Brisingr Spork, Part 20: Gifts of Gold

[pangolin20]

theepistler wrote in antishurtugal, 2017-03-20 17:24:00

MOOD: sore
MUSIC: Breaking Bad Soundtrack


Brisingr Spork, Part 20: Gifts of Gold

We are now 165 pages into this book and nothing important has happened. But all that changes in Gifts of Gold – an action-packed, suspenseful chapter full of rich character development and snappy dialogue, in which-
Oh wait. Actually it’s just Eragon wasting even more of our time by hanging out with side characters we don’t care about who will have never become important. (And at least one of whom will never be seen again).
Having tried to undo Elva’s curse and failed miserably, Eragon leaves Nasuada’s “pavillion” and thinks about the really important stuff he has to do next.
Which are, in order:
1. Finish oiling his armour
2. Prepare for the wedding
3. Find a “proper sword” for himself
4. Something else we aren’t told about
Note that working at ways of defeating the apparently invincible King Galbatorix is not on the list. And it never will be. I shit you not – Eragon expends literally no effort on working toward his supposed main goal. Instead he spends his time on trivial bullshit and doesn’t so much as try to think up a plan on how to deal with the Evil King of Evilness until they’re right on his fucking doorstep. Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure “just wing it and see” is not a good strategy when it comes to winning a massive world-changing war against an immortal mage king with powers beyond imagining.
Instead this little matter is shoved aside in favour of Saphira announcing that she’s going to go have a bath, and some more annoying stilted dialogue:

Saphira unfurled her wings in preparation for flight. A few hours. I’m hungry. Once I am clean, I am going to catch two or three of those plump deer I’ve seen nibbling the grass on the western bank of the river.The Varden have shot so many of them, though, I may have to fly a half-dozen leagues toward the Spine before I find any game worth hunting.
Don’t go too far, he cautioned, else you might encounter the Empire.
I won’t, but if I happen upon a lone group of soldiers. . . She licked her chops. I would enjoy a quick fight. Besides, humans taste just as good as deer.
Saphira, you wouldn’t!
Her eyes sparkled. Maybe, maybe not. It depends on whether they are wearing armor. I hate biting through metal, and scooping my food out of a shell is just as annoying .
I see.

Here we see the first instance I’m aware of of Saphira “licking her chops”, which as I complained in my review makes her sound like a cat and doesn’t make any sense given that it’s already been established that she as a reptillian tongue. We also see another example of Eragon talking like a medieval poem rather than a (barely literate) human being, or the character he was in the first book either, for no reason.

We also learn that Saphira is prepared to eat people, and is in fact so comfortable with the idea that she has no problem making jokes about it. This is off-putting enough, but then Eragon shows that he’s also okay with it. “I see” is literally his only comment after her gross little joke, after which the subject is dropped entirely. And knowing Paolini it will never be mentioned again. I have a nasty suspicion this bit was supposed to be amusing.

Then Eragon’s manner of speech abruptly changes again.

“Right,” Eragon said to himself as Blödhgarm rejoined his companions. “First things first.”

See what I mean about the characters having inconsistent modes of speech? It’s irritating enough that Eragon suddenly started speaking like somone out of a Shakespeare play, but he doesn’t even stick with it. He just switches around at random. If it weren’t for the dialogue tags I’d have no idea who was supposed to be talking here.

He then strolls off onto the training ground, and we get what I’m pretty sure is a grammatical error as well as some more Ancient Language gibberish.

Crouching, he lay his right hand palm-upward on the trampled earth. He chose the words he would need from the ancient language, then murmured, “Kuldr, rïsa lam iet un malthinae unin böllr.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t that be “he LAID his right hand”? Either way this just doesn’t read right to me. Also I wish we didn’t have to keep reading these extended passages in the AL. Would it have killed him to give us the words in English and just say he was using the AL? It adds precisely nothing to the story.

In any case this spell draws gold out of the earth, and soon Eragon is holding three nuggets the size of “large hazelnut[s]”. Paolini informs us that magic be used to pull gold from the soil “with great effort”, but this costs Eragon precisely nothing other than making him tired for exactly one paragraph before instantly recovering. And of course there’s no suggestion at all that this spell could be used to fund the Varden even though it’d take nothing more than a couple of days, a few magicians and a case of Red Bull. Nobody in this series has any imagination or practicality. No wonder they’re so useless and keep having problems with things that shouldn’t be an issue.

Eragon then goes and has a big lunch to make up for all the “energy” he just used to magic up the gold. Riveting.
After that he has an encounter with Horst the blacksmith, who I think we’re supposed to care about.

Waving his free arm, Horst said, “Ho, Eragon!” Then he held up a finger, forestalling Eragon’s reply, and pulled a plug of felted wool out of his left ear. “Ah, now I can hear again. What brings you about, Eragon?” While he spoke, his sons scooped more charcoal into the forge from a bucket and set about tidying up the tongs, hammers, dies, and other tools that lay on the ground. All three men gleamed with sweat.

Hahah, Horst just called Eragon a ho. Did anyone yell “Ho!” at other people in the last two books?

Another example of Paolini attempting to write human interaction follows, and it’s as clunky as always.

“I wanted to know what was causing such a commotion,” said Eragon. “I should have guessed it was you. No one else can create as big an uproar as someone from Carvahall.”
Horst laughed, his thick, spade-shaped beard pointed up toward the sky until his mirth was exhausted. “Ah, that tickles my pride, it does. And aren’t you the living truth of it, eh?”
“We all are,” Eragon replied. “You, me, Roran, everyone from Carvahall. Alagaësia will never be the same once the lot of us are done.”

What the hell does that even mean? Was that supposed to be some sort of metaphor? In any case this exchange is painfully lacking in emotion. We don’t need fancy descriptions of what it looks like when Horst laughs; we need a description of the emotion behind it and Eragon’s reaction to that emotion. As usual Paolini puts a wall between us and his characters by focusing on superficial details rather than getting to the heart of anything. And this is a major reason why I don’t give a shit that Horst’s wife Elain isn’t doing well with her pregnancy. The other is that I know nothing about either her or Horst and am not remotely invested in them. Paolini could have the pair of them disemboweled and I wouldn’t bat an eye.

One of Paolini’s failings is that he sucks at making his secondary characters interesting or sympathetic. Another is his inability to write believable conversations. Which is why moments such as this one are so tedious to read. Both skills take a hell of a lot of practice to master, not to mention a good eye and ear for the little nuances in how people speak and behave, and Paolini shows evidence of neither.

Anyway, moving on – Eragon asks Horst where to find some guy named Gedric, who I’m 90% sure has never been mentioned before. Gedrick is the guy Eragon stole some ox hides from back in the first book, in case you care. (And if you do care, I weep for you).

Because of course tiny podunk villages in the ass-end of nowhere always have a professional tanner in residence. Just like how they always have a butcher. Yet another hint that Paolini bases big chunks of his worldbuilding off RPGs and D&D rather than reality or common sense.

Gedric, as it turns out, has a terrible flaw: he’s unattractive!

The tanner ran over to Eragon and stood before him, his gaze lowered. He was short and swarthy, with a jaw like a mastiff’s, heavy eyebrows, and arms thick and gnarled from stirring the foul-smelling vats where he had cured his hides. Although he was far from handsome, Eragon knew him to be a kind and honest man.

Um, how does Eragon know what a mastiff is? Are there pedigree dogs in Alaglag? And more “telling” shows up – we’ll never see Gedric be “kind and honest” (in fact we’ll probably never see him again after this scene, period). On top of that, it’s apparently noteworthy that a guy who doesn’t look like a model for Abercrombie & Fitch is a nice person.

Because only attractive people can be pleasant to be around.

Pardon me if I betray my early 80’s Australian roots here, but Paolini can get stuffed.

Anyway, so then Eragon does the “I’m so totally noble” thing again and tells Gedric about the hides he stole.

“I stole them, and I’m not proud of it, but I needed the hides. Without them, I doubt I would have survived long enough to reach the elves in Du Weldenvarden. I always preferred to think that I had borrowed the hides, but the truth is, I stole them, for I had no intention of returning them. Therefore, you have my apologies. And since I am keeping the hides, or what is left of them, it seems only right to pay you for them.” From within his belt, Eragon removed one of the spheres of gold—hard, round, and warm from the heat of his flesh—and handed it to Gedric.

He also murdered a probable teenager in cold blood and claims not to be proud of it, but we’ll never see him make any effort to atone for that particular crime, since handing someone a lump of gold to pay for stolen goods is way easier than any of that complicated morality shit.

Also, NOBODY CARES! Seriously, even hardcore fans wouldn’t give a shit about the leather Eragon boosted in book one. Not to mention that this repayment thing comes right out of nowhere. He’s never so much as thought about it before.

Predictably Gedric makes clichéd protests about how the gold is too much to pay, blah blah blah, and Eragon “nobly” insists that he keep it. He then proceeds to (what else?) kiss Eragon’s ass.

