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antishurtugal_rebornConfession time: I am a slob who never cleans anything if she can possibly avoid it. Normally it takes me days to psych myself up enough to break out the bucket and scrubbing brush. And yet today I washed and darned my bedroom curtains, wiped the windows, cleared out an old cabinet I’d been meaning to get rid of, did the vacuuming, cleaned some cobwebs off the ceiling, and tidied up the study. I mentioned this totorylltales, remarking on how unusually productive I’d been and how my place was looking cleaner than it had in years.
He said, and I quote: “Wow, you must be really bored. Or avoiding something unpleasant.”
After a pause he added “…you’ve got the next Eragon chapter, don’t you?”
Eragon: the book so dull it made me wash windows and dust the shelves to put off having to pick it up again.
But I guess I’m out of delaying tactics now.
To begin with an interesting fact – in the self-published edition, this is chapter 48. Unfortunately I didn’t notice any more noteworthy new material, which is a shame because yesterday I heard a rumour that there’s a deleted scene featuring Durza and Galbatorix. (If only. I searched for it in vain).
Anyway, so our bumbling band have reached the implausibly huge mountains at last. And I’m depressed to note just how much better of a character Eragon used to be. He actually has emotions here, and acts like he has a personality. Where did that go? Sigh…
Everyone pats themselves on the back for making it through the desert in one short pointless chapter, and Eragon thinks about how great it is that they managed to ride “sixty leagues in five days”, which he claims is impressive even for someone who gets to change horses along the way.
He then moves on to thinking about how he’s finally outside the Empire for the first time in his life, and now he won’t have to keep avoiding towns and dodging soldiers and such. Yeah, because the journey so far has been fraught every step of the way and not just 80% peril-free padding…
However he refuses to forget all the very nebulous evil shit Galbatorix has done, namely: slaughtering the Riders (which did not personally involve you), driving the elves away (you’re human – why would you care?), “condoned atrocities like Yazuac” (how do you know the urgals who did it hadn’t just gone rogue? And what other atrocities were there?), and wreaked havoc on Ergy’s life. He declares that he hates the King. “Hated him!”, exclamation mark and all, and decides he can’t just turn his back on all the eeevil stuff he’s done.
Unfortunately, the way this is written makes it feel less like a brave hero coming into his own and more like a childish temper tantrum. I’m not quite sure how to put my finger on it, but it’s just how it feels. There’s just something petulant about it.
He also thinks about how there’s “more to it than that: he wanted an answer”. Namely, he wants to know why all this has “befallen me”. I have no idea how these two things are in any way related, but that I do have an answer for.
It’s because you’re the self-insert Mary Sue.
There is absolutely nothing special, admirable, unique or impressive about Eragon. He’s not particularly brave, he’s not intelligent or cunning, he’s not kind or compassionate, and perhaps most importantly of all, he lacks empathy. A true hero, even a budding one, puts others before himself and thinks of their needs before his own. What makes Eragon come across as far more of a villain in the making is that one of his most noteworthy traits is selfishness. Again and again and again we’ve seen him only think about himself and his own wants, while disregarding the wants and needs of other people – including Saphira and even Roran, the first of whom is supposed to be his soul-bonded best friend and the second of whom he supposedly grew up with as a brother. When Saphira first hatches – a tiny vulnerable baby animal, all alone in the world – how does Eragon react? By thinking that if he raises her he can become famous and important. He has not one single moment of genuine sympathy or kindness towards her. Later on when she’s older and clearly terrified, how does Eragon react? By getting all pissy that she’s not doing what he wants, and then taunting her and calling her “craven” (in this context, it’s perhaps not surprising she grows up to be a rude unfeeling bitch).
And when Roran wants to leave home and get married, how does Eragon react to that? By getting angry. He has not a word of good wishes or congratulations or anything like that. Instead he throws a baby fit and then sulks for a week. All because Roran isn’t putting his very important ass first.
And when Garrow died – what did Eragon do then? Mope around full of self-pity, with not one single thought spared for Roran, who is now an orphan. He didn’t even consider going to see him in Therinsford while they were passing through, or leaving a sympathetic message.
