Brisingr Spork: Chapter 55?: Flight
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Pixen wrote in antishurtugal, 2018-08-25 23:31:00
Brisingr Spork: Chapter 55?: Flight
I'm baaaaaaack! My sporking style has possibly chaaaaanged! Hopefully for the better... My deliberate focus from here on in is to challenge myself not just to recap the chapter's events and snark about it (although snarking is admittedly a lot of fun) but to properly highlight what doesn't work and why, regarding plot, character motivations and prose. That's the plan, anyhow.
With that being said! Let's briefly brief about this chapter's events: Eragon and Saphira depart from Oromis and Glaedr in the air and head back to the Varden army. They chat along the way. On the forth day of travel in the early dawn they arrive, only for Trianna the sorceress to mentally tell them in a panic that Arya and another elf are in mortal danger and the chapter leaves off with that cliffhanger.
That's about it for plot, for a chapter that runs about 1800 words and can easily be recapped in 70. Many have said it betterbeforehand but the problem lies with how much is integral information which drives the plot along blow-by-blow and how much is simply recapped in the prose. Padding, in other words. This chapter could have simply been a recap nested in the previous, then the cliffhanger could have neatly brought us out of 'recap mode' and drum up excitement for the next chapter.
Brisingr suffers all the way through with padding. (Are you sick of hearing us bring it up yet?) Whether it's endless details on objects that don't affect the story in any way, or tangential scenes that really make no difference to the plot's momentum, or conversations that educate neither characters nor readers... it beggars belief that Paolini said that the third book in the trilogy had to be split into two simply to fit everything in. These padding chapters simply don't have to be here. This is why a good and firm editor is worth their weight in gold.
Our chapter starts thusly:
- From Ellesméra, Saphira and Glaedr flew without stopping over the ancient forest of the elves, soaring high above the tall, dark pine trees.Sometimes the forest would break, and Eragon would see a lake or a contorted river winding across the land.
Flew without stopping. Well, duh. They've only just started out on their journey and are flying over trees, which would likely hinder any attempts at landing. What did Paolini actually mean when he wrote this? If he's foreshadowing how much actual marathon flying they do over the entire chapter, that's one thing (hold that thought) but we've only just established the mood and set the scene in the first place so we don't have to necessarily 'think ahead' at this stage in the opening paragraph. So what does it mean? Is it just thoughtless words? (Padding, perchance?)
Sometimes the forest would break... I absolutely understand what Paolini means here, but this word choice seems a little off to me. This is followed up by the very odd contorted river description which (once again, I know what he's trying to say) really doesn't properly fit the imagery. It's close to the mark! and your mileage may very well vary! and it's certainly evocative which normally would score him some points in my humble opinion because I like playing around and seeing others play around with vocab...? but 'contorted' brings to mind something unnaturally bent out of shape and rivers are formed naturally no matter how winding or bending they end up. (Unless the elves sing them into contorting their shapes like they do trees? Who knows!)
In the meantime, Eragon is not looking at the scenery. (The reader is forced to, but not our MC?) He's cramming the Ancient Language for his end of term finals:
- [He] was busy reciting within his mind every word of the ancient language Oromis had taught him, and if he forgot any or made a mistake inpronunciation, Oromis would have him repeat the word until he had memorised it.
- They arrived at the edge of Du Weldenvarden by late afternoon of the first day.
- Keep safe your heart, Saphira, and mine as well.
Saphira flies on without landing to rest until night falls. Let's face it right here right now: she's just Eragon's shiny blue car. He drives her through the entire night and only pulls over to refill her tank and take a piss stop at the dodgy highway servo before heading on straight away.
Day two: and Eragon's cruising through the desert. Night two and — oh, ugh:
- And by the time darkness had again engulfed the land and sky and held them in its cold embrace, Saphira and Eragon were beyond the confines of the sandy wastes and were again soaring over the verdant fields of the Empire, their course such that they would pass between Urû’baen and Lake Tüdosten on their way to the city of Feinster.
- After flying for two days and two nights without sleep, Saphira was unable to continue.
"Y'roight, mate?"
"Yeah nah she's fucked, mate," the teenager says, gesturing at his bejewelled blue beetle on the side of the road.
