Green Brick Commentary

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 Wherein our hero tries to figure out who he is so he can get his fancy new name and open the door to a magic vault that a certain someone swore didn't have in it what it has in it.

Chapter Fifty-Three: A Question of Character

 

And here we are back with Eragon, and little surprise, he’s being a total Whiny McWhinepants. The chapter opens with Eragon being a klutz, basically tripping over his own two feet and falling onto his side.

 

“Barzûl,” he said as he rolled to his feet and carefully stood. At least I didn’t land on Brisingr, he thought as he pried scales of cold mud from his leggings. 

 

And amazingly enough, his sword does not catch on fire as it should have done, what with him saying “Brisingr” even in his mind. It’s still the ancient language, right? So shouldn’t the sword have erupted into flames? That’s what it’s doing every single time he’s said it before, albeit aloud rather than in his head. It really bugs me that the rules are different whenever it suits the author. Rules are rules for a reason. They shouldn’t be bent or broken as it suits the moment. At that point, you break immersion and ruin it for your readers, because this whole big deal has been made about the stupid Sue sword bursting into flames every time its name is said, and here he’s thinking the name - after it’s been established that the magic words still work even if they’re said in the mind (see the incident under Dras-Leona where Eragon tried to use a spell to get himself out of his chains and epically failed) - but nothing happens. No sudden flames, no drains in his energy, nothing. Good lord, I severely dislike this book. It’s like a manual of what not to do when writing your own stuff.

 

Eragon is depressed, and gets on with heading back to their chosen campsite. They’ve decided to hang out in a ruined building now, believing it’s safer than being in the forest. I suppose that’s relative, but considering no danger befalls our zeroes at this point or, really, ever again in this story, then yeah. It’s safer. Anyway, as he walks through the grass, he startles a bunch of bullfrogs, and Eragon says they’re the only other strange creatures they’ve encountered on the island. He describes the frogs, and if you need a mental image, imagine a frog with an angler fish’s antennae on its head. The antennae basically performs the same function for the frog as it does the real-world fish, allowing the frogs to eat lots of things. The result of the extra food means that the frogs grow super huge, as Eragon says he saw one the size of a bear’s head. He doesn’t say what kind of bear, of course, so I’m going with a real-world grizzly bear, because why not.

 

Actually, I’d rather the frog be the size of a real-world grizzly bear’s head than the size of the head of a bear that lives in the Beor Mountains. Because those things could eat Saphira.

 

Eragon then talks about how the frogs remind him of Angela (which is a throwback to when he first met her back in Book One, where she was trying to prove that toads didn’t exist) and he really wishes Angela were with him here. And the reason he wishes this is because he wants to take the easy way out and get her to tell him and Saphira their true names. He reasons that if anyone could tell them their true names outright, it’d would be Super-Special-Timelord-But-Not-Really-Sue Angela. For the first time in the entire series, Eragon says that he “always” felt like Angela could see right through him and understand everything about him. Yeah, sure. It’s really hard for me not to go “hahahaha, that’s because, just as Eragon’s your stand-in, Angela’s your sister’s stand-in. Of course she’d be able to understand everything about you, dumbass!” Anyway, he says he’s uncomfortable with that little revelation, but at this moment, he would really like to take advantage of it, because Eragon’s lazy and wants everything handed to him so he doesn’t have to work for it.

 

Anyway, Eragon then decides to tell us that he and Saphira ultimately decided to trust Serious Ass and stay on the island for another three days at most while they try to figure out what their true names are. Glaedr left the decision up to them, citing they knew Serious Ass better than he did, so stay or go as you please, either way there’s great risk and there’s no more safety. Saphira ultimately decides their fate and says that the werecats would never serve Galby (even if they weren’t aware of doing so?) and states the werecats “prize their freedom” too much to be anyone’s servant. So she trusts the werecats, and she trusts them more than anything else, including the elves. So here they are. They’ve spent most of that day, and now most of today, sitting and doing pretty much nothing while they try to figure out their true names. We’re told Glaedr offers his help when they ask him, but otherwise he just keeps to himself, and lets Eragon and Saphira flounder. Apparently many of the conversations Eragon and Saphira have with one another are so embarrassing, Eragon’s glad no one else is around to hear them. Then he tells us that Glaedr told them that the mission of finding your true name is something you need to do on your own, but hey, if he thinks of theirs, he’ll tell them because they don’t have time to waste. Still, it’d be better if they did it on their own.