I could easily go on, but I think I’ve made my point. Eragon is a selfish little asshole with no regard for other people’s feelings, and that other than his utter lack of patience is his only particular defining feature. …Oh, and then there's also his third notable trait: overweening arrogance. Which I think we can all agree did not need this sort of encouragement. Therefore I feel quite safe in saying that he’s not a hero by anybody’s definition, and even though the real atrocities he’s going to commit have yet to come, he is and remains an objectively bad person.
So unless dragons are regularly in the habit of hatching for complete douchebags and for no other reason than that, the only explanation as to why this idiot got one is Because The Author Sayed So.
Christ, I’m not even one page into this chapter. Are there any more windows that need scrubbing? Maybe I can go get my tyres rotated? Visit the tax accountant and get my return filed?
Aaaarrrrgh.
Anyway, Ergy then checks out the life-sized elf doll he’s been lugging around, so of course cue descriptions of her pretty cheekbones. He thinks about how he’s poked around in the minds of animals and people but – irony alert – “He always remembered Brom’s admonishments to not violate someone’s mind unless absolutely necessary, and had refrained from doing so, save for the one time he had tried and failed to probe Murtagh’s consciousness.”
Fast forward to book three…
Even now he takes a few moments to consider whether it would be okay to try and mind probe Arya and whether she’d forgive him for it, before going ahead. What follows is pretty annoying and confusing as well, because first he finds some powerful mental defenses, and then has to throw up “his own barriers” as Arya mentally attacks him in return. It’s confusing and annoying because Paolini never bothered to establish just how the hell any of that works. How does one throw up a mental barrier and when did Ergy learn how to do this? When did Brom teach him? What are the rules of “mind fights”?
We will never find out, and it doesn’t help that Paolini keeps describing it using weird metaphors and inappropriate imagery involving crystal and icy daggers and whatnot.
The short version is that Arya is a million times stronger than him, and quickly wins the fight. Ergy yells “I am a Rider and a friend” in the AL (when did he learn how to say that?) , and Arya makes careful mental contact. Predictably her mind is all vast and ancient and powerful and full of beautiful singing, because of course it is. Too bad in practice she mostly just acts like a cold-hearted snot. Eragon thinks about how it’s no wonder elves are so alien and inhuman and such, which is pretty amusing because when we actually do get to meet some they just act like really pretentious humans with egos a mile wide.
They have a mental conversation, and even though it’s stated that Ergy only knows a few “scattered words” of the AL he’s somehow able to say shit like “You’ve not stirred or said a word in all that time. I don’t know what to do to help you” and then understand Arya’s detailed explanation of the nonsensical torture she apparently suffered, which was to be poisoned every day and then given an antidote. What the hell was the point of that? Sounds like a perfect way to accidentally kill your prisoner under interrogation to me, and especially when you have magic and mind-rape powers. Come on.
Either way she’s still poisoned and has put herself under to slow it down. The poison gets a name, naturally (and just as naturally will never be mentioned again). She says the antidote is very (and I mean VERY) conveniently with the elves and also with the Varden, but they have to hurry and go on dragonback. Ergy claims that he’s got a friend with him he won’t abandon. That is until next week, when he abandons the shit out of him and then pretends he didn’t.
Arya offers to tell him how to find the Varden, as long as he swears an AL oath not to harm the elves, the dwarves, the Varden or the dragons. Which he does.
First up, I note one group is conspicuously absent from this promise. A little race known as – oh, I don’t know – humans? So apparently Arya doesn’t give a shit if he hurts other human beings unless they’re in the Varden, but not so for the elves or the dwarves. Which will be contradicted later anyway when Eragon helps to kill a dragon and also harms and kills multiple dwarves without suffering any consequences.
Arya gives him the info and then retreats, and Ergy comes to and finds out he’s been sitting there for “fifteen minutes” (what the hell was the point of specifying the number and how did Murtagh calculate it anyway?). Saphira makes a “dry” comment about how he was grimacing in pain the whole time and wants to know what was going on. What, so she’s mentally bonded to him and couldn’t sense any of this?? I have to say this much-vaunted human/dragon bonding thing is awfully convenient when it comes to when it does and doesn’t work. “More one mind than two” my ass.