"Pop the bonnet. Let's have a look at her Eldunari."
Saphira sleeps her exhaustion off for a few hours whilst Eragon practices his moves with his new shiny sword. Paolini then practices his moves with telling and showing. It's quite... telling (hur hur) that this doesn't quite work:
- Ever since they had parted with Oromis and Glaedr, a sense of constant anxiety had troubled Eragon as he pondered what awaited him and Saphira at Feinster. He knew that they were better protected than most from death and injury, but when he [...] remembered the sight of blood spurting from severed limbs and the screams of wounded men and the white-hot lash of a sword slicing through his own flesh, then Eragon’s gut would roil and his muscles would shake with suppressed energy, and he did not know whether he wished to fight every soldier in the land or flee in the opposite direction and hide in a deep, dark hole.
[Caption: 'Image is locked' picture]
there was an attempt
We hear 'show, don't tell' ad nauseum, and it is true generally speaking (worth mentioning that some telling is necessary sometimes) and there is a good amount of show in the latter half of the paragraph what with the roiling guts and shaking with nervous energy... but! And it's a big BUT!
I'm trying to figure out and explain just why this still feels like it's missing the mark, and I think I sort of understand why. The reader is kept extremely distant from Eragon's emotions because of the tense: "his guts would roil, his muscles would shake" rather than just something like "Eragon's stomach twisted as the screams of dying men echoed through his mind" rather than just defaulting to "he didn't know whether he wanted to fight or fly" which is basically the least common denominator unimaginative/cliched response to a crisis. It just seems... wanting.
Also... there's a massive Eragonaphant in the room, trying to hide in the corner. In another telling-showing way: we've been told that Eragon cares about the lives of others and hates fighting and war and violence but what we're shown as his character develops throughout the four books is a completely different beast. So much so that around the community Eragon is headcanonically a sociopath. This is why this sort of 'last ditch effort' styled writing feels deliberately placed here in order to remind the reader: "See? He cares! He has human emotions!" If you can feel that there's machinations behind the prose there's a chance it's clunky, out of place, badly written or all of the above.
In short, it's a vicious cycle. Paolini's not feeling what he's writing (or at least not putting it forward in the text) so Eragon's not feeling what he's feeling so I'm not feeling what he's meant to be feeling. Nobody's emotionally invested and so a bad time is had by all. More 'dread' and feeling 'sickened' and a clinical reaction that very nearly mentions Eragon's Thumbs again:
- His dread only worsened when he and Saphira resumed their journey and spotted lines of armed men marching over the fields below. Here and there, pillars of pale smoke rose from sacked villages. The sight of so much wanton destruction sickened him. Averting his gaze, he squeezed the neck spike in front of him and squinted until the only thing visible through the bars of his blurry eyelashes was the white calluses on his knuckles.
Saphira calls him 'little one' and tells him not to get upset about it. She shares some 'wisdom' and then asks him to tell her a riddle to keep her awake. Just microsleep already, Saphira, put us all out of our misery.
- Very well, he said after a moment. I am coloured red and blue and yellow and every other hue of the rainbow. I am long and short, thick and thin, and I often rest coiled up. I can eat a hundred sheep in a row and still be hungry. What am I?
- A dragon, of course, she said without hesitation.
- No, a woollen rug.
- Bah!
The third day, and Saphira is burningly tired; but she won't accept a spell or two. This part is very boring. This is where a nifty ol' timecut would work wonders. Their next conversation is completely irrelevant and unimportant. Not even worth taking time over. It doesn't characterise them in any way. It doesn't lend much — if any — vital information. It might as well be robots talking to each other for how soulless the entire exchange feels.
- And so it was. Later that night, when dawn was only a few hours away, a dull red glow appeared upon the western horizon.
Saphira apologises, rather than arguing back that it was his freakin' idea to announce their arrival. Eragon didn't specify, after all, just how to do that.
- Still blinking, he said, The first thing we should do is find a horse that just died, or some other animal, so that I can replenish your strength with theirs.
Saphira is about to reply when Trianna makes mental contact:
- Eragon, Saphira! cried the sorceress. You’re just in time! Arya and another elf scaled the walls, but they were trapped by a large group of soldiers.
They won’t survive another minute unless someone helps them! Hurry!