 

Surprise, neither Eragon nor Saphira have succeeded yet.

 

Ever since Brom had explained to him about true names, Eragon had wanted to learn his own. Knowledge, particularly self-knowledge, was ever a useful thing, and he hoped his true name would allow him to better master his thoughts and feelings. Still, he could not help but feel a certain amount of trepidation about what he might discover. 

 

Not that this matters. It doesn’t change him as a person, doesn’t make him a better member of society. It’s just a means to an end and it means nothing. Eragon doesn’t change his ways because of it. He doesn’t even try. And it still bothers the hell out of me that a person’s entire being, entire identity, can be spelled out in a few words. It also bothers me that the ancient language is a language that’s described as being the word for an object (if that makes any sense) can be used to describe a dynamic being such as a human. It wouldn’t be so bad if the rules of it being x word in the ancient language means x word in Alagaesian English and it wasn’t used as Elvish and true names for people and dragons and whatever else dynamic didn’t exist, but that’s not the case. It drives me bonkers. I could get this part being Eragon’s revelation about him not being the farm boy anymore and realizing that what he wanted when he started out in this moment isn’t what he wants now, and that he won’t be content raising crops or sheep anymore. That he’d rather explore the world than stay in an isolated location for the rest of his life, being called out to deal with this or that threat and not having any freedom of his own. But even though that’s kind of what happens, the whole true name thing takes away from the charm of that, and makes all of this mean nothing in the end, as Eragon leaves anyway and is confined to an isolated location where all he does is whine about how boring and unfair his life is. 

 

Eragon whines that he doesn’t even know if he can discover his true name, but he hopes he can, both for the success of their mission and because he doesn’t want the dragons to figure it out for him. If he’s to hear his whole being described in a word or phrase, he wants to arrive at the knowledge on his own rather than having it forced on him.

 

You know, like he did to Sloan. And notice he has no regret about that. He doesn’t even mention it.

 

Eragon climbs up the stairs to the building and describes the structure. Apparently it used to be a nesting house, but by the standards of Vroengard where everything is fuck-off huge, this house is super duper tiny so as to be entirely useless. At least, that’s the feeling I get. However, the building itself is still three fucking stories high (so it’s not small) and the interior is large enough for Saphira to move around comfortably. WHICH MEANS IT’S NOT SMALL. Good lord, what kind of building code standards did the Riders have to equate a three-story tall building to “absolutely useless”? Anyway, we’re told the southeastern corner of the building has collapsed inward, which took part of the ceiling with it. But the building is safe despite that. Trust me. Eragon heads through the doorway and across the floor. Apparently said floor is glassy, whatever that means. He says in the floor are strikes of color that form some kind of abstract design. All I can ask is why.

 

And going on a tangent, you do realize that all these huge buildings and these fancy floors and whatever else amazeballs stuff that the Riders used to build this city would’ve cost a lot of money, right? Even if they mined most of it themselves, transported most of it themselves, and built most of it themselves, not everything they would’ve built with would’ve been discovered by the Riders by pure chance, if not with their own sweat and muscles, which I highly doubt the Riders used, unless it was their magic muscles they were flexing. And since a lot of these buildings are of elvish design, the money likely came from the elves, which means the elves were loaded, which means that Arya bitching at the dwarf priests for not “sharing their wealth” is completely hypocritical by that standard? I mean, aside from it being completely hypocritical for the simple fact that Arya demands the priesthood to spend their money on the poor and destitute, all the while ignoring that her own people abandoned the world and her own mother imitated Cartman by telling the Varden “Screw you guys, I’m going home” when she found out her daughter went missing, of course.

 

Anyway, Eragon is mesmerized by this design but it apparently annoys him too, because every time he tries to puzzle out the design, it just keeps shifting. This isn’t important in the least bit. But it does have something to do with one thing, and that is Eragon’s whinefest.