Astonishment raised Gedric’s eyebrows, exposing pale skin that normally lay hidden in deep folds. Like a split in blue-gray granite, a wide grin spread across his jaw, transforming his features. “A saddle!” he breathed. “Imagine, me tanning the leather for a Rider’s saddle! And without a hint of what I was doing at the time, no less! No, not a Rider, the Rider. He who will finally cast down the black tyrant himself! If only my father could see me now!” Kicking up his heels, Gedric danced an impromptu jig. With his grin undiminished, he bowed to Eragon and trotted back to his place among the villagers, where he began to relate his tale to everyone within earshot.

He then promptly disappears from the series forever. And good bloody riddance.

Eragon leaves, feeling smug.

It might take me a while, he thought, but I always settle my debts.

Oh, fuck you. You’re stealing the Lannister family motto now? Also, this has never been a feature of Eragon’s character, so you can shut your whore mouth right now, you arrogant little prick.

Ahem.

Eragon then goes up and meets Jeod, the character who is supposed to be a loveably eccentric scholarly type. His bitchy wife Helen is there of course, and we get a completely unnecessary and overly detailed description of her filling the kettle to make tea for the visitor. Might I add, Jeod acts like this is her duty and doesn’t even bother to ask. Charming man. (Later on when Eragon breaks his mug, Helen is expected to clean up the mess and neither man lifts a finger to help. Yay for misogyny!).

Helen storms off in a temper, and Jeod explains that, basically, she’s a spoiled rich girl who’s pissed because she isn’t getting free room service at the Alaglag Hilton despite being completely useless to the war effort. Wow, I have SO much sympathy for her. Also they’re apparently receiving an “extra ration” from the always practical Nasuada… and Horst isn’t. Even though qualified blacksmiths are kind of important to have and Jeod and Helen are dead weight. Brilliant.

Eragon asks Jeod what he’s doing with all all the books he’s studying, and Jeod explains that he’s looking for information which might help the Varden. Here we get a rare example of Paolini bothering to foreshadow something, albeit in the clumsiest way possible.

“…If I could find mention of a tunnel that led underneath the walls of Dras-Leona, for example, it might save us a great deal of bloodshed.”

Wow. Subtle.

Eragon and Jeod then drink “red-clover tea” (is that a thing?) and eat “biscuits”. I can’t help but wonder what kind of biscuit. As an Australian, the biscuits I know are crunchy sweet snacks which may contain sultanas, rolled oats or chocoalte chips. But in America “biscuits” are apparently doughy, savoury affairs which resemble scones and are sometimes eaten with fried chicken and gravy. Given Paolini’s difficulty in separating his writing from his own upper middle-class American upbringing, I’m honestly curious.

Eragon explains that he’s come to tell Jeod about how Brom died. He then does just that, and as usual it’s frustratingly emotionless. For about the thousandsth time Paolini falls into the “telling” trap, as Eragon’s account of what happened isn’t written out but rather summarised in a single short paragraph. We are also told that he finds this upsetting, and are then given a token attempt at him showing emotion.

“If only I had known what I know now,” Eragon said, “then I could have saved him. Instead...” Unable to summon words past the tightness in his throat, he wiped his eyes and gulped at his tea. He wished it were something stronger.

Yeah, if only Brom the fully-trained Rider had bothered to teach you jack shit the idiot would still be alive. Also I really don’t get why Eragon is this upset; he barely knew the guy, and there was no affection between the two of them – Brom spent the entire book treating Eragon like shit and periodically beating him to a pulp.

Maybe that’s why Eragon instantly gets over it and moves on to listening to even more exposition. Jeod talks about why Brom might have gone into exile after stealing Saphira’s egg, and suggests that something “momentus” my have happened which caused him to cut himself off from everyone.

Yeah, he got some random Mary Sue pregnant and then decided to bunk off to the middle of Buttfuck Nowhere to keep an eye on their moronic offspring rather than do anything further to help the cause he supposedly cares so much about. No wonder Eragon is so selfish and irresponsible – it’s genetic. Eragon then asks about Morzan, his (not really) father, and we find out that he too was Speshul.

“He was tall, he had broad shoulders, his hair was dark like a raven’s feathers, and his eyes were different colors. One was blue and one was black. His chin was bare, and he was missing the tip of one of his fingers; I forget which. Handsome he was, in a cruel, haughty manner, and when he spoke, he was most charismatic. His armor was always polished bright, whether mail or a breastplate, as if he had no fear of being spotted by his enemies, which I suppose he hadn’t. When he laughed, it sounded as if he were in pain.”

Gods forbid Morzan look like a regular guy. And of course he has to be all Evil ‘n’ Shit with the “cruel, haughty” speech and the evil laugh . Could this guy possibly be any more of a walking cliché?

Eragon then asks about his mother Selena, and would you believe it she was also Speshul?

“…Morzan may have been a fearsome swordsman, a formidable magician, and a murderous traitor, but it was that woman of his who inspired the most terror in people. Morzan only used her for missions that were so repugnant, difficult, or secretive that no one else would agree to undertake them. She was his Black Hand, and her presence always signaled imminent death, torture, betrayal, or some other horror.” Eragon felt sick hearing his mother described thusly. “She was utterly ruthless, devoid of either pity or compassion. It was said that when she asked Morzan to enter his service, he tested her by teaching her the word for heal in the ancient language—for she was a spellcaster as well as a common fighter—and then pitting her against twelve of his finest swordsmen.”
“How did she defeat them?”
“She healed them of their fear and their hate and all the things that drive a man to kill. And then while they stood grinning at each other like idiot sheep, she went up to the men and cut their throats... Are you feeling well, Eragon? You are as pale as a corpse.”

Okay, I’ve talked about this before but let’s go over it again. Selena grew up in a remote, dirt-poor peasant village. How the fuck did she learn how to use a sword? Who taught her? And who trained her in magic? She was with Morzan for what – a year or two? How the fuck was this untrained nobody qualified to work as Morzan’s deadliest secret agent? And why has none of this ever come up before? Spellcasters are supposedly rare and disliked among humans, so why did nobody have a problem with Selena or suspect that was why she left Carp Hall?

And aw, Eragon is all shocked and horrified that his mother was an evil murderous maniac. Because Eragon would never ruthlessly slaughter helpless opponents or use magic to screw with people’s minds oh wait.

Typically, Eragon then rationalises his mother’s misdeeds away by deciding that Morzan must have “perverted her essentially good nature”, and reflects that he can’t accept the idea of both his parents being “evil”, and yes that’s the word Paolini uses.

Because everybody in the world is either “good” or “evil”. There couldn’t possibly be any middle ground or shades of grey.

This is so incredibly childish I don’t even have words for it.

Anyway, so Jeod gives Eragon a copy of the banned history book The Dominance of Fate, and what the fuck does that title even mean, and mentions how it’s only banned in the Empire and that Galbatorix burns every copy he finds and hangs anyone caught with one.

Um, why? Seriously, why? It’s a history book. Even if it contains the true story of Galbatorix’s rise to power, why the fuck would he even care? The dude has godlike powers; there’s no chance in hell that he could be overthrown by a revolt from the populace, and said populace would have way more sense than to try and challenge him given that he can wipe out an entire army in ten seconds flat and would doubtless have done so to the Varden if he weren’t every bit as lazy and passive as Eragon himself.

(Huh, maybe laziness is a side-effect of becoming a Rider. It would explain a lot. After all the dragons apparently spend most of their time lazing around snoozing in the sunshine).

Real life dictators don’t censor and burn books just because they’re Evil. There’s always a calculated reason behind it, and most of the time it’s because the books in question run counter to the bullshit philosophy they’re peddling. That’s why the Nazis burned anything they deemed Jewish or Communist. Paolini has his supposed villain burning books (and apparently a library as well) to make him seem as evil as the Nazis, but without any defined agenda to back it up. In the next book we find out that Galbatorix is supposedly intent on releasing all the knowledge the Riders censored, and there’s no reason to assume he’s lying, so why the fuck is he burning libraries and banning harmless history books? And if he is censoring history, where are the Empire sanctioned alternative history books chock-full of pro-Galbatorix propaganda? Isn’t most of the populace illiterate anyway? Logic! My kingdom for some logic!

Eragon then gives a second gold nugget to Helen so she and Jeod can start a new trading enterprise and become rich again, so now Helen doesn’t hate Eragon any more. Isn’t that convenient? If someone is pissed off at you, just pay them off and you’ll instantly become their hero for life! He also offers Jeod a ride on Saphira, and we will never actually see that happen.

After that Eragon leaves and – wait, what about the third gold nugget? He didn’t give it to anyone! I guess it’s possible he uses it to make the rings he later gives to Roran and Katrina, but this is never explicitly stated, and I doubt too many people made the connection – I certainly didn’t and I’ve read this book before. For all I know the third nugget simply disappears forever.

End chapter.