What an absolute waste of a chapter.
54 comments
[1]
thegharialguy
August 26 2018, 01:33:33
If Paolini really knew how to use the multiple perspective angle, then he would have skipped over this travel time entirely and instead developed the battle in Fence City before Eragon arrived. And I don't just mean like that last Roran chapter, I mean leave us with the characters fighting for a while, meeting dangerous antagonists who are actual character and amping up the tension until Eragon finally arrives to save the day. The plot isn't developed well enough in this section to fully justify doing that (the final boss of the entire book ends up being some random shade created on the spot), but at the very least these past two chapters could have been replaced with Arya's assault on the walls and her subsequent trouble with the enemy. What he did is the absolute epitome of show don't tell. It's especially bad as Arya and elves in general have so much hype around them that I have trouble believing any human enemies could actually provide trouble for her.
Also I can see my eyelashes as bars when I squint my eyes. But I have been told recently by several people that I have rather long eyelashes. Maybe that's just compared to Japanese people, I'm not sure, no one's ever mentioned it to me before.
[1A]
theepistler
August 28 2018, 22:14:03
I've actually encountered the "character looks through his eyelashes" thing before, so of course I tried it. For the record, all I can see is a blur. (And for the record, I have extremely good eyesight).
[1A1]
thegharialguy
August 28 2018, 22:30:03
Having good eyesight might actually make it harder to do. When you squint you essentially bend your inner eyelense out of shape to focus on something, which really isn't good for you in the long term. If you're eyes are already good, then it's just going to work like wearing a pair of glasses when you don't need them.
[1A1A]
torylltales
August 29 2018, 07:46:29
The lens bending is only a tiny part of it though. the biggest part of squinting is pinhole effect, by reducing "noise" we clarify the signal that gets through, and by reducing "pixel" density we put the pattern recognition parts of our brains into overdrive to work out what the image is supposed to be.
[2]
Anonymous
August 26 2018, 02:09:45
Saphira flies on without landing to rest until night falls. Let's face it right here right now: she's just Eragon's shiny blue car.
I think what really indicates that Saphira is just a sparkly possession of Eragon is the fact that he doesn’t give her some of his magical strength when they’re flying to the Varden. While the poor lizard has to fly nonstop, Eragon is relaxing.
[3]
syntinen_laulu
August 26 2018, 02:12:42
Saphira flies on without landing to rest until night falls. Let's face it right here right now: she's just Eragon's shiny blue car.
Well, unlike the traditional 'galloping all day' on horseback, at least there's nothing intrinsically implausible about a dragon flying non-stop all day. After all, swifts fly from Northern Europe to Central Africa every year without once coming to land, even sleeping on the wing. Maybe dragons in the wild routinely spend all day on the wing and barely land at all unless they're nesting.
What does seem stupid, though, is for Eragon to drive her to fly until she's utterly exhausted and simply has to sleep. It would surely be more sensible, and almost certainly wouldn't lose any time, to give her shorter rests at intervals.
[3A]
cmdrnemo
August 26 2018, 08:41:16
It would also show some sympathy even a little kindness on his part. If there was anyone in these books Eragon should put some effort to be nice to. It would have to be Saphira.
In terms of flight duration for dragons. I want to agree with you. We don't have hard numbers on what they can and cannot do. There's no reason they can't fly all day. It would help if Eragon put some magic into it. Instead of sitting there like a coconut.
[3A1]
torylltales
August 26 2018, 23:58:40
Instead of sitting there like a coconut.
"Are you suggesting Eragons migrate?"
"Not at all, it could be carried."
"What, a dragon carrying an Eragon?"
"It could grip it by the belt."
(This has been another exciting instalment of 12am Thoughts With Torylltales)
[3B]
pipedreamno20
August 26 2018, 09:55:32
That’s a fair point. She goes a fair bit over one day but as you said even non-mythological creatures can manage far longer times on the wing (and Saphira is “oooooh magical” to boot) so yeah probs was a little harsh here.
Yeah, she outright tells him not to give her any energy because he “needs his strength” for the action to come. Where in the later bit of the chapter he can feel, hear and sense through the link how freakin’ exhausted she is. Won’t she be needed in the battle, too? She’s only a bigass dragon that can flame and physically attack smaller creatures like humans. What’s the point of having her so tired she can’t assist? Ah well.
