Always Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide

by Phineas

Oh, like you didn't expect this. I'd be hard pressed not be involved in a week involving sidekicks.

I admit I don't always have the most glamorous of lives, but it's got it's perks. Living in a panty drawer not being the least of it.

Sure, I'm diminutive in size, but as they say, it's all in how you use it. (And quite frankly, I'm hung like a mutant goat, so it all works out in the end. Also? My services can be bought for the mere price of several slabs of bacon. A bargain, if I do say so myself.)

But for all that sidekicks are nearly always the bridesmaids and never the bride, we're also a hell of a lot more fun. We get to say what everyone is thinking, even if they're too chickenshit to admit it. We point out the obvious to our chosen heroes, particularly when they're too blind to see it. (Or too stubborn. Sometimes it's the same thing.) We often look cute and harmless, which makes us easy to talk to, even if some of us can't respond in kind.


Sometimes sidekicks are all about hearts of gold and being physical representations of the hero's inner psyche.

Sometimes it really is just about biting people on the ass.


We're the both the comic relief and the surrogate parents. (Just look at all those childhood classics - Jiminey Cricket, Toto, TinkerBell - children heroes in particular respond to us because we are not grown-ups. Also? Tinkerbell's ass is delicious. And sparkly. I leave sparkles behind too, but I wouldn't exactly call it pixie dust. Well. You could call it that. But you'd be wrong. So very, very wrong.)

We may point our heroes in the right direction, but we let them decide how and when to travel that path. Heroes have to be forged, after all...and sometimes a sidekick's job is to merely let them figure it out on their own.

Of course, that doesn't mean we're going to just sit back and let them fuck it all all up, either. Where would Frodo be without Samwise? That ring wasn't going walk its way into Mordor by itself, now was it?

When it comes right down to it, hero stuff  is often deadly. Deadly boring. All that damned nobility makes for tricky situations and whereas sidekicks don't get any of the glory, we also don't get blamed when something goes wrong.

The real test is after the story is done. The quest has been completed. The dragon has been slain. The hero becomes king and weds the princess. The sidekick?  Relegated to some sort of honored position, perhaps. Or maybe we die in a last sacrificial moment, giving a final gift of courage. Snoresville, either way.

So let the hero sit on his stuffy old throne and marry the virgin princess. My job's done - the bastard half-brother prince and I are going down to the local pub to score some tail and have a foam party.

I might even bite him on the ass.

P.S. The awesome portrait up above was done by the lovely and talented Enerjak.