Ergy tells her and Murtagh what happened and that they have to go to the Varden, but it’s even further away than Gil-Galad and they only have three or four days to do it. Murtagh immediately gets angry and points out that this is ridiculously impractical and the horses are already exhausted and will die if they keep pushing it. Ergy suggests he fly ahead with Arya and Murtagh can catch up later, but Murtagh just gets even more pissy and whines that Ergy is treating him like a servant, and after Murtagh saved his life no less. Eragon whines back at him, and then Murtagh sneers that “you’re so totally helpless you force everyone to take care of you!”
Wow, it’s as if Paolini suddenly became self-aware for a few moments and realised how utterly incompetent and useless his self-insert is. No wonder everyone liked Murtagh better. (And no wonder he was hastily gotten rid of in the next book).
Murtagh insults him some more. So Eragon punches him in the stomach. Real mature.
They end up getting into a fistfight, which unlike a lot of Paolini’s other fight scenes is actually pretty realistically undignified and messy. They keep going at it like a couple of kids on the playground until Saphira breaks it up and pins them both down, and then tells them to talk it out. So now we’re playing Couples Therapy, apparently. No wonder some people shipped those two back in the day. (Mind you, some people will try and turn anything into slash. It gets old pretty fast).
Murtagh repeats that he doesn’t want to go to the Varden, but now elaborates that the reason why is because he’s expecting them to instantly hate him. He keeps acting evasive, which pisses Eragon off, but finally starts to say “My father” before Saphira interrupts saying she can see something. The two humans look and Murtagh for some reason yells “demons above and below!”. Even though there are no “demons” in this setting.
And these are just urgals anyway, as it turns out – a whole army of them led by some chieftain or other who Murtagh talks up as being vicious and also mentally unbalanced. Lovely. And pointless, as we’ll never actually meet the guy and he will not be playing any role in the plot.
The two of them make a quick compromise: Murtagh will come with them as far as the entrance to the Varden, and then they’ll part ways. Saphira flies off with Arya and Ergy and Murtagh mount up and start riding again. On their exhausted horses who at this point should be in dire need of food and rest. But then of course as we all know Paolini has no idea how horses actually work.
I have no idea where the urgals are relative to where our hero… protagonist… characters we’re following are, by the way. Paolini really seems to have a problem with visualising things in that regard. But in any case that’s no longer my problem, because the chapter ends there.
Next up is gharialguy, who gets the pleasure of sporking one of the most tooth-rottingly melodramatic and cheesy scenes in the entire book. Have fun with that, scales.
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Date: 2020-04-28 08:41 am (UTC)Yeah, my bad. I am STILL trying to understand where the fuck was that from, btw. Some people say the movie, but I have seen that crap twice years ago and nothing of sort happens (and I will not watch it again for the sake of a scene I am sure is not there).
Don't you love how none of us can point the finger on what Galbatorix did to be hated but we can all agree on why Eragon is total "human" garbage?
Even if the books repeatedly hammer over our heads that he is very patient. Yeah... No.
Ok, but "save for that one time" it's almost as saying that if you cannot finish the crime because your victim stops you and defends himself then you cannot be accused of the crime. Such a twisted logic. This should count as a fail, not as an accomplishment, Ergy.
Also, notice how he wonders whether the *elf* would forgive him but never bothered asking the same for Murtagh or apologizing for having tried to mind rape him.
I think that somewhere in my paper copy of Eragon it is written that Paolini corrected Eragon's grammar to spare the readers his mistakes but that his grammar is atrocious at this point. Still doesn't explain how he understands Arya, though.
Because if she could we may have needed an answer to why she did not gut Arya when she attacked his Rider like that. I mean, yeah. Self-defense. But if an elf, a shady creature I do not know, mentally attacks for any reason my friend I will attack back. But Saphira is a non-character and so she pops out of the existence when it's convenient.