Wow, that accomplished a lot. Did this really need to take up an entire chapter? And would you believe the next chapter accomplishes just as much (ie. fuck-all)? I’m just going to lay this out for anyone who doesn’t already know: you can do more than one thing within a chapter. Or hell, even a scene! Paolini seems to think a chapter can only be dedicated to worldbuilding, character development or plot advancement. It couldn’t possibly be two of those, let alone all three.

Actually this is a depressingly common problem among fantasy authors. It’s the reason why so many series become bogged down in politics or worldbuilding or the characters hanging around doing fuck-all while the plot spins its wheels. It happened to Robert Jordan, it happened to Terry Goodkind, and it’s probably happened to George R R Martin as well (Patrick Rothfuss is an exception – his own series was apparently like to begin with). Seriously, guys, you can have character development, world-building and politics and advance the plot at the same time. Really! It’s not that fucking hard! I'm a mediocre author at best and I can do it in my frigging sleep.

Of course, with some other authors, notably GRRM, the non plot-advancing stuff is entertaining to read anyway because the world is immersive, the characters are interesting and sympathetic and the politics are supenseful. Paolini doesn’t have that to prop him up – his politics are hackneyed and obvious, his world-building is unoriginal, and his characters are boring, one-dimensional and unsympathetic. On top of that he completely stinks at writing dialogue, so when his characters hang out and chat it’s just plain annoying to read and you can’t concentrate on what’s being said because you’re too distracted by how stilted and unbelievable everyone sounds. Some authors can make unimportant dialogue fun and naturalistic, but Paolini is not one of them. Not even close.

In the next chapter, we waste even more time on an infuriatingly bald-faced Harry Potter ripoff and Eragon chooses a new sword which will serve no purpose in the plot despite being given a ridiculously detailed description! Also we get to spend time with yet another side character we don’t care about.

Yay.

Somebody get me an aspirin.

69 comments

[1]

zelaznamaska
March 20 2017, 17:42:29
Apparently red clover tea is recommended for women during menopause.

[1A]

theepistler
March 20 2017, 17:45:29
Ah, that's right - I remember now! I used to go to a tea shop with a huge selection of herbal teas, and I'm 99% sure Red Clover was one of them, with some spiel about how it's good for menopause. And a disclaimer warning against using said tea as a substitute for actual medicine, hahah.

[2]

the_bishop8
March 20 2017, 18:29:47
He does use the last orb to make the rings for Roran and Katrina. Not that those rings ever really matter.

[2A]

theepistler
March 20 2017, 18:31:31
Is that ever actually stated, though? All I remember is him handing over these rings which appear right out of nowhere and saying they're enchanted with X, Y and Z, none of which will ever be relevant.

[2A1]

hergrim
March 20 2017, 19:22:22
Yep, in the next chapter. I specifically searched the book to find out.

[2A1A]

theepistler
March 20 2017, 19:32:32
Really? I have precisely zero memory of that.

[2A1A1]

hergrim
March 20 2017, 20:04:58
Yeah, it's specifically mentioned that he made the two rings from the third gold sphere.

[2A1A2]

kidwithrabbit
March 21 2017, 06:02:22
Because they have no real bearing on the story. They're literally just there to let Katrina know that Roran almost got crushed by a wall in the last book.
Aaaaand that's it.

[3]

Anonymous
March 20 2017, 19:23:44
Is nobody bothered about the way Selena defeated the twelve swordsmen? She healed them of their fear and hate and they just stood there, waiting for her to kill them. Whaaaa...? What logic is this? Why don't people do this more often then? Could this be used against the painless soldiers? She healed them of their fear? Can you do the same thing about someone's good sense? That line is making my head explode.

-TTT

[3A]

Moris Kurth
March 21 2017, 02:26:50
I Think it's less 'healing' and more 'lobotomizing'. Without fear the basic principle of self-preservance is gone, which makes them not react to a hard, sharp object swung in their general direction.

[3A1]

Anonymous
March 21 2017, 04:20:30
She was taught the word for healing i.e waise heil or something. How can that spell be used to remove fear? By thinking of fear as a disease? If I think of their hands as a disease, can I heal them of their hands?
-TTT

[3A2]

theepistler
March 21 2017, 16:57:42
Once again Paolini flip-flops between "magic is all about the intentions" and "magic has to be worded as laboriously and precisely as a legal document". Reminds me of the awful movie, where the word "brisingr" can be used to do just about anything depending on what the plot requires and yelling the word for "branch" somehow causes a vine (not even a branch, mind you - a vine) to wrap itself around an enemy's throat and instantly kill him.

[3B]

kidwithrabbit
March 21 2017, 06:18:14
This is why I became more and more frustrated by this series's magic. It's like the bad guys are the more creative ones, while the heroes are hung up on rules that may as well not exist.

They say you have to use words, BUT how the spells actually work is how you intend for the words to work, how you interpret them. You can make diamonds using just the word for water. You can heal people of their fear so they let you kill them. You can strip people of pain so that they become effing zombies, because screw it, that's what the magician that cast the spell intended.

Hell, I was going to do a fanfiction where the protag drew shapes and wrote equations instead of speaking the ancient language purely out of being a stubborn, contrary brat. And they weren't going to be correct at all or entirely make sense. But they were going to work, anyway, because it makes absolute sense to him. Because, despite what the books say, there are far, FAR more examples of magic doing what the caster intends, rather it doing explicitly what they say or staying in the bounds of what would be physically possible.

No, seriously. Being unable to feel pain shouldn't make you immune to dying from blood loss or trauma. And if they have a 'ward' for that...where's the energy for it coming from? Themselves? On top of the blood loss and trauma? The heck?

[3B1]

Anonymous
March 21 2017, 11:24:56
That makes the thing with Eva even worse.
-TTT

[3B2]

theepistler
March 21 2017, 17:04:56
Being unable to feel pain shouldn't make you immune to dying from blood loss or trauma.


Yeah, and that's why IRL it's a damned dangerous condition to have. I watched a documentary about unusual disorders once, and one of them was a congenital condition which prevented a child from feeling pain. The parents talked at length about how incredibly careful they had to be. If the kid so much as tripped over it had to be treated like a full-scale emergency because the kid would have no idea if he'd done himself any damage. There were stories of babies with the condition scratching their own eyes out, and kids chewing bits off themselves.

In fact, you know what? I can actually speak from personal experience here: I went to the dentist once and was given a numbing injection. Afterwards I had no sensation in my lower lip. I was supposed to wait for the injection to wear off, but I had to go to work so I ate my lunch anyway. It was hard, but I was very careful.

Shortly after I got to work the injection finally wore off, and all of a sudden I was in a lot of pain. Without so much as noticing, I'd chewed my lip into shreds. We're talking multiple bloody wounds. And while my face was still numb I'd had absolutely no indication that anything was wrong.

Now imagine you'd had that injection on your entire body and it never wore off. You're fucked.

[4]

hergrim
March 20 2017, 20:03:21
In any case this spell draws gold out of the earth, and soon Eragon is holding three nuggets the size of “large hazelnut[s]”. Paolini informs us that magic be used to pull gold from the soil “with great effort”, but this costs Eragon precisely nothing other than making him tired for exactly one paragraph before instantly recovering. And of course there’s no suggestion at all that this spell could be used to fund the Varden even though it’d take nothing more than a couple of days, a few magicians and a case of Red Bull. Nobody in this series has any imagination or practicality. No wonder they’re so useless and keep having problems with things that shouldn’t be an issue.

The sphere would weight 157 grams, which is the equivalent to £6.12s.9d and is enough to pay 530 spearmen for a day. If we take 9d as the average pay for the army, then the daily wage for 20 000 men would be £7500. This would require 1130 spheres of gold per day. On top of this would come food (1d per man per day), horses (£1 or more each and needing 1d in food each), equipment (£1 per person average would be a good guide) and various miscellaneous items I don't have a ready estimate for. The gold also requires a cube of earth 34 meters to a side, with a surface footprint of over 13 hectares per day for wages alone. Each Mage is unlikely to be able to produce more than one sphere per day unless Eragon teaches them how to extract energy from living things and store it in gems, so the small number of mages could only help with a fraction of the Varden's ongoing costs.

Horst laughed, his thick, spade-shaped beard pointed up toward the sky until his mirth was exhausted. “

I'm pretty sure Horst broke his back here.

Um, how does Eragon know what a mastiff is?

Apparently mastiffs is synonymous with "molosser", which all have "heavy bones, pendant ears, a relatively short and well-muscled neck, and a short, broad muzzle." This includes puts, as it happens.

His armor was always polished bright, whether mail or a breastplate, as if he had no fear of being spotted by his enemies, which I suppose he hadn’t. When he laughed, it sounded as if he were in pain.”

Paolini forgets here that most medieval noblemen had bright polished armour, when they weren't covering it in velvet or deliberately patinating it. That's one of the reasons why the "White Company" had its name: every man of them had polished armour. It's got nothing to do with not being afraid to be seen.