[3B1]
theepistler
August 27 2018, 07:13:26
I've noticed that everyone else in this thing is expected to exhaust and overwork themselves to a dangerous degree in order to make life easier for Doucheagon, but he never has to miss any sleep himself. Entitled prick.
[3B1A]
torylltales
August 27 2018, 09:55:22 Edited: August 27 2018, 10:02:40
Very true. It's just more of his Special Sueness. The whole universe revolves around Eragon's comfort and goals, to the point where people put themselves in harms way rather than let him experience the slightest discomfort.
Another example: Horst spending his own hard-earned money rather than Eragon going without his steak dinners and roast chicken lunches. When Horst has absolutely no reason to do so, and the amount of meat Eragon took would have cost him a month or more of his own earnings (as the blacksmith in a tiny mountain village with zero immigration and next to no trade with other villages, he can't have been in huge daily demand).
[3B1A1]
syntinen_laulu
August 27 2018, 17:04:07
Doesn't follow. The smith was the one crucial specialist craftsman in a medieval village (which is why Smith, and its equivalent in other languages, is far and away the commonest surname - every village had one, and he was vital to everyone; nothing could be constructed with him. Bear in mind that you couldn't then just run along to the ironmonger for a pack of nails, or to the kitchenware shop to replace a broken knife; if you needed a couple of nails you had to ask the smith to forge them for you, and if the point of your knife broke you asked him either to grind it down into a different shorter shape, or make you a new one. The smith's special skills and power in dealing with two such important stuffs as iron and fire were so impressive to the pre-industrial mind that in many countries' folklore he was seen almost as a magician.
[3B1A1A]
torylltales
August 27 2108, 22:12:41 Edited: August 27 2018, 22:26:19
That's a good point, but how much smithing work could a tiny village of 300 farmers need? Houses and fences and furniture wouldn't have been made with many nails in the later middle ages, and if there's that many twisted pitchforks and bent ploughs and broken knives in one village that it keeps a full-time smith wealthy enough to buy months' worth of meat just for some kid he feels sorry for, then perhaps he isn't all that good at smithing and people would be complaining more and paying less.
Anyway that's all beside the point that rather than let Eragon suffer any small amount of inconvenience, Horst blows what would still be a substantial amount of money on an unnecessary luxury that most middle ages peasant farmers wouldn't have thought to have.
I found a handy visual reference to what 300 people look like, by the way.
image: 300 people in a 100m2 square, by Prof. G Keith Still, for a lesson on crowd safety analysis.
If Horst is a skilled and honest smith, I think he'd be actually smithing at best every other day, certainly not every day. Unless he stockpiles bits and pieces all year for sale at the one-weekend-a-year Trade Fair. That's still a lot of spare horseshoes to have lying around, especially when iron is itself expensive.
[3B1A1A1]
zorbulon
August 28 2018, 01:52:37
Pitchforks for hay would be wood, and ploughs probably as well, but there's plenty stuff for a smith to do: all the sickles (every grownup needs one to harvest grain) and scythes and spades and picks. Sickles and scythes must be thin and tempered very hard to hold a proper edge and you hit a rock with one it'll probably snap. And a drafthorse harness needs tons of buckles and hoops and geegaws that wear out over time. Small village probably would not have a wainwright but cart wheel would still likely be straked or maybe even iron-tyred. Let's not forget the variety of axes either, for woodcutting or carpentry or woodcrafting or just plain old chopping firewood; you can count on every household needing a few. Does it snow in the Spine region? That would mean a few more iron pieces for making and fixing sleds. Granted, inuits can make sleds out of leather and frozen fish, but I don't think those are practical materials for a subarctic climate. Is there a dedicated coal burner in the village? Granted, charcoal and tar are made in large batches, so probably not. Smithing every other day, maybe if every other other day was used for smelting down scrap iron. Also the iron is likely pretty bad quality, so any smith making any sort of bladed tool would have to use the puff pastry method, by hand, and that is pretty damn laborious if you don't have magic zombie elf muscles. Japanese iron was very bad, which is why they had to go to such extreme lengths when making swords.