Yeah, and it's something I really hate. But to give half a cent to this fandom I did not see in fanfictions the abhorrent pairings I learned to expect from other fandoms. (For example there are almost no Galbatorix/Murtagh fanfiction, something I am extremely grateful for)
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Date: 2020-04-28 10:28 am (UTC)I have the next spork ready to go but I'll let this one stew for a day or tow before posting.
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Date: 2020-04-28 10:41 am (UTC)Trouble is you don't see Eragon doing that here at all. Instead you just get vague references to him throwing up unspecified, undescribed "barriers".
Fantastic! Well done you. :)
By the way, it turns out I was wrong. Gharials actually can eat human corpses and throwing dead people to them actually is a tradition in some parts of the world. The original source I looked up was inaccurate. So one point to Ms Cross, I guess. (This brings her overall score up to -99,999 instead of -100,000).
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Date: 2020-04-28 10:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-28 10:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-28 11:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-28 11:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-28 11:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-28 05:25 pm (UTC)-UltimateCheetah
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Date: 2020-04-29 12:44 am (UTC)I know right? The trouble is that we can see Galby's motivations as to why he did what he did, and they're sympathetic. Eragon doesn't have that. He just acts like a douche because he's a douche.
"But I'm not a rapist! She got away before I even did anything! You can't send me to jail! This isn't fair!" ~Eragon logic.
Given how determined he is not to abandon the guy, Eragon really doesn't seem to actually care about him that much.
Yeah, that's a really weak excuse which reads very much as if he made it up after the fact. And anyway, writing dialogue coming from someone who's not fluent in the language they're using isn't THAT bloody hard. If he just didn't want to make his self-insert sound stupid, well... too late, I'm afraid.
Yup. A non-character is exactly what she is. Both Paolini and the other characters just treat her like a prop.
Same here, and not because I'm a homophobe or anything - I'm just sick of how some fans always have to make everything sexual, even if it means breaking canon five ways to Sunday. Though I am biased because I find sex distasteful in general.
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Date: 2020-04-29 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-29 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-29 02:17 am (UTC)-UltimateCheetah
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Date: 2020-04-29 02:36 am (UTC)Lo, I am that same Epistler. :p And that would definitely make sense, given how little the elves care about humans.
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Date: 2020-04-29 03:00 am (UTC)New headcanon: Eragon is actually set in a post-apocalyptic Mad Max-style world, and the words "horse" and "dragon" refer to types of vehicles. Galby's agents are hunting Eragon because a "dragon" is a military-grade helicopter with a napalm load, that no private citizen should have control of.
He declares that he hates the King. “Hated him!”, exclamation mark and all
What? You can't just have characters say how they feel! That makes me feel angry!
So unless dragons are regularly in the habit of hatching for complete douchebags and for no other reason than that, the only explanation as to why this idiot got one is Because The Author Sayed So.
My headcanon is that it's because the Vault of Souls eldunari needed a pliable puppet they could manipulate into getting them close enough to Galby to exact their vengeance. And who better for cruel irony than the illegitimate son of one of Galby's most trusted agents (I'm talking about Selena, not Brom), a boy who was born out of two trusted people betraying Galby's right hand man?
They have a mental conversation, and even though it’s stated that Ergy only knows a few “scattered words” of the AL he’s somehow able to say shit like “You’ve not stirred or said a word in all that time. I don’t know what to do to help you” and then understand Arya’s detailed explanation
another headcanon: when you're mentally communicating with someone inside their or your mind, language barriers don't exist because the meaning behind the words is communicated more than the words themselves. In the past some smart alec human Riders tried to take advantage of this as a way to learn the AL faster, but found it too difficult to listen to a word and concentrate on the mental meaning of it at the same time.
Arya offers to tell him how to find the Varden, as long as he swears an AL oath not to harm the elves, the dwarves, the Varden or the dragons. Which he does.
First up, I note one group is conspicuously absent from this promise. A little race known as – oh, I don’t know – humans?