Also, how to you laugh as though you're in pain? Is it the hysterical "I'm high on endorphins" laugh or the "no, really, my leg isn't actually broken" gritted teeth laugh?

Actually this is a depressingly common problem among fantasy authors. It’s the reason why so many series become bogged down in politics or worldbuilding or the characters hanging around doing fuck-all while the plot spins its wheels. It happened to Robert Jordan, it happened to Terry Goodkind, and it’s probably happened to George R R Martin as well

I sort of disagree here. I think the problem is the innumerable plot threads set up by the authors and the wide geographic spread of their characters. The plot river essentially overflows the banks and spreads out into a slow moving, turgid stream. Unless you're absolutely ruthless with pruning plot threads or capable of covering several years in a single book, it's really difficult to prevent a plot overflow. I really don't think that, at least in the case of Jordan and GRRM, it's down to only having one of the three elements per chapter.

[4A]

theepistler
March 20 2017, 21:44:41
If Nasuada can use magically created lace to make money, I don't see much difference between that and magically sourced gold when all is said and done.

As for your last point, when I say "advance the plot" I of course mean the main storyline. Subplots should contribute to the main storyline as much as possible, and it pays to avoid having too many of the things. Otherwise you'll end up writing entire thesaurus sized books in which nothing of actual significance happens. GRRM, like many others, made the mistake of having entirely too many subplots, which is why his main storyline hasn't gone anywhere in over a decade and why I ultimately got sick of reading the series despite the excellent writing and characterisation. As for Jordan, I never got past the first book because the writing was bland and the characters were obnoxious, and therefore I didn't care about the main storyline to begin with.

[4A1]

hergrim
March 21 2017, 05:18:53
If Nasuada can use magically created lace to make money, I don't see much difference between that and magically sourced gold when all is said and done.

Making each gold ball would double a mage's daily energy expenditure without taking extraction into account, so they might not be able to make a ball as large as Eragon or even bring as much as the equivalent amount of gold dust to the surface.

As for the lace, well, I think that's bullshit in any case. I don't know how much energy it requires to create a piece of lace, but certainly more than Paolini expects and enough that you won't be making enough money to fund an army by undercutting the cost of lace.

[4B]

syntinen_laulu
March 21 2017, 05:58:58
Apparently mastiffs is synonymous with "molosser"

Perhaps Paolini has been reading British books, or just older ones. Mastiff is the universal word in Britain for that type of dog, and has been since the 14th century - I'd think that over here you'd need to have a particular interest in dog-breeding or some such thing even to know the word 'molosser' which is very recent. (At least, the Oxford English Dictionary still hadn't heard of it in 2002.)

[5]

syntinen_laulu
March 21 2017, 01:12:33
However he meant Saphira's crack about eating enemy soldiers to come across to readers, as a piece of twisted humour or an actual possibility, the effect is nasty.

he lay his right hand palm-upward on the trampled earth.

Leaving aside the craptastic grammar: (a) laying one's hand palm-upwards on the earth when crouching isn't much more comfortable than pointing one's spade-shaped beard to the sky, and (b) to end up in his palm those nuggets are going to have to pass right through his hand. WTF? But even if they didn't do that, only rose to the surface of the soil and Eragon picked them up and then held them in the palm of his hand, there's something about using the back of one's hand either to attract or repel something magically that simply doesn't compute.

Then he held up a finger, forestalling Eragon’s reply, and pulled a plug of felted wool out of his left ear. “Ah, now I can hear again."

Wise Paopao, demonstrating to his readers his deep practical knowledge of how smiths work! Or rather not: because ear protection for workers in noisy trades is a very, very recent phenomenon created by modern industrial health and safety research and legislation. For millennia until well into living memory smiths accepted hearing damage as just one of those things.

how does Eragon know what a mastiff is? Are there pedigree dogs in Alaglag?

You can have pedigree mastiffs, to be sure, but 'mastiff' in itself just means 'a type of big heavy dog with a massive head and drooly jaw, used since antiquity as guard dogs, hounds, war dogs, and for bull- and bear-baiting'. If dogs are used for any of those purposes in Alaglag, then they probably are mastiffs.

I can’t help but wonder what kind of biscuit.

Me too. There's also a third possibility, which would be my default assumption if the word cropped up in a quasi-medieval army encampment: the original meaning of the word is 'small loaf of bread baked twice (bis-cuit is French for 'baked again') to dry it out hard so it would keep indefinitely'. In other words, hard-tack or 'ship's biscuit'. Maybe the tea was necessary for dunking the biscuits to soften them enough to eat without breaking one's teeth.

[6]

Anonymous
March 21 2017, 03:43:49
You just have to wonde r if Eragon was the first guy smart enough to draw gold out from the earth. Surely if any old mage could do it then the whole economy would be out of whack.

[6A]

theepistler
March 21 2017, 17:09:50
Maybe THAT'S why people don't like magicians: the bastards keep using their magic to get gold for free.

[6A1]

Anonymous
March XX 2017, XX:XX:XX

[7]

zorbulon
March 21 2017, 06:57:40
Eh, I'd find it far more likely to have a butcher and a tanner in a pseudo-medieval backwater podunk than a smith - a smith with multiple apprentices, even. Where did he get his iron? Is there a swamp or shallow lake close by to dredge for "lake ore"? And why did they even need that much iron anyway? Skilled carpenters and joiners can make pretty much any furniture out of only wood; it certainly is easier with iron nails but those are far from necessary. Iron was pretty much reserved for the essential tools such as knives and awls and shears that are practically impossible to make out of wood; iron nails were a luxury until after the industrial revolution and mass production of iron. Even if they have horses, shoeing them is entirely optional.

For the matter I don't see why a smith would need ear plugs anyway unless they are very bad at their job. Hot iron is pretty soft and hammering on it does not make much more noise than hammering on a chunk of beeswax. It is just a dull 'thunk' unless you miss and hit the anvil instead. And you want to hear it because it is one of the prime indicators telling when you need to put the iron back in the fire.

Also while about any farm town housewife of their worth of that time would know how to butcher a rabbit or a chicken, any larger animal would need a specialist and there'd be quite a few large animals even in a fairly small town. You have to string up the cow and they weigh a ton, and skinning does need plenty of strength and precision and of course practice, and let's not forget the business of extracting all the giblets intact either... as for tanning, doing it without the help of modern chemistry and such is a messy and time-consuming business, also with rather distinctive and unappetizing odors. You'd need a specialist for that, somewhere a little distance from the town center.

And, well, I'll say that I could not take the whole 'saga' in any way seriously from page one since 'Carvahall' pretty much spells out 'hairy house' to me... it's a native language thing.

[7A]

theepistler
March 21 2017, 07:46:12
Call me nuts, but I find it a wee bit implausible that Carphat would have enough large animals around for skinning that a tanner would be able to make a living. Do they breed the oxen whose hides Eragon stole? What are oxen doing there in the first place anyway? You never actually see any; there just happen to be ox hides hanging up for Our Hero to steal. I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure that in a place that small it would be far more practical to be a jack-of-all-trades. I'm also pretty sure you couldn't just stroll into a butcher's shop and buy fresh meat anytime you fancied, especially given that there was no bloody refrigeration. And it actually is confirmed that Sloan has raw meat just lying around; Eragon sneaks in and steals a bunch of it like it's no big deal.

You're probably right about the blacksmith thing - if Carphat is meant to be that tiny you'd really expect people to make trips to a neighbouring larger settlement to get their horses shod or something like that.

Carvalonghall is supposed to be a backwater village with a tiny population, etc., but from the way it's actually written you'd think it was, well, a small town in the middle of rural Montana, what with the "porches" and shops and nobody actually seeming to do much farming or other hard work, and even the supposedly dirt poor having private bedrooms and nightstands and chicken for breakfast. What, do they have running water and electricity as well?

[7A1]

torylltales
March 21 2017, 08:56:29
I agree about the tannery business, tanning and butchery tend to go hand in hand, especially in mountain villages where there is lots of game like deer and rabbits etc.

The ox are quite out of place considering we never see any oxen ever in the series, but it's not implausible for a butcher and a tanner to both exist in a little village. Unless, and this is the kicker, unless there is a larger town within a day's walk where villagers might take their catches/kills for processing.

Like Therinsford, the larger town just south of Carvahall that has enough population to support a mill (that would be able to hire assistants from neighbouring villages) and a stable of horses for sale.

[7A2]

zorbulon
March 21 2017, 09:17:17
Yup, I am just pointing out that the smithy is the bigger elephant in the room. They do farming, right? So they need to till the fields and oxen are far more likely candidate for that than horses, generally speaking; they are easier to handle, stronger, and on top of that you won't feel as bad about eating them once they're finished, generally. I guess they are supposed to have hunters and I could easily see a senior hunter doubling as butcher. (Also going alone to mountains to hunt deer is Plain Stupid; good luck carrying your catch back all on your own.)