Pampering a random orphan boy with constant stream of expensive meat treats paid with all that hard-earned money, hell no... unless you fashion Horst into some kind of sugar daddy for Eragon. Aha! I knew there had to be an explanation...
[3B1A1A2]
theepistler
August 28 2018, 08:19:13
And that's not even getting into the fact that unless he's going to salt or pickle them (...which he doesn't), those "roasts and steaks" will be a big pile of maggots and dysentery in a matter of days. Maybe that's why you never see them actually eat any of it. Enough meat to last the winter my arse.
[3B1A1A2A]
syntinen_laulu
August 28 2018, 19:31:37
Yes. A side of bacon, now; that wouldbe something any impoverished peasant family would covet, far more than a backpack-ful of expensive cuts.
[3B1A1A2A1]
theepistler
August 28 2018, 20:58:02
Or dried sausage; apparently that was a staple. Hell, I remember my highschool history teacher telling us about a festival the commoners used to hold once a year involving a giant sausage. Sounds like it was a hoot!
[3C]
thegharialguy
August 26 2018, 20:41:56
Forget about swifts, albatross are so ridiculously good at flying, they expend more energy simply standing on the ground that gliding through the air. They essentially stay in the air permanently except once every few years or so where they land to mate. Saphira is noted to get tired by flying though, so she's definitely no albatross. What's even crazier than forcing her to fly without rest is the fact that she's not just galloping him there to bring him to battle, she's expected to completely take part herself. He's actively making her a less effective combatant by driving her so hard...I mean that's one way to make the rider and his shiny new sword important compared to the dragon...but it's a pretty terrible one.
[3C1]
syntinen_laulu
August 27 2018, 17:08:18
Yes. And it just makes no sense. Real physical exhaustion is a kind of injury; the bodily tissues have taken a hammering from which they will naturally heal with rest, but that takes time. If Saphira took enough rests not to get exhausted in the first place, they would both get where they are going quicker.
[3C1A]
Anonymous
August 27 2018, 19:30:27
Least we not forget that this is a mere few days after he flew her from Dwarfland to Elfland so hard she was foaming at the mouth. She can't be fully recovered from that.
[3C1A1]
theepistler
August 28 2018, 08:22:11
Indeed. If Saphira was a horse he'd be in very real danger of riding her to death by this point. I can't believe anyone thought this was a good idea - does Algaelab have a Humane Society we can contact?
[3C1B]
theepistler
August 28 2018, 22:19:58 Edited: August 28 2018, 22:23:37
Indeed. I've suffered from exhaustion myself more than once, and it sometimes takes up to a week to recover, both physically and mentally.
Interestingly, Paolini himself supposedly suffered from some sort of sleep/exhaustion disorder while writing this book (it came up in an interview as I recall), so methinks the constant theme of characters being exhausted was something subconsciously seeping through. Except he only ever inflicts it on the "lesser" characters and never on the self-insert.
[4]
theepistler
August 26 2018, 10:52:03
Ugh, more pointlessly long traveling scenes. When my characters have to travel somewhere I usually just summarise it in a short paragraph, or cut to another character and then cut back once they've arrived. I've done plenty of traveling myself, and it's monotonous as hell - why would you want to read about that kind of thing in a book? Or want to write it in your own? I can't write long traveling sequences because they BORE me. And if it bores me, it's probably going to bore the reader too. I've often wondered whether Paolini himself is bored by writing this stuff. Well, he does come across as bored with writing in general, so...
And aw, he's trying to convince us Eragon hates killing again and is afraid of battle. Which is kinda funny, because this is how he's going to behave in the very next chapter:
While Blödhgarm spoke, Eragon placed a hand on the chest of one of the dead soldiers and transferred what energy remained in the man’s flesh into his own body, and thence to Saphira. “Where are the spellcasters now?” he asked, proceeding to another corpse.
He does this without so much as blinking. And then continues doing it in the next paragraph. He's literally sucking "energy" out of dead human beings and he doesn't have the slightest problem with it. Unlike the previous scene where he did it with animals, and was disgusted by it and eventually stopped because he supposedly couldn't take the horror any more. In other words, animal lives are apparently more important than the lives of other human beings. (An ongoing theme in this series, you'll have noticed).