To be generous, I think that could be because Arya assumed that Eragon wouldn't be so callous as to attack his own species, because she as an elf can't image any reason to attack a fellow elf? She just assumes that humans are covered by Eragon's oath because she can't imagine humans not having a perfectly harmonious (read: repressive) monoculture like the elves have.
Wow, three new headcanons in one chapter.
and then Murtagh sneers that “you’re so totally helpless you force everyone to take care of you!”
Like I said in the previous chapter spork, Murtagh would be excellent at Cinema Sins. *ding!*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag-RvTUfcdU
They end up getting into a fistfight, which unlike a lot of Paolini’s other fight scenes is actually pretty realistically undignified and messy. They keep going at it like a couple of kids on the playground
Which is surprising, not only because of Paolini's writing ability,but because he's never said anything in interviews about having other children his own age around with whom to fight, except his older sister.
The problem I have with this fight scene is that, well...
Murtagh doubled over, swearing. Then he yelled and launched himself at Eragon. They fell in a tangle of arms and legs, pounding on each other. Eragon kicked at Murtagh’s right hip, missed, and grazed the fire. Sparks and burning embers scattered through the air.
They scrabbled across the ground, trying to get leverage. Eragon managed to get his feet under Murtagh’s chest and kicked mightily. Murtagh flew upside down over Eragon’s head, landing flat on his back with a solid thump.
Murtagh’s breath whooshed out. He rolled stiffly to his feet, then wheeled to face Eragon, panting heavily.
Murtagh was supposed to have been trained to fight since a young age, right? By a "master swordsman", no less. So what's all this scrabbling around in the dirt, wildly attacking with no technique, self-control or self-preservation? At the very least his swordplay lessons should have taught him about footwork, stance, and things like timing and reach/distance. Not to mention the very strong connection between swordplay and grappling (including ground-fighting and throws) that should have enabled Murtagh to avoid that ridiculous cartoonish Judo throw/kick thing.
In a realistic situation we should expect this scene to play out like it is: an unskilled teenager being hopelessly outclassed by an adult who has had many years of training in combat. Basically like the movie scene where Brom thrashed Eragon with a stick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XDEWDU5G8A
Until, of course, Saphira intervenes, thus proving Murtagh's point and allowing him to end with some line about how Eragon can't fight and needs to be rescued - again!- by someone else.
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Date: 2020-04-29 03:24 am (UTC)Let alone start running again after just fifteen minutes' rest.
Maybe that's why it reads as so cheesy and petulant to me. Reminds me of a little kid yelling "well I hate you!" because you wouldn't give them a sweet.
I REALLY doubt it.
It even says they both know how to kill with their bare hands (don't ask me when Ergy learned that) but are holding back. But you're right - it's a realistic depiction of a messy schoolyard brawl which shouldn't be there.
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Date: 2020-04-29 03:47 am (UTC)-UltimateCheetah.
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Date: 2020-04-29 04:11 am (UTC)I wish the elves had been taken down a peg too. Mind you, it was pretty satisfying seeing them get their asses kicked by "mere human" Lord Barst.
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Date: 2020-04-29 05:20 am (UTC)This. A thousand times this. Personally, I believe romance to be way too overvalued. Nowadays you cannot literally have any meaningful relationship (and this counts for heterosexual and homosexual *both*) without people hijacking it to turn it into a love story. Every meaningful relationship HAS to be a romance, hasn't it? I mean, it's not human beings can form strong and lasting relationships even without these being romantic. It devalues friendship and loyalty way too much to my taste. Also, it's hypocritical as fuck, because people blab until they're blue in the face about the fact that if a woman is kind to a man it doesn't mean that she has romantic interest and that man should be more gentle and get rid of toxic masculinity amd that people can be happy alonewith their friends, but then the split moment two characters of the same gender (generally male) are close you better believe that they are a couple or you are an homophobe? Wtf. I don't ship or straightforward dislike many of *canon* heterosexual couple, I guess I am an heterophobe then, somehow. Jokes aside, the shipping mentality is fucked. This is why, as a base, I don't ship.
