. They stick by the main character's side through thick and thin, offering comfort, wisdom, and support.
Then of course there are the villain sidekicks, who are usually sidekicks in the most vanilla sense of the word. They exist mainly to aid and abet their masters' evil plots, be his bumbling yes-man, and provide the readers with a good laugh.
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It's not impossible to avoid this basic trope. By all means, if you're inspired to do it, write a story about a loner. Just don't give him any pets, or people will associate those as his sidekicks...
But here's a few tips for those who are more interested in simply busting the trope's tropy-ness.
First, and maybe most important: Base your written friendships off the ones you have in real life. Don't assume that the relationships you see in books are the way things happen. Measure them against your own experience. Friends don't always agree. In fact, the closer they are, the more free they will be with their disagreements. Neither do they always quarrel. Their closeness lets them accept their differences without arguing about them 24/7. The idiosyncrasies of a relationship, of course, will depend on what personalities your characters have, and I cannot stress enough how important it is to get solid, dynamic personalities for both characters in question.
Second, give them a truly deep bond. This is one of the main pitfalls of this trope. Sidekicks risk becoming mere soundboards, comic relief, or just someone to balance out and show off Mr. Main's personality. Don't be afraid to let your characters love each other (and I'm not talking about romantic love), and don't be afraid to let them show it either. It gets tiresome when every earnest moment between friends is hastily fobbed off with a joke and a laugh.
Neither be afraid to give your pair a slightly dysfunctional relationship, something that can be worked on over the course of the story. Maybe the main character has a tendency to assert his own way or delegate tasks he doesn't want to handle, and his docile, easily subdued friend takes the brunt of this attitude. You get the picture? They can have genuine affection for one another, and still have problems.
And it might seem weird trying these ideas out with a villain, but hey, give that a shot too. It never hurts to make your enemy more human.
A final thought is to give your character more close friends than just one. I don't mean create a team of one-sided characters to follow your protagonist everywhere. Perish the thought! But put a couple other important people in his life. Give them their own niches in life, their own backgrounds and individualities, so they're not simply there "for him". Maybe one of them meets your character's social needs. Maybe one is the friend he goes to for advice – or to pour out heartbreak. When all your characters are rooted into their own setting, their own backgrounds, and each other's lives, a web of surprising depth will emerge. You'll realize that you've created a community, and maybe a world, that's more real than you ever expected it to be.