Eragon was about to answer when four soldiers ran out from the mouth of a dark alleyway, spears lowered. In a single, smooth motion, he drew Brisingr from its sheath and slashed through the haft of the lead man’s spear and, continuing with the blow, decapitated the soldier. Brisingr seemed to shimmer with savage delight.
This is the sword that's supposedly infused with its owner's personality, by the way. Also, I really don't think it's physically possible to pull off a blow like that, no matter how elfy special you are.
[4A]
Anonymous
August 26 2018, 20:30:23
Yeah, even if you travel in a scenery-rich region and unless things happen and want to describe said scenery to make things less featureless it's better to resume.
Very little, if any, people is gonna find interesting that you describe by detail all the curves of a path through the mountains.
[4A1]
theepistler
August 26 2018, 20:45:50 Edited: August 26 2018, 20:46:13
This sort of thing CAN work... but only if you're so good at describing irrelevant scenery and such that it's enjoyable even if it is pointless. A really talented writer can make filler entertaining as hell. Clive Barker is great at it - he writes books which include all sorts of long-ass asides that don't really advance the main plot, but it's such a pleasure to read that you just don't care. (Galilee is a prime example. He spends most of it screwing around and endlessly delaying the inevitable explanation of important backstory, but damn if it isn't fun to read.)
Thing is that you have to really, really understand the rules before you can break them. And Paolini doesn't. He just includes long-ass descriptions because he's imitating other people who did the same thing and probably thinks this automatically makes your books more "epic" and "immersive".
[4A1A]
torylltales
August 27 2018, 10:06:34 Edited: August 27 2018, 10:14:16
Steinbeck is another. He could take the most boring everyday activities and turn them into absolutely riveting prose.
She held the screen door open and the man came in, bringing a smell of sweat with him. The boys edged in behind him, and they went immediately to the candy case and stared in, not with craving or with hope or even with desire, but just with a kind of wonder that such things could be. They were alike in size and their faces were alike. One scratched his dusty ankle with the toe nails of his other foot. The other whispered some soft message and then they straightened their arms so that their clenched fists in the overall pockets showed through the thin blue cloth.
[4A1B]
thegharialguy
August 27 2018, 12:05:39 Edited: August 27 2018, 12:07:31
I've just finished reading A Wizard of Earthsea. The second half of that book is basically 90% travelling, but it actually works because even when there's nothing happening, the story is building tension. The protagonist is scared shitless of a monster he unleashed on the world and the travelling he does to either outrun or catch it is driving the plot forward. Or, in other words, the travelling sections have a reason to exist. This doesn't. It could potentially if Paolini did a better job building this battle, both narratively and in regards to its importance to Eragon. But it's quite literally standard affair. There's no more dramatic tension here than there was during the trip between Dwarfland and Elfland (which was like ten times worse as there wasn't even potential for purpose in that chapter, while there is something of potential here). Travelling isn't inherently bad, it's just like everything else, if we're hearing about it then it needs to matter. Dedicating a chapter to travelling is like dedicating a chapter to a character taking a shit. Unless there's a strong reason they're doing it, I don't want to read about it.
[5]
theepistler
August 26 2018, 10:52:17
Comment part 2, because fuck you LJ.
Through his bond with her, Eragon sensed that Saphira was gathering herself to pounce upon the group of soldiers. He put a hand on one of her forelegs. Wait, he said.Let me try something first.
If it doesn’t work, then may I tear them to shreds? she asked, licking her fangs.
Yes, then you may do what you wish with them.
Saphira being a bloodthirsty psycho again, and again, Eragon doesn't have a problem with it. But he totally hates killing and thinks killing is bad, remember?
Eragon waited until the captain was only a few feet away. Then he took a single step forward and stabbed Brisingr through the center of the man’s embossed shield, through his arm underneath, and then through the man’s chest and out his back. The man convulsed once and was still. As Eragon pulled his blade free of the corpse, there was a discordant clamor from within the guard towers as gears and chains began to turn and the massive beams that held closed the city gates began to withdraw.
“Lay down your weapons or die!” Eragon shouted.
...then he kills a guy for disagreeing with him, when the man is walking slowly toward him and could have been easily disarmed. But he totally has a problem with killing, remember?
