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Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Top Ten Favorite Sidekick Best Friends


hosted by The Broke and Bookish

Technically, this week's Top Ten Tuesday is meant to be Top Ten Favorite Characters in X Genre, but I honestly stared at that topic for like five solid minutes, and not one thing came into my dense little brain. I have so many favorite characters and so many favorite genres. I'll read anything. I'm a genre hopper. A genre slut, if you will. And I had a feeling if I FORCED myself to choose just one genre, I'd end up saying all the same characters I've been blabbing about for weeks. And there are only so many times I can drool over Warner before you have me committed.

So this week, I'm bending the rules. Instead of favorite characters in X genre, I'm doing favorite X type of characters. And the x stands for... sidekicks! Slash best friends! Otherwise known as the awesome supporting players who deserve a moment in the spotlight for being so awesome.

Of course, I'm sure I've forgotten about a million of them, because these are just the ones coming off the top of my aforementioned dense head, but let's get to it.

1. Ron Weasley from Harry Potter

me in a few days

The ultimate sidekick with the ultimate hero best friend. Seriously, this guy is best friends with HARRY FREAKING POTTER (all the coolest people reading this just got AVPM earworms): Quidditch sensation, Defense Against the Dark Arts prodigy, and oh, yeah, casually that dude who defeated Voldemort before he could walk. Despite the fact that Ron sometimes feels overshadowed by his glorious best friend (and makes hideous decisions like that whole sulky chapter of his in GoF and DO NOT EVEN GET ME STARTED on what he did in DH), Ron is truly, deeply loyal. He's risked his life countless times for his best bud, and he'd do it countless more times. He's afraid a good ninety percent of the time, but in the end his sense of friendship always sparks his bravery, and then he's willing to do anything for the people he loves.

This is arguably my FAVORITE RON WEASLEY LINE. All the feels.

Shout outs to Hedwig, Crookshanks, and Fawkes for being awesome beastly besties.

2. Kenji from Shatter Me/Unravel Me


I will keep this short, as I have raved about him at length on this blog countless times. He's brave, loyal, and dedicated to his cause. But best of all, he's hilarious, honest, and always willing to pull both Adam and Juliette out of the depths of their emo doldrums (which is no small task, I assure you. Those two are like the emo king and queen). Yes, Kenji, you are completely right. There are MANY girls who want to see you naked, you handsome, devilish thing, you.

3. Angela from Unspoken

Unspoken was hands down one of my favorite reads of 2012. In the hands of someone other than Sarah Rees Brennan, Angela would be the main character and Kami, the actual protagonist, would be the sidekick. Kami is plucky, plump, and always prepared to thrust herself into certain peril in search of the truth. Angela is darkly beautiful and much admired by the opposite sex. She disdains all of humanity (except for Kami... and Holly, naturally) and hates people almost as much as she loves a good nap. She is openly rude to basically everybody, and oh, do I love her for it.


Despite her complete laziness, she's fiercely protective of Kami, which means she's willing to do all sorts of things she loathes in order to help her friend. She will also definitely physically accost anybody who messes with her or her girls. Rusty has trained her well, after all.

4. Iko from Cinder and Scarlet

Iko is the best sidekick in history who is not actually technically alive, nor has she ever been. She's an android who somehow ended up with the most distinct personality in all of New Asia. She's bright, bubbly and girly. She loves to swoon over hot princes and worries that temporarily being a spaceship makes her look fat. She and the levelheaded Cinder are a wonderful pair, and for the first fifty pages of Scarlet, I spent a lot of time going, "Yes, yes, interesting stuff, BUT WHERE IS IKO, EXACTLY?" I missed that little glitchy android.

5. Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings



OH, SAM. I already talked about how often Frodo done you wrong. It's safe to say, if they'd just given you the dang ring in the first place, those books would have been significantly shorter. Sam is the ultimate sidekick of unwavering loyalty, willing to sacrifice life, limb, happiness, and dignity to help his Mister Frodo.
 

6. Bess Marvin and George Fayne from Nancy Drew


These guys are like the quintessential sidekicks. They're brave-ish, and they're loyal, but they're not supposed to be nearly as awesome as Nancy Drew. But who even is, really? She's Nancy Drew. She, like, routinely saves herself and random heiresses from kidnapping, foils jewelry heists, and catches murders, all before jaunting off to have a romantic picnic with boyfriend, Ned, with not one strawberry blonde hair out of place. (Undoubtedly, though, something nefarious will occur at said picnic, requiring her to leave poor Ned in the lurch for the millionth time. Ned is long-suffering.) Bess and George are total opposites, with Bess being flirty, flighty, and blonde, and George being tough, tomboyish, and dark haired. Bess also, strangely, wants ice cream one hundred percent of the time. They balance out practically perfect Nancy really well, I feel.

7. Zero from Holes



ZERO. I love him. He was so underrated by everybody except for Stanley because he couldn't read, but he was absolutely brilliant. He was the one who seemed to figure out nearly every secret in this magnificently secret-laden book. He'd been through a lot, but he was willing to go through a lot more for his best bud Stanley Yelnats. You just can't help but love this kid.