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Date: 2020-04-29 05:32 am (UTC)One of my favourite relationships I ever wrote involves a straight man and a straight woman. They have a lot in common and understand each other better than anyone else. They trust each other so much they're completely comfortable with being physically close, they hug a lot, and even flat-out say "I love you" to each other.
But it's not a romance. They never show the slightest interest in having sex or becoming anything other than affectionate friends. They're just not attracted to each other in that way. And indeed, if they did have sex it would only damage the friendship.
The books they're in aren't published yet, and if there's one thing I'm looking forward to it's knowing that some of my readers are going to go absolutely bonkers waiting for these two to start making out and then have 10,000 babies. No doubt if I flat-out told them it's never going to happen some would refuse to believe me. 🤣 But it's not going to happen.
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Date: 2020-04-29 07:55 am (UTC)Eragon doesn't know shit, he's had maybe a month of training while on the run from a man whose idea of training is to beat him every night until he somehow figures out how to defend himself.
Being compared with someone who has been trained by a master probably since he was able to walk. As though they were both on even terms.
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Date: 2020-04-29 08:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-29 12:44 pm (UTC)I can see more submissions on AO3 and fanfiction.net shipping them both and making them having 10,000 babies anyways. See, I'm trying to write an experimental SS on a gender-neutral person (gasp!!) who is also an asexual (GASP). Okay, I'm by NO means a published author and in fact I'd say that I'm a total noob when it comes to writing, so publishing is out of the window the same way you can't handle scissors before a certain age. It's really hilarious that people would ship asexual, aromantic characters written by asexual, aromantic authors because they believe in the mantra "If you don't make out you're automatically disqualified as not being in a relationship. Court adjourned."
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Date: 2020-04-29 12:59 pm (UTC)Oh yeah. Shippers pretty much always explicitly don't care about canon or word of author. I don't know if you were there to see it, but when J.K.Rowling outright said in an interview that Draco/Hermione was not going to happen and you'd have to be delusional to think otherwise, a certain subsection of her fanbase went BALLISTIC. Because they apparently thought they knew better than her when it came to her own damn characters. The collective temper tantrum was pretty hilarious to watch. One of them even wrote an open letter to JKR laying out all the "evidence" as to why she was wrong and how she'd ruined the whole series for them. The sheer entitlement of it was unbelievable.
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Date: 2020-04-29 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-29 07:50 pm (UTC)1. Murtagh can beat the Ra'zac, but not a 15 year, untrained boy. Seems legit.
2. Murtagh's father is obviously evil in this chapter, but Morzan is such a nonentity that the reveal has almost no impact.
3. The Urgals' appearance is totally manufactured to put off the "astonishing" reveal. This wouldn't have needed to happen if the Ra'zac were still in the book, and had almost caught Eragon and Murtagh. Maybe the Ra'zac know they're in a terrible book, and have just given up to have a coffee break and count down the days to their retirement.
-UltimateCheetah
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Date: 2020-04-30 03:04 am (UTC)That's a good point. Morzan really is a nonentity - I mean the guy's dead for cripe's sake. Who cares if you have an Evil Daddy if the guy's been six feet under for the last fifteen years? We don't even know what specific atrocities he supposedly committed when he was alive. The whole setup would have had a lot more impact if Galbatorix was his dad instead.
You can tell because it comes right the hell out of nowhere.
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Date: 2020-04-30 05:03 pm (UTC)About the Urgals/orc ripoffs, they're just another example of Paolini's clumsy ways of hiding secrets. Having Brom hiding secrets "just because", didn't work, and neither does this. He should've had Murtagh actually refuse to tell Eragon anything, because it's none of Eragon's business, with the reveal being found out when they reached the Varden. The orcs should've been introduced long before this. Where was the editor?
P.S. Are you going to write more Epistles? I really liked the third person Epistler voice that you did. One of my favorite lines: "If you will indulge the Epistler for a moment: AAAAAAAAARGH." That made me laugh so hard.
-UltimateCheetah
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Date: 2020-05-01 07:21 am (UTC)Aww, the Epistler thanks you! However, her days of writing Epistles are over.