Bellowing in unison, twenty soldiers ran at him, brandishing their swords. The others either dispersed and fled toward the heart of the city or else took Eragon’s advice and placed their swords and spears and their shields on the gray paving stones and knelt by the side of the street with their hands on their knees.
A fine mist of blood formed around Eragon as he cut his way through the soldiers, dancing from one to the next faster than they could react. Saphira knocked two of the soldiers over, then set another two on fire with a short burst of flame from her nostrils, cooking them in their armor. Eragon slid to a stop several feet beyond the rearmost soldier and held his position, his sword arm outstretched from the blow he had just dealt, and waited until he heard the man topple to the ground, first one half, and then the other
Then he hacks up a bunch of dudes in revoltingly graphic detail, complete with the cliche "dude gets lopped in half and it takes a moment for the corpse to come apart because Our Hero is just so fast and badass" lifted right out of Kill Bill.
You see the problem here? Paolini wants Eragon to look morally superior and "good" because he periodically has him wangst about how fighting scares him, and then completely ruins it by then writing these "badass" scenes of violent dismemberment, with absolutely no hesitation or regret shown by Doucheagon as he mows down a bunch of pathetically helpless regular dudes. If he hates killing that much, he could easily have just disarmed these guys, or scared them into surrendering by cutting all their weapons in half. Which would have made him look both badass and moral.
But nope. He chops them up like deli meat with blood spraying everywhere, stabs one guy through the chest, and cuts another one in half. And then goes back to making that stupid running gag about the name of his sword with not a care in the world.
If you want to have a theme about the evils of fighting and killing in war, then you can't have it both ways. You just can't. And if you try to do so, you'll just end up making your protagonist look like a colossal hypocrite and a coward who doesn't stand by his principles. Which means that, ironically enough, Paolini's attempts at making Eragon look moral just end up making him even more unlikeable than he already was.
[5A]
Anonymous
August 26 2018, 15:11:09
A tad off topic but I’d love to read a fantasy book where the protagonist is a simple soldier on the “wrong” side whose fighting against an army with a super-Sue akin to Axis or Eragon that acts morally superior despite doing brutal stuff like you described in your two comments.
[5A1]
theepistler
August 26 2018, 20:41:35
I'd read that!
[5A1A]
torylltales
August 27 2018, 10:17:16
"Are we the baddies?"
[5A1A1]
theepistler
August 28 2018, 22:32:39
[Caption: Casper and Hobbes laughing wildly with caption ROFL!]
[5B]
Anonymous
August 26 2018, 20:48:24
If this crap was like D&D or similar settings, where adult dragons and above are almost indestructible if you don't have magical stuff, Saphira could walk in letting soldiers exhaust themselves attempting in vain to cause more damage to her than some very luckily insignificant wounds, then Eragon ordering them to surrender and/or disarming the others who still fought. She would not even have to use "frighful presence", that basically causes mooks to run away scared.
I'm reading what you've sporked and reads as usual like a mook horror show.
[5B1]
Anonymous
August 26 2018, 20:52:24
EDIT. Sorry, I meant she could have used that "frightful presence" to scare those mooks and the rest for those were not affected. I know this is not D&D, but when even a game so geared as combat as it offers that kind of alternatives even if are reserved for dragons, normally not PCs and typically antagonists... well.
[5C]
thegharialguy
August 27 2018, 12:08:51
So...should we just consider the next chapter sporked with this comment?
[5C1]
theepistler
August 27 2018, 16:50:55
Oops. Once I'd started quoting I got a little carried away. :-p There's just SO much to object to in that chapter.
[6]
Anonymous
August 26 2018, 15:42:57
I’m excited for this spork to be finished!
[6A]
theepistler
August 26 2018, 19:20:52
We're so close now! Literally just a couple of chapters to go!
snarkbotanya is up next, and I believe she's already started![7]
vorpal_tongue
August 26 2018, 19:39:49
Is it possible to take energy from a deceased animal? But... they're dead...? How does that work?
He did say "just died", so animals, I'd wager, would have at least some residual energy left just after dying (Maybe a fair bit if the death was sudden; no time for death throes to waste energy on).