Did they actually use money? That's another silly thing, a tiny farming village would much more likely to have goods-for-services exchange economy. The primary use for money would be trading with outsiders. Even itinerant specialists like knife sharpeners and tinsmiths would often work for food and shelter.

Carveggiehall does seem like a rural American town, sure, it just needs that sleeping Mexican under a giant sombrero and a steam locomotive railway. And the way things are just around for grabbing, it is a rural American town out of a videogame where nothing ever spoils and most things are there because the game designer had a quota of plot items to fill in.

[7A2A]

syntinen_laulu
March 22 2017, 01:25:59
Actually the smithy isn't implausible at all. There's a reason why 'Smith' is the commonest surname in the English-speaking world: every medieval village needed one, and he was one of the most important, if not the most important, specialists in the community. You could not do without someone who knew how to bash metal. He probably wouldn't smelt iron himself, let alone mine it; he'd buy bar iron from the nearest town. (And a great deal of his work consisted in recycling; you routinely retrieved and saved every bent nail from old items being destroyed.)

Agree about the usefulness of oxen over horses (though feeling bad about eating horses is an extremely modern emotion). But with only an occasional worn-out beast to butcher, there's no way a village could support a tannery or butcher's shop. Maybe one villager might be specially good at cutting up oxen and another at tanning large hides, so their neighbours would call on their skills when they killed an ox. But as regular businesses, no.

Agree also about money. The lowest value coin in medieval England was the silver penny. According to this site, (and RA are a pretty good group), around 1000 AD two pennies would buy you 15 chickens! Even granted that you could cut pennies into halves and quarters, there's no way you could buy a single chicken or half a dozen eggs from a neighbour for money; you'd have to barter.

And totally about the idiocy of Eragon's hunting trip; there was no way that he could have carried back enough meat to make several day’s trip worth while. (Other kinds of hunting, such as fur-trapping, are another matter.) If they were really short of food he’d have done far better to spend some time doing day labour or odd jobs for better-off villagers in return for some eggs or bread.

[7A2B]

Anonymous
March 22 2017, 13:01:38
Actually oxen are specially trained steers--castrated bulls--and a lot of work is needed to train them. A good ox is a valuable animal and, yes, you might very well be as attached to your ox as another person would be to a horse. And medieval people did not have any hang ups about eating horse meat like modern people do--in fact it's still eaten in some cultures. Moreover, oxen were often preferred as farm animals. They're slower than horses but require less feed and are usually hardier animals. A well trained ox is also often just plain easier to work with, as I understand it.

So the real surprise is not that ox hides were present but that Garrow had horses (2 if I remember right!) despite ostensibly being poor. A destitute family should not be eating chickens (eggs and thus chickens were too valuable) or owning horses. If they were truly poor, they may not even own their own oxen, but rather rent or share a team with other villagers or even just own one ox and borrow another. That sort of arrangement even appears in some fairy tales that were recorded in the 1800s when the medieval era was long past, so it's not as if Paolini could find no sources if he'd bothered to look.

Ahem. Back to my original point, unless the entire village was in a famine, there would not be multiple ox hides at all, only cattle/bull/calf hides. Oxen are not a breed or species, and killing animals you've spent months or years training makes no sense unless you will otherwise starve or the ox is too old or injured/sick to do the work.

So you might eat your aged ox, but you might feel pretty badly about that, even if it's only because it will take time and/or money to replace him.

[7A2B1]

theepistler
March 22 2017, 18:29:47
A destitute family should not be eating chickens (eggs and thus chickens were too valuable)

Paolini is apparently one of those people who don't know that chicken used to be so expensive people only ate it on Sundays, and only then if they were well-off. It didn't become ridiculously cheap until factory farming was invented.

[7A2B1A]

syntinen_laulu
March 23 2017, 00:46:50
In 1192 King Richard I of England attempted to make his way home from the Third Crusade over the lands of his enemy Leopold of Austria, disguised as a merchant, but was identified in a low inn near Vienna and made prisoner. One contemporary story was that the locals realised this ‘merchant’ wasn’t what he claimed to be when he ordered roast capon for his dinner. They knew that only a seriously wealthy nobleman would dream of eating an extravagant food like capon on anything but a really special festival, and that anyone who imagined that a downmarket establishment like theirs could even provide it had no grasp at all of how ordinary people lived.
There’s no particular reason to suppose the story is true, but it’s a very clear illustration of just how affluent you’d need to be in the 12th century to think of roast poultry as an everyday food. (Boiled or stewed, somewhat less so; whenever a chicken got too old to lay or a cock too old to do its duty, into the pot it’d go, being too tough and stringy to roast.)
A side-note: my brother took part in a Himalayan climbing expedition, and when they came down in a triumphant mood after a successful ascent, the guy who ran the local tea-house where they were based asked if they would like a chicken curry for a celebratory dinner? Sounds great, they said, bring it on. When their meal arrived they thought he had forgotten, because all it seemed to be was vaguely-flavoured rice with some bones in it. Being used to British chicken curries, full of big chunks of tender chicken breast, they hadn’t realised that in the Himalayas a chicken for the pot consists mostly of skin, bones and sinews; you just boil it in with the rice to give it flavour.

[7A2B2]

syntinen_laulu
March 23 2017, 00:52:01
So the real surprise is not that ox hides were present but that Garrow had horses (2 if I remember right!) despite ostensibly being poor.

Not necessarily. It’s only in Western Europe that horse ownership was a high-status thing; in Eastern Europe horses have always been draught animals. One of the very few things I liked about that terrible Eragon movie was the perfectly convincing Carpathian homestead the Slovak set-designers had built for Garrow, where he had two stocky little Carpathian ‘Hucul’ horses to pull his plough, as has been normal in that part of the world for a millennium and more.

[7A2B3]

Anonymous
March 23 2017, 09:56:46
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<I don't know anything about medieval European culture> I can understand chicken being expensive, but why were eggs expensive?

-TTT

[8]

torylltales
March 21 2017, 09:00:04
boo hiss, spoilers for my chapter. :(


(Huh, maybe laziness is a side-effect of becoming a Rider. It would explain a lot. After all the dragons apparently spend most of their time lazing around snoozing in the sunshine).

I wouldn't be surprised. Mix "has the right of any king or queen" with "can get anything and everything with a few magic words" and a subservient population of peasants, and you get a class of person with no real need to exert themselves in any meaningful way.

[8A]

theepistler
March 21 2017, 17:15:33
Oh dear... I just realised I managed to summarise everything that happens in your chapter in a couple of sentences. I am bad person. *hangs head in shame*

Be sure to go to town on the Harry Potter ripoff! When I read it I was completely outraged, and for good reason.

[8A1]

torylltales
March 21 2017, 17:42:55 Edited: March 21 2017, 21:50:08
Doing so! I have the two books sitting by side together. Kind of feels like an insult to Harry Potter to have it so close in proximity to brisingr.

[9]

torylltales
March 21 2017, 10:07:15 Edited: March 21 2017, 10:13:54
More importantly, if she was already a spellcaster before she came to Morzan, how had she not learned the words for "heal" before then? Who did she learn spellcasting from, who didn't teach her 'heal'?

edit: this was meant to be in reply to TTT.

[10]

dinogrrl
March 21 2017, 10:27:47
Having written a wizard's familiar character who's a giant carnivorous mammal who has and still does eat humans...even if a large meat-eating animal jokes about such things and wouldn't really do it, that's going to have a MAJOR impact on how others, even its own human, relate to it. Well, not just to the animal, but to the person it's bonded to as well. And generally, it doesn't make relationships easier for anyone. Which, now that I say that, is probably why Paolini didn't want to pursue the idea of Saphira eating people or even just joking about it.
(Why no, my wizard character would never condone his familiar eating humans...unless it's the humans of his enemy's forces. Why no, this has never come up in political/war discussions before, why do you ask.)


The biscuit dilemma is an interesting one! I would put my bet on it being closer to the American biscuit than British one.

[11]

Anonymous
March 21 2017, 11:29:15
Um, why? Seriously, why? It’s a history book. Even if it contains the true story of Galbatorix’s rise to power, why the fuck would he even care? The dude has godlike powers; there’s no chance in hell that he could be overthrown by a revolt from the populace, and said populace would have way more sense than to try and challenge him given that he can wipe out an entire army in ten seconds flat and would doubtless have done so to the Varden if he weren’t every bit as lazy and passive as Eragon himself.
...
Real life dictators don’t censor and burn books just because they’re Evil. There’s always a calculated reason behind it, and most of the time it’s because the books in question run counter to the bullshit philosophy they’re peddling.

I like this line of thought. Not only do we never see Galby being very oppressive, logically he SHOULDN'T be. His would be the most awesome dictatorship in history to live under. Maybe even better than democratic government, depending how much you value that "voting" thing. Real despots are oppressive and brutal because they have (or could have) real enemies- people and ideas that are actually dangerous to them. But Galbatorix is invincible and omnipotent. He has no reason to fear free speech, because his subjects can't ultimately do anything. As long as taxes get paid Galby has no reason to kill people or restrict freedoms. He has every incentive to go the other way, and set up the country for good things like order and prosperity and general populace happiness, because that makes his life as king easier and awesomer.