8. Kitten from The Immortals

I talked about Tamora Pierce's glorious series last week, focusing on Daine and Numair's swoony romance, but this week I'm going to talk about Kitten, otherwise known as Skysong, who happens to be Daine's dragon ward. Yup, she's a tiny baby dragon who doesn't know how to talk or fly yet, but she's got a fearsome temper and scales that change color with her mood. That is basically the best kind of animal sidekick you could ask for, really. Except for possibly...

9. Saphira from Eragon



Full confession: I haven't read the last book in this series, and I'm not sure if I will. I totally loved Eragon, liked Eldest, and enjoyed Brisingr, but the books burnt me out, to be honest. They're a lot of work. BUT my absolute FAVORITE PART of the series was Saphira and Eragon's unique relationship. She's a dragon, and he's her rider, but they're equals who love and rely on each other so fiercely that you can barely even call Saphira a sidekick. She's brilliant and definitely can be very scary and they can communicate WITH THEIR MINDS. I would trade my dopey dog in for a Saphira in a heartbeat, who can barely understand me when I communicate the word sit.

Okay, I'm wrapping up here. Do you have any favorite sidekicks I forgot (and I forgot a lot... oh crap, I'm just remembering Hana from Delirium and Kim from If I Stay and so many others and oops. But I must stop here. Can't include them all)? Did you actually do the Top Ten Tuesday question that was posed to you? Leave me your links so I can come visit, please!

19 comments:

  1. I couldn't come up with a good TTT for this topic either--like you, I genre-hop too much to just pick one, so I did mine on my top ten favorite character arcs instead. I really like your topic--so often the sidekicks get overlooked when they're just as awesome(sometimes more so) than the hero. I totally agree with you about Sam--he definitely deserves the most loyal friend ever. And Iko might be my favorite character in Cinder, which is saying something, given my love for the majority of the characters in the book.

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  2. Very cool list--Ron Weasley is the best ever.

    Tonile @ My Cup and Chaucer

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  3. I'm with you with Ron and Samwise. Great list and choices.

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  4. Yay for the Nancy Drew mention!

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  5. This is such a legit idea for your TTT. I love it! I agree with most of these, as I haven't read all of them. But it was a jolly good time to read all of your favorite sidekicks!

    My TTT: http://thewhiteunicornfiction.blogspot.com/2013/02/top-ten-characters-from-books-that-deal.html

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  6. As soon as I saw your list I was thinking Sam. So glad you picked him.

    Definitely agree with you on Ron and and I love Gilmore Girls. I'm so glad you quoted that on here.

    Check out my Tuesday meme post here

    ~Danica Page@Taking it One Page at a Time

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  7. Good list, I love Ron and Zero as well.

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  8. Love your twist on this week's TTT! Samwise Gamgee was awesome, he was just so solid throughout Frodo's journey.

    Here's my Top Ten for this week :)

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  9. I love Samwise!! I chose him for my TTT too :) Great post!

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  10. I liked your spin on the topic. Gotta love Ron :)

    Great list!

    Sarah @ Loving Books

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  11. Bess and George! I always liked George more, to be honest...and you are spot on about Ron.

    I genre hop, too...it was so hard to pick a genre and stick to it when I was like, "But there's also so and so from over here!"

    What a great list. :D

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  12. While I did not enjoy Shatter Me, I did like Kenji. He was kinda like an 8 week old puppy, cute and bumbling. :D

    Iko is a great choice, too, I almost cried when...that thing that's totally a spoiler happened!

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  13. I LOVE YOUR LIST. I think I say that every week, but really. Normally I don't pay much attention because I'm one of those crazy fearless leader types so I focus on the characters that take the lead, but you mentioned so many awesome characters! Except Ron. I could do without him. But anyways, KENJI <33333 Unravel Me would've been SO depressing without him. Also yay for Iko, Zero, and Saphira (LOVED HER. And I don't even like dragons)!

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  14. AAAAAAH what a great spin! Gil, you're a genius. And aww, Sam and Zero. My heart.

    My TTT: http://shelversanon.blogspot.com/2013/02/top-10-tuesday-favorite-humorous.html

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  15. AH! Love the sidekicks/best friends spin on the topic. And Ron Weasley and Samwise Gamgee are THE BEST FRIENDS someone could ask for. I often go on rants with my family about how awesome they are, but seriously... they're incredible!

    My Top Ten

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  16. Love this idea of friends/sidekicks. Love how many twists people have put on this week's TTT.

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  17. I love your list!! Ron definitely goes down as one of the best sidekicks of all time, and who could possibly not love Samwise?!

    Fabulous!

    Ems
    My Top Ten

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  18. I'm guessing you haven't read Daughter of Smoke and Bone? Zuzana not being on this list is a CRIME.

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  19. First off, I totally agree with Ron and Kenji, but the fact that you included Saphira makes me so happy. I too got kind of burnt out by the books after Brisingr, so the final one is still sitting waiting for me, but I absolutely adored her relationship with Eragon and she is basically one of the best animal characters ever, in my books.
    P.S. I only now just realized how long ago this topic was, but I was already writing out my comment. So oh well, you get a comment anyway :P

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