[7A]
minionnumber2
August 26 2018, 20:09:36
Or if we want to go for the screwed route, it's easier to use a soul as energy when it's currently leaving the body than when it's firmly attached to its fleshy bits.
[7A1]
vorpal_tongue
August 26 2018, 21:08:16
Hm. Hadn't thought of that... that would have been an interesting idea...
...Gonna have to note that one down...
[8]
minionnumber2
August 26 2018, 20:13:20
The Eragon and Saphira at the gas station bit was hilarious.
[8A]
theepistler
August 26 2018, 20:47:08
Seconded. XD
(As an Australian, I actually know people who talk like that).
[9]
Anonymous
August 26 2018, 20:24:26
Pure filler. This could have been distillated in a couple of words (as in
"They flew over the Ellesmera forests and over the rivers that meandered through it, with Eragon recalling Oromis' teachings and just stopping when Saphira was exhausted. Hours later, whe she had rested and Eragon had both practiced a little with his new sword and reflected on the horrors of battle, both continued flying now over a landscape ravaged by war.
Eragon was thinking on how give energy to Saphira, that was still exhausted and could not accept magic, when she received a mental communication from Trianna" (cut to her message)
There, 86 words without the last part and sure that it could have been ever more cut off. One wonders if PaoPao was like other writers as Dickens (?) paid by word, so he'd have to add so many filler.
[9A]
pipedreamno20
August 27 2018, 08:36:20
Props, I like it!
[9B]
torylltales
August 27 2018, 10:21:49
I like your summary. Vastly more palatable than the chapter.
[9C]
thegharialguy
August 27 2018, 12:14:48
Well that last sentence where you refer to Saphira as that instead of who could do with a little work, but I bet you did that in like three minutes or less. If Paolini wrote like that, then he could release books more frequently than every half decade and maintain his relevance.
[9C1]
Anonymous
August 27 2018, 17:55:26
Ups, you're right. I confunded "she" with "he". Anyway, you get the idea.
Glad you like it, I'm somewhat lazy to write except for some types of scenery (especially space scenery, which is pretty much porn for me loving astronomy), and that helps.
A question for you: I'm heavily influenced by D&D, where dragons have battleship levels of toughness as you may know. How tough are the ones of Alagaesia?. Besides that dragon-killer weapon (the Dragonlance comes to mind), I remember it's mentioned wings are Saphira's weak points and that Eragon has to protect her.
[9C1A]
theepistler
August 28 2018, 08:25:41
Well Brom was apparently able to kill one with crippled magic and no special rider sword, plus Galby wiped out the entire wild AND tame population with barely any help, so I'd say Paodragons are about as tough and invincible as your average moth.
[9C1A1]
Anonymous
August 28 2018, 09:38:02
I'd rather see that as badassery, even if the former's one went pretty much to dev/null in certain battle.
But, hey, Shruikan went down quite fast being victim of just two dragons that were dwarfed by him and a copy (this being PaoPao) of the Dragonlance so yes, nothing of tank/battleship-like roughness. Otherwise Eragon would not need to protect Saphira, as she could simply let mooks come in and hit her with little or not effect, and given how she was able to stay over the roof of a building without causing an inmediate collapse (Dras Leona temple, I'm not going to call that thing a cathedral) Saphira must be quite lightweight.
[9C1A1A]
theepistler
August 28 2018, 12:40:27 Edited: August 28 2018, 22:46:44
I thought Galby must be a major league badass... But then he managed to be outwitted by dumbass teenager Nasuada, and was then taken out by dumbass teenager Eragon. So all in all he must have had an extremely easy job of it killing off all those dragons (and elves). That or he spent the intervening 80 years huffing paint.
(Meanwhile "badass" Brom couldn't handle a Razac. Which Ergs is later able to kill with a stick).
[9C1A2]
thegharialguy
August 28 2018, 11:28:57
As tough as the plot demands would probably be a better descriptor
[9C1A2A]
pipedreamno20
August 28 2018, 12:33:51
Given that the death dart is canonically the only thing that can kill a dragon, I think so too.
[9C1A2A]
Anonymous
August 28 2018, 13:31:24
And for what it seems its size, too. When someone claimed to be the next Tolkien writers with so little consistence it does not spell well.