[11A]

Anonymous
March 21 2017, 12:36:34
Yeah, but a counter-example is someone like, say, Darkseid. He really IS omnipotent, or close to it, and beloved on his homeworld. He could have a great thing going by just ruling Apokolips, but he can't contain himself to that small a stage-- the knowledge that anything exists outside his control is intolerable to him.

Of course this means that all his major enemies are external. There's no hint of rebellion because his people worship him, and none of his subordinates have the brains/power to overthrow him. So he's best seen as an invader to be pushed back rather than an oppressor to be risen against.

(Don't you love it when you set out to make a point and then your own evidence disproves it? :) )

[11B]

theepistler
March 21 2017, 17:18:30 Edited: March 21 2017, 17:19:01
And that's exactly what he claims he's trying to do in book four, too. And note that Eragon and company have zero plans for how they're going to improve the lot of the common people. It's not so much as brought up. Which only adds to the impression that their motivation has nothing to do with justice or equality or making the world a better place, but rather to do with petty revenge over something no-one cares about. That and putting themselves in power.

[12]

Anonymous
March 21 2017, 18:08:16
One small thing that annoys me mover and over is how do you say that you need to show emotions and reactions to said emotions, but how do you do it if that dos not mean showing the phisical manifestations of said emotions?
I understand that is not enough to say "eragón was sad" and le ave it that way.

This is the biggest case in which I would appreciate more showing instead of telling un tour rants ¿how can you portray emotions correctly?
Example: How you would have written Eragon's conversation with horst?

[12A]

Anonymous
March 22 2017, 13:51:34
Hi, New Anon here. Been a bit of a lurker, but this comment got me thinking and wanting to participate.

So, the main issue with this conversation is that it lacks emotions from BOTH parties, emotional reactions, I mean.

If memory serves, this is the first time since before getting magical super powers that Eragon and Horst meet. Horst treats this like any other meeting when it's not. Eragon should also have some trepidation at meeting his old neighbors. Are they mad at him for what he's done? The main issue is that no one from Carvahall treats Eragon any differently, nor does Eragon have the feelings you have when meeting someone again after a long time: nervous, excited, hopeful, embarassed, worried, etc.

If you have a chance, listen to the Writing Excuses Podcast. They're full of great tips and how to write exercises. They explain this concept because as humans, we naturally have emotions tied to things. For example, I'm looking at the 3 books of the Inheritance Cycle I own. Each one fills me with a different emotion and set of memories: Eragon reminds me of multiple things, my feelings as a teen reading it, wishing I could get lucky like Paolini and get published as a teen (thank goodness I didn't!), the time we read it in class since it followed the Hero's Journey Archetype; Eldest reminds me of the trip I took when I got it and how bored I was reading it because there was too much detail of the world around the characters and not enough with the actual people; Brisingr fills me with annoyance, because he lied about the Trilogy bit and it threw off the six-letter, starts with "E" naming scheme he had going, as well as being sick with the stomach flu when I first read it. That's all just from looking at the three books I own.

The problem is, Eragon doesn't tie emotions with objects (or even people, but that's another story), when it's basic human nature to do so, unless the object is significant to the plot. I think Paolini doesn't really think about the emotional state of characters throughout their journeys, nor does he ever utilize emotions the way that really evokes emotion, he focuses on "what would be cool?" and never treats his characters as proper humans. They only feel the emotions of the moment, they don't sit and stew and ponder them like we do. Nor do the emotions influence the actions. Unless Eragon is off angsting, but even that can be done right. It's hard to do right, but it can be done.

The other issue is that this conversation is mainly used to reveal that Horst's wife is still pregnant. It's meant to be foreshadowing for Book 4 when the baby finally comes, but it's done awkwardly.

I would use Elain's pregnancy to draw a connection to Roran and Katrina. These little details evoke more emotion because there are connections and show that Eragon thinks of more than just himself. The Writing Excuses Podcast explains that what a character focuses on reveals a lot about them. For example, Han Solo focuses mostly on the monetary reward he's going to get for saving Princess Leia. It makes his return that much more awesome because the whole movie, he's been in it for the money, but when he comes back, you know that he values his friends more than paying off Jabba. He doesn't say it, but he shows it. It's a case of actions speak louder than words, which is why Eragon keeps having sociopathic tendencies in the book because he says/thinks one thing, but does another.

TL;DR: Introduce human connections with each character and have them react to each other.
(I actually wrote out this whole scene, but I wasn't aware that there was a character limit in the comments. WHOOPS)

[12A1]

Anonymous
March 22 2017, 16:53:44
Thanks, I'll watch those podcasts as soon as I can.
However, muy main problem is that I don't know how to DESCRIBE said emotions and show them in the writing.
When I try writing al emotional scene, I describe the phisical manifestations of said emotion, and I don't know if that is the right way to do those things

[12A2]

minionnumber2
March 22 2017, 17:12:28
Post it in another comment you silly goose, I wanna read what you've got. :)

[12A2A]

Anonymous
March 23 2017, 12:35:42
Okay, then! Also, I shall be signing off as "NA (New Anon)" to help distinguish my posts.

The sound of hammer on metal caught Eragon by surprise, mostly due to how familiar it felt. He smiled, just a little bit, thinking of home. Only Horst's forge had that particular sound, a sort of broken melody. It had often greeted him when he and Roran had gone into town.

A slick eel born of guilt squirmed its way inside him. What must everyone from Carvahall think of him? Because of him, they'd all been displaced, all forced to leave their homes just because he brought home a dragon egg. The eel tightened itself, coiling in his throat until it was hard to swallow. He couldn't face Gedric, not yet. He turned toward the forge.

Horst hammered away at a fire orange sword, Baldor and Albrecht working behind their father. There were far more weapons and pieces of armor than at the Carvahall forge, but the smithy was still the same. It even had the same smell. Growing up, Eragon had secretly longed that Garrow had been a blacksmith instead of a farmer, envious of Albrecht and Baldor's strength at such a young age.

The two young men caught sight of him and stopped working, hammers slack in their grips, mouths open. Eragon looked away and rubbed his neck, fingers brushing against his pointed ears. No doubt the two were piecing together the last time they saw him with the present.

"What're you staring at-?" Horst asked, turning to his sons, finally stopping in his work. He followed their gaze to Eragon. He dipped his head down in a bow. "Hail, Shadeslayer."

"Hail, Shadeslayer," Albrecht and Baldor echoed, bowing at the waist.

"Please don't call me that," Eragon said, finally looking up at the three. A blush crept up his face. It was fine when the rest of the Varden stared and greeted him with lofty titles, they barely knew him. But hearing it from home...

"You're taller, Eragon." Horst shot his sons a look, and the two departed, though not without much peering back over their shoulders. He crossed to the front of his anvil and rested against it.

The statement caught Eragon off guard, a bark of laughter easing the tension inside him. "Of all the changes to notice, Horst..."

"It's the only change that matters to me. You're still Eragon, aren't you?"

"I don't know." He hated admitting it, but he truly didn't know. There were times he'd catch his reflection and he wasn't sure if the face looking back at was actually himself.

"Feel like the world's been turned upside down on you?" Horst asked, beckoning Eragon closer with a wave of his hand.

Eragon nodded, leaning against a pole near Horst, sighing. "I feel like I'm living someone else's life, or a story Brom used to tell."

"I know the feeling. While it may pale in comparison to your tale, we've all had quite a journey of our own."

"How is everyone? Has Elain had her baby yet?" Last he remembered, Elain was fairly far along in her pregnancy. He tried to imagine Katrina's stomach swollen out, but he couldn't do it. Besides, they had time. Babies took nearly a year, didn't they?

"We're all doing well. A little worse for wear, but nothing time won't resolve." Horst gave a sigh, the sigh of a man wishing to do more but was helpless. Eragon knew that sigh well, he'd given several of his own. "Elain's still pregnant, and I worried the journey might have done harm to our baby. But Elain assures me it's kicking her in the ribs every night. Still, I worry for them."

Eragon looked away, throat tight. "Is...Is anyone mad at me?" He did not look to see Horst's response, just squinted his eyes shut and got it out. "It's all my fault Carvahall got uprooted, it's all my fault you've had to trek all the way to Surda just to be safe."

A sturdy hand landed on Eragon's shoulder. He looked up to see Horst smiling a gentle, comforting smile. "Eragon, no one is upset with you. You couldn't have known that that stone you found was actually an egg, you couldn't have known what would happen. We could have stayed behind, maybe we would have been shown mercy. But we all chose to leave. I'm sure old King Palancar would be very pleased that his descendants woke up and got back to fighting instead of farming."
~
I'm a slight sucker for good dads in fiction, so I made Horst one.
~NA

[12A2A1]

minionnumber2
March 24 2017, 13:43:29
I like it! Shows off more of the relationship that we heard about in the books (but was kind of ham fisted in at certain moments instead of being shown through the entire book) and for once makes Eragon actually sound like a human who has a connection with the people around him.

