Dude Relationships

Notes on FOLK TEMPLATES
The Folk templates often inform relationships among Dudes, who are known to play plastically with relationships.

• A dude may understand a certain other dude to be as a sibling, Brother or Sister. This does not necessarily follow traditional gender assignation, and the subtle qualities of an individual relationship can be brought out in deviation; e.g. a woman and a man who identify as Sisters.
• There may be a Grandmother, a generous female figure who connects well with a variety of people. Her home is a common gathering ground and she is a willing, natural hostess. There will be tea.
• It is rarer to encounter identification with Mothers, even less so Fathers, but informal adoption does exist.

Partnered Dudes
Although partnering (esp. heterosexual) has been heavily tainted by Folk tradition, Dudes still fall in love and want to hang out like all the time. Self-conscious dudes in partnerships may report the “Sitcom Effect”, which occurs when trivial difficulties in communication and suspiciously accurate heteronormative irritations disrupt partnered dudes (regardless of gender). These Dudes feel an inexorable pull to Folk hilarity that is not welcome.

Old Dudes - in terms of Local Dudes, basically Dudes who have stuck it out in the Opera, year after year. “Old Dudes” refers to a variety of relationships that can occur over years (seven or more), generally indicating some degree of acceptance and familiarity. Old Dudes, together or in passing, may have a feeling of camaraderie, having outlasted countless Transient Dudes. They may have plenty of shit to shoot or conduct a relationship of Nods.

Friends - In the Dude’s quest for individuality, finding truly Like Humans within the often superficial Dude Network is a poignant situation. While celebrating each others’ differences, Friends share a likeness (They like each other; they relate on some or many levels). To have a Dude (“she is my dude”), or to identify a directly connected Dude relationship (“we are dudes”) is generally a confirmation of that friendship feeling, an intimate sense of shared experience, and implied trust. Obviously, simply being a Dude in the same Network as another Dude does not mean you all are Friends, and perhaps some Dudes, even with all their network maintenance, are unable to have Friends (see the Living Nerve).

Dude Grouping
A relatively temporary manifestation, occurring any number of times, this is a confluence of Dude Friends/Dudes Who Share Likeness. The book “Nurture Shock”26 suggests that children who were more individualistic (dude prototypes) are also more prone into falling into groups, very specific groups. While this might manifest in some as Faux-Folk groupings, there are also a wide variety of temporary gatherings that invite a recurring and/or rotating cast of participants, satisfying both the urge toward individual expression and the desire for more consistent contact.
These can be a House Party or a Private Party in a Public Space. Varieties of the Dude Grouping include but are not limited to Drunken Melee (Dance Party), Potluck (Soup Night), Work (Craft) Circle or Motivated Group Effort [see Production Issues under Dude Values], Street Meet (Explorers), Art Appreciation, Activist Actions, Community Commerce, Ironic Excuse Gathering (Ugly Sweater), Festival Feeling (Fire), Family Holidays, Spirit Seeking (yoga class, meditation group), In The Band, and Dude Opera (High Drama Alert !!)

A Dude’s Death
This can come in a minor form, like a dude moving from your city and either disappearing or transitioning to a non-communicative exterior dude, or the major form, when a dude fully moves on from their investment in dude values (individual development and/or production and/or consumption of culture) to folk, dick or monster concerns.26 The Stinging Death is its most extreme, when a user dude (technically an asshole, see Jerks) casts you aside because they have nothing left to gain from you professionally, financially or (worst) dudally. In either of these situations, the jilted Dude may state “[Name] has died as a Dude (to me)”. The Dead Dude may continue in the rest of his life with some dudish pretense, but the conferred “Death of the Dude” seriously weakens his actual standing as a strong dude. Thus we see that there is some kind of relativity in being a Dude, at least there is a greater amount of Dudism conferred upon those with a great many Dudes of her own - a core factor in establishment of strong dudes (versus weak dudes), though there is more to the phenomenon than mere popularity.

A curious dude may embark upon a Burning Bridges Tour, catching up with exterior dudes to see if in fact they will still be your dude or not- if it’s clear (one way or the other) that you won’t be dudes you can cut those ties consciously or inadvertently. Can be similar to weeding out your junk when you move.