Top Ten Tuesday: Characters I’d want with me on a Deserted Island

The good folks at The Broke and the Bookish have a weekly meme post called Top Ten Tuesday.

This week, we’re listing the 10 characters we’d most want with us if we were stranded on a deserted island. This one was a LOT of fun to write.

1. Arya Stark from Game of Thrones. Because when Chuck Norris has a problem, and no one else can help, he doesn’t hire the A-Team. He hires Arya Stark.

via Cheezburger.

2. Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings. He can cook a meal out of almost anything. He’s honest to a fault. He’s tougher than he looks. And you know it’s good luck to have a hobbit around.

3. R2D2 from Star Wars. Even though we think of him as a movie character, he’s been in plenty of books. He has an electric prod to keep agressive monkeys at bay, reconnaissance capabilities, and tons of valuable knowledge stored in his memory bank. He handled himself very well on Dagobah and doesn’t need food to function. Plus, just think how cool it would be, if you were stranded on a desert island, to have a DROID for a companion.

4. Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next. She’s a brilliant detective who can travel into fictional stories, and she has a fun sense of humor. Like Master Samwise, she is tougher than she looks. I would pray she could manage to rescue a copy of Robinson Crusoe from the shipwreck.

5. Scheherazade from 1,001 Nights. Life on a desert island would just be  more pleasant with a master storyteller who also happens to be a beautiful and crafty genius.

6. DC Comics’ Oliver Queen, aka Green Arrow. He’s a helluva lot more amiable than Bruce Wayne and he has experience with desert islands. He’s also a keen-eyed archer and a master bowyer. If I managed to bond with him or save him from dying while we were stranded, I’d be set for life once we were rescued, because he’s also a billionaire.

Here’s a one-armed Oliver nocking a kryptonite arrow with his teeth to fire it at Superman in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (long story). Oliver and Green Arrow are © DC Comics. Fair use applies.

7. Gideon from the Bible. The advantage of having a mighty warrior with a humble background who’s good at thinking on his feet and has a direct line to a divine being should be obvious.

8. Orpheus of Greek myth. I just couldn’t do without some music. Since I must have a fictional musician on this list, I’d just as soon have him be a demi-god who can charm the very rocks with his songs.

9. Breehny-hinny-brinny-hoohy-hah, aka Bree, the talking horse from C.S. Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy, my favorite of the Narnia books. This list wouldn’t be complete without a talking animal and kid’s lit/YA character, so this is a twofer.

10. Iorek Byrnison, the armored talking bear from Pullman’s His Dark Materials. If I’m going to have a Lewis character on this list, I have to add a Pullman character. And you must admit, having an armored bear as a companion is a real asset when you’re in a survivalist mode.

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