[12A2A1A]

Anonymous
March 24 2017, 14:19:55
Thank you! For the other Anon who asked the initial question that sparked this, here's a breakdown of what I did.

1. I made Eragon self-conscious about the transformation because he is a teenager and these are people he knows. Even if you're pretty confident, it's human nature to become worried around people who are close to you. This also ties into a greater theme I would explore of Eragon figuring out who he is. In my version, Eragon is struggling with his identity because it's been in constant flux for the last few months and it's "returning home" that drives home that point.

2. Baldor and Albrecht are probably people Eragon knows. In the original version, Paolini describes them like it's the first time we've ever seen them, which dehumanizes them and puts a barrier between Eragon and them, when there really shouldn't be. Their ages aren't stated (to my recollection), so I put them around the same age as Eragon, drawing some further parallels that give the scene a little more tension (or I hope they did anyways). I showed them in shock with their body language, but I also "told" the emotion, via the piecing the past with the present line. You can do both when it comes to emotional reactions.

3. Horst is way more fatherly and more worried about his wife. Horst is a good dad (tm) and even though he's a pretty jovial guy, he's also worried about his wife and baby. I also used this moment for Eragon to slip into a position where he's searching for guidance. Eragon's burned through 2 father figures in a short time, he's bound to be looking for some form of comfort/father figure. Horst, I figure, is a good replacement, and Horst is happy to oblige.

4. By mentioning Brom and Garrow, Eragon shows he still misses them, but I don't outright say it. The problem with a lot of the characters is that they only exist when they need to. Once they have fulfilled their role, they disappear until the plot needs them again. Bringing them back, even in name only, does a lot to say how Eragon feels about them. There's a saying that "absence makes the heart grow fonder," and for the two "Dads" in Eragon's life, he probably misses them a whole bunch. At least, my version would. And yes, there would be tears coming out of nowhere because grief does that to you. Heck, I'd make the Morzan revelation from Eldest be this huge shock and Eragon sinks into depression because his father figures are dead and his real father is the second worst bad guy in the world. Oh, and his Mom was an assassin, so that's going to make everything so much more delightful for him (end sarcasm).

I hope this helps you out, other Anon!

~NA

[12A2A1A1]

Anonymous
March 25 2017, 04:16:37
Yes, it really does. :) I love those writin excerpts

[12B]

theepistler
March 22 2017, 19:40:58
Okay, this is a complicated question but I'll do my best.

Portraying emotion in characters is something that needs to be constant, but also fairly subtle. There needs to be an emotion behind every line of dialogue, even if it's something tepid like boredom or indifference, and you need to know why that emotion is there, and understand that it will be influenced by the circumstances, the characters' personalities, and their relationships with each other. That emotion should show in body language, but also choice of words and even sentence length. For example, an angry character is likely to speak in a curt manner and use aggressive body language. In fact, you know what? I'll give you three examples of what is essentially the same thing being said by characters in a few different emotional states.

Angry/hostile: "Obviously!" he snapped.
Happy/friendly: "Well of course!" she said with a smile. "Did you even need to ask?"
Bored/indifferent: "If you say so," he said, and turned his attention back to his book.
Jealous/bitter: "I suppose that's true," she said sourly.

And so on. Paolini's problem is that his characters don't change their mode of speech according to their mood or who they're talking to. Eragon and Horst's interaction here might just as well be between a pair of passing acquaintances rather than two people who have known each other since one of them was born. There's no tension, no real sense of familiarity - I've seen ironing boards that were less flat.

You know what - fuck it. I'm going to do a quick 'n' dirty rewrite of this scene just for you.

Horst tensed. 'Eragon,' he said. 'Is that really you?'
'Yes, it's me,' said Eragon.
Horst slowly put his hammer down. 'You don't... forgive me, but you don't really...'
'...look the same?' said Eragon 'I know. it's a long story. But it really is me.' He hesitated. 'How are you? How is Elain?'
'We're... all right,' said Horst, his expression guarded. 'Elain's a bit sick. With the baby and all.'
'I'm sorry,' Eragon said awkwardly. He looked up at Horst, and was struck by how tired and strained the man looked. Guilt gnawed at him. 'I know you must blame me for what happened to you,' he said abruptly. 'You lost everything because of me.'
'It's not your fault,' Horst said gruffly. 'You didn't ask the Empire to come after us.'
'I know, but-,'
'No.' Horst's brows lowered, and he frowned sternly at Eragon. 'I know it's not fair, but these things happen. We need you to protect us from the King.'
Eragon forced a smile. 'I'll do my best, I promise.'

Etcetera.

[12B1]

Anonymous
March 25 2017, 04:21:21
THANK YOU. This is probably one of the most helpful advices about emotion I haver recived.
So basicaly the problem with paolini is that he focuses in how characters look when portraying an emotion, instead of focusin what his characters do when they have said emotion ¿Right?

[12B1A]

theepistler
March 25 2017, 09:46:34
Exactly. It's always all "surface" with him, and that applies to the rest of the stuff in his books as well. It's one reason why his fight scenes are so boring - he focuses on describing stuff like flashing blades and exactly what shape a cloud of blood is, rather than focusing on the tension and danger.

[13]

Anonymous
March 22 2017, 18:52:57
We also learn that Saphira is prepared to eat people, and is in fact so comfortable with the idea that she has no problem making jokes about it.

Eh, she's a dragon. I don't expect her to be pro human life.

What the hell does that even mean? Was that supposed to be some sort of metaphor?

Translation:

Horst laughed. 'Ah that makes me proud. And you're the symbol of our village's pride.'

'We all are,' Eragon said. 'You, me, Roran. Everyone from Carvahall. Things aren't going to the same with the lot of us around.'

“A saddle!” he breathed. “Imagine, me tanning the leather for a Rider’s saddle! And without a hint of what I was doing at the time, no less! No, not a Rider, the Rider. He who will finally cast down the black tyrant himself! If only my father could see me now!” Kicking up his heels, Gedric danced an impromptu jig. With his grin undiminished, he bowed to Eragon and trotted back to his place among the villagers, where he began to relate his tale to everyone within earshot.

Good lord this is awful. The black tryant? Never heard that before. Doing a little dance? I'm even feeling second hand embarrassment and he's a bloody book character.

Might I add, Jeod acts like this is her duty and doesn’t even bother to ask. Charming man

Rather than this being him ordering her around, I see it as trying to be subtle about remaining her that as they have a guest, they should be hospitable.

and reflects that he can’t accept the idea of both his parents being “evil”, and yes that’s the word Paolini uses.

I think it's acceptable for characters to think in black and white morality. Authors on the other hand should always be thinking empathetically. However, even though black/ white morality isn't as realistic as shades of grey, it shouldn't mean that every story should be grey. The problem as we know is the actions of Eragon and some others violates the black/ white rules. There are many times when they act like anti-heroes and then the next chapter we're told they're supposed to be right and always right. Decide on one and stick with it.

Despite my replies, I agree with the overall context of your spork. There's wasted plot points, annoying dialogue, annoying ye olde speak, annoying praise, clear good and bad according to who adores Eragon. The intent of this book, to show Eragon and Saphira's debts and responsibilities, is buried under a slog of snail pacing and inconsistencies

- Anon 2

[13A]

theepistler
March 22 2017, 20:00:08
Eh, she's a dragon. I don't expect her to be pro human life.

Except that dragons in this series are supposed to be wise and enlightened, not bloodthirsty animals with no regard for sentient life.

Rather than this being him ordering her around, I see it as trying to be subtle about remaining her that as they have a guest, they should be hospitable.

Yeah, no. Apparently his idea of them being hospitable is him sitting around and sharing idle chit-chat with Eragon while Helen does all the cooking and cleaning. It's still sexist.

I think it's acceptable for characters to think in black and white morality. Authors on the other hand should always be thinking empathetically. However, even though black/ white morality isn't as realistic as shades of grey, it shouldn't mean that every story should be grey. The problem as we know is the actions of Eragon and some others violates the black/ white rules. There are many times when they act like anti-heroes and then the next chapter we're told they're supposed to be right and always right. Decide on one and stick with it.

Exactly. And Eragon has no business thinking in terms of clear-cut Good Vs Evil when he himself, a supposed good guy, killed a helpless prisoner in cold blood less than a week ago and has already brushed it off as no big deal. He's obviously not supposed to be a simpleton with no self-awareness, which is what makes this bit so idiotic.

[13A1]

Anonymous
March 23 2017, 03:08:22
Except that dragons in this series are supposed to be wise and enlightened, not bloodthirsty animals with no regard for sentient life.

A dragon can be wise enough to cook someone and be enlightened by their taste (I know I was).

Or, put it this way, most of the NPCs in the books simply exist, and don't count as "sentient life". Like Horst for example. Or Elain.

Or Saphira.

It's alright to cook and eat them.

[13A1A]

theepistler
March 23 2017, 17:07:02
Well that's why Eragon doesn't care about Saphira eating human beings - because they're just NPCs. As far as he's concerned they don't qualify as actual people with, y'know, feelings and loved ones and the ability to feel pain. Chalk this one up to his sociopathy; an important feature of being a mentally healthy human being is having the ability to feel empathy for other people even when we've never met them. That's why we get sad when we hear about a natural disaster on the other side of the world, or see pictures of strangers in distress.

[13A1A1]

Anonymous
March 24 2017, 22:54:32
Yeah, even the creators of the concept "monkeysphere" know that.
To elaborate, the monkeysphere says that a human being cannot connect with more than 150 people more or lesss without starting to simplify some of them. That is the reason that poeple feel much more pain when you hurt ONE person they know about than when you hurt a million of strangers. They simply don´t FEEL like people to us, they are just abstract victims

And yet... they still say that the one thing that set us apart from the monkeys and dolphins is that we know RATIONALLY that those things feel horrible. It might not be personal, but we can still imagine ourselves in other people´s shoes.

Most of us at least. Eragon apperently didn't got the memo

[13A1B]

w3rew0lfgirl_99
March 25 2017, 15:40:23
I guess I would be one of the few people who would be okay with Saphira eating people. I remember when she thought about eating the slavers head after Murtagh chopped it off in the first book.

When I was a kid my friends use to play paintball and the little plastic ball gun game. One of my friend's little brother tried to kill a lizard which upset me. My mom went over to all the kids and told them not to shoot at any wild life because if "they killed it they ate it." and that nothing should go to waste. Anyway all the wasted human carcasses from the war should be feeding something even if it is Saphira instead of taking another life like a deer or something.

Also I have lived in a mostly vegetarian lifestyle (I eat meat once or twice a month). We have dogs and we sometimes feed them raw leftover meat from a processing place. We also have pet poultry/fish. While I use to bury the pet chickens and fish when they would pass on, I now just feed the remains to the dogs. It is gross but I know my pet chickens died a natural death and lived a happier life than those from a factory farm and a body is just an empty vessel.

[13A1B1]

minionnumber2
March 25 2017, 19:43:04
My boyfriend and I had an interesting discussing about mutilating bodies after a person is dead a while back and the biggest reason the taboo exists is for friends of the dead and not the dead themselves. Most chickens and fish don't have elaborate mourning rituals, so throwing them directly to the dogs isn't really bad because it doesn't upset the other chickens or fish (that we know of). People, on the other hand, have a lot of things we do to mourn someone who has passed on and a death tends to be even more upsetting when the body isn't completely intact or is flat out absent, at least for Americans. I don't know about the little details of rest of the world's mourning rituals so I can't really speak for every place.

Though, it would be interesting if death rites were different when the Dragon Riders were around because food for dragons could be hard to get. Maybe even have a huge ritual involving honoring the person's body and treating getting eaten by a dragon as a huge honor for the entire family...

[13A1B2]

theepistler
March 25 2017, 19:51:40 Edited: March 25 2017, 19:52:04
The problem is that Eragon has been trained to revere life, even if it's the life of a freakin' ant. And yet he's okay with his "partner-of-heart-and-mind" eating HUMAN BEINGS. And can you imagine how that would go over, if word gets out that the noble Rider, saviour of the land and champion of the oppressed, allows his dragon to eat people? Shit, Galbatorix makes a remark about how Shurikan eats people if he's woken up unexpectedly, and this is meant to be a sign of how Evil and callous Galby is. And yet Eragon is totally cool with his own dragon treating people as elevensies. Double standards much?

[13A1B2A]

Anonymous
March 26 2017, 21:25:36
The series hasn't been about humans on one side and elves on the other, because whether we like it or not, it's always been Galbatorix and the empire vs the rebels, elves and dwarves. You could say that foremost his priority is toward the faction he fights for. Fighting for humankind comes second.

You could think of it like sci fi - planet A has a lot of species, including humans. Planet B has a lot of species, including humans. In a war, the protagonist who is a human fights for everyone on planet A.

[13A1B2A1]

theepistler
March 26 2017, 22:13:12
I think we already knew that. Problem is that Eragon really doesn't seem to care about anybody dying unless it's an elf or a dragon. Plenty of people on the Varden's side get creamed, and he couldn't care less. He actually does refer to himself as "the champion of the people" at the beginning of this book, and yet later on he sees the Varden deliberately burning slums full of innocent poor people and doesn't so much as blink. His supposed reverence for the sanctity of life is nothing but a sham.

[13A2]

syntinen_laulu
March 24 2017, 01:28:31
Apparently his idea of them being hospitable is him sitting around and sharing idle chit-chat with Eragon while Helen does all the cooking and cleaning. It's still sexist.

And why shouldn't it be? This is a quasi-medieval society in which a father has the right to permit or forbid his adult daughter's marriage; clearly patriarchal. 'The man of the house sitting around and sharing idle chit-chat with the guest while his wife bustles around preparing and serving refreshments' is an exact description of that kind of society's idea of being hospitable. Frankly, if Jeod were to bustle around helping Helen with the cooking and washing up, the obvious falsity of that would annoy the h*ll out of me.

[13A2A]

theepistler
March 24 2017, 18:20:56
I think the reason why it bugs me is that Paolini is so inconsistent about whether this is supposed to be a patriarchal society or not. It worked in Game of Thrones; here it's just annoying.

[13A3]

Anonymous
March 24 2017, 16:41:31
Yeah, no. Apparently his idea of them being hospitable is him sitting around and sharing idle chit-chat with Eragon while Helen does all the cooking and cleaning. It's still sexist.


We don't know if that's how they always are, or if it was just a once off where Jeod had to remind Helen they need to be hospitable towards a guest. Partners/ spouses help each other, so in this case it was Helen making them tea because Eragon's business was with Jeod. There's no cleaning in this scene and the most cooking she does is to take out a tin of biscuits. I don't feel a once off case, in a situation where he would want to not embarrass them both, means he's sexist.

Now this debate wouldn't be happening if he'd simply asked her, rather than giving a look and then later on thanked her.



I just don't feel that once case, where a couple would want to save face and look like things are running smoothly

[13A3A]

Anonymous
March 24 2017, 16:41:59
Anon 2, BTW

[13A3B]

theepistler
March 24 2017, 18:21:58
There's no cleaning in this scene

Yes there is. When Eragon "dramatically" breaks his mug, Helen is immediately expected to pick up the pieces.

[13A3B1]

Anonymous
March 26 2017, 21:35:24
Okay, I read the scene (pg 288)

- Eragon accidentally breaks the mug from holding it too hard
- 'Here, let me help you with that,' said Helen, bustling forward and dabbing at his tunic with a rag. Embarrassed, Eragon apologised several times by assuring him it was a small misahpp and not to worry himself about it.
- While Helen picked up the shards of fire-hardened clay, Jeod began to dig through the layers of books, scrolls, and loose papers that covered the bed, saying...

So again I feel this isn't enough evidence to say Jeod is sexist. Helen chose to clean up the mess, to help. She wasn't ordered to.

- Anon 2

[13A3B1A]

theepistler
March 26 2017, 21:52:08
Actually I was more thinking that the scene was sexist, rather than Jeod specifically. See, in a lot of fiction sexism is present but easy to miss because it's either a subtle undercurrent or because the author uses stereotypes we're used to seeing in everyday life, so we just accept it as "normal" when we really shouldn't. Jeod doesn't need to bully his wife into doing the womanly thing in this part of the book, because it's just taken as read that she'll do it anyway. Helen - who by the way grew up rich and has probably never done her own cooking or cleaning before - is relegated to doing "womens' work" for this entire scene, and her anger over her situation is written as petulant and sulky. Because, you know, when a woman is pissed off she's just being silly and overdramatic.

It's the same thing with Katrina. Literally all she does is cook and clean and be pregnant. She has no other role in the story other than being a helpless kidnapped victim for Eragon and Roran to heroically rescue, and then being a complete and utter stereotype of the Good Wife. It's quite frankly insulting.

Now you might say Nasuada and Arya disprove this complaint, but I'd say... not really. In the case of Nasuada she barely does anything other than be "charming", wear lots of pretty dresses and go to feasts. After that she becomes yet another useless damsel in distress. Arya's entire existence is to be Eragon's love interest. If she weren't his assigned reward with boobs, she'd have no purpose being in the series at all.

Comments

[pangolin20]

Leaving aside the craptastic grammar: (a) laying one's hand palm-upwards on the earth when crouching isn't much more comfortable than pointing one's spade-shaped beard to the sky, and (b) to end up in his palm those nuggets are going to have to pass right through his hand.

Actually, the former is not that uncomfortable, and perfectly fine to achieve. For the latter, it evidently came from the ground around his hand and then fell in.