 

The surface of the floor was covered with a fine web of cracks that radiated outward from the rubble beneath the gaping hole where the walls had given way. Long tendrils of ivy hung from the edges of the broken ceiling like lengths of knotted rope. Water dripped from the ends of the vines to fall into shallow, misshapen puddles, and the sound of the droplets striking echoed throughout the building, a constant, irregular beat that Eragon thought would drive him mad if he had to listen to it for more than a few days. 

 

Or, you know, you could fix the problem. Get rid of the vines and fix the roof? Something than just sitting there and getting annoyed by the sound? I feel like that’s one of Eragon’s constants, though. Instead of fixing the problem when it’s easily fixable, all he does is complain about it and does nothing. Like he expects someone else to deal with the issue rather than him dealing with it himself. I could understand not dealing with it the first night or so just because he’s tired, but if they’re going to be staying a few days, having adequate shelter would be priority number one, followed by food. This is not adequate shelter. It’s a shelter, but it doesn’t offer much protection. Sure, in the next paragraph we’re told that Saphira made a wall of stones to protect their actual campsite, but that’s not going to really do anything if something attacks that the stones are ineffective against. Nor does it stop the drip that’s driving Eragon bonkers. And you know, I’m not surprised that Eragon did fuck all to help make their camp. The kid literally loves to have other people serve him. 

 

As I said in blue above, we’re then told that Saphira dragged a bunch of stones into a semi-circle around their camp as a defense, and that also implies Eragon did nothing. He didn’t set any FUCKING WARDS or much else. Well, when Eragon comes to the barrier, he jumps onto the nearest block, which is over six feet tall. What is he, a mountain goat? No, he’s just elfified, which means he can jump over tall buildings in a single bound now. He drops to the other side and Saphira pauses long enough in her grooming to question him but not really. In response to her “questioning thought” Eragon shakes his head and she goes “alright then” and goes back to licking her foot. Eragon drops his cloak and sits by the fire, whereupon he removes his boots. Saphira asks him if it looks like it’ll rain again and Eragon says probably. He just sits by the fire for a moment, then goes to sit on his bedroll. He watches Saphira work on giving herself a bath. He gets an idea and mutters something in the ancient language, but nothing happens, which makes him disappointed. For the first time, Eragon remembers how Sloan reacted when he said Sloan’s true name, and Eragon also says Saphira doesn’t react to the words as Sloan did.

 

But notice how there’s no regret or sadness about the way he treated Sloan.

 

So Eragon closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall, and thinks:

 

It frustrated him that he was unable to puzzle out Saphira’s true name. He could accept that he did not fully understand himself, but he had known Saphira since the moment she had hatched, and he had shared nearly all of her memories. How could there be parts of her that were still a mystery to him? How could he have been better able to understand a murderer like Sloan than his own spell-bonded partner? Was it because she was a dragon and he was a human? Was it because Sloan’s identity had been simpler than Saphira’s? 

 

How about authorial fiat? Literally Eragon was able to figure out Sloan’s true name because the author wanted him to. Otherwise there was no logical reason for Eragon to figure it out. Eragon doesn’t know squat about Sloan except for the fact the guy’s a butcher, he has an unhealthy obsession with his daughter, he hates the Sue for reasons we never find out, he made Roran miserable which is, by default, an attack on the Sue, and just generally was a grumpy old codger that refused to give Eragon what he wanted when the little bastard demanded it. You know, like a proper adult. Eragon knows nothing about Sloan’s past except for what he was told second-hand, and even then, it wasn’t that much. Sloan’s wife went over the Igualda Falls for some unknown reason and he changed as a person. That’s it. And as far as Eragon knowing Saphira, that he doesn’t know her at all makes a while lot of fucking sense, actually, because we’ve only been told they’re “intimately linked” and they “share everything”, but what we’ve seen is the complete opposite of that. Eragon treats Saphira as a convenience at best and a pet at worst. He’s never actually taken the time to get to know her, to know her likes and dislikes, to know what she wants out of life. What her opinions are. And this is because Saphira is nothing more than an accessory to him. She’s his status symbol, much like his sword. Remember, his first thought on seeing her right after hatching was that she was going to make him famous. He didn’t give a shit about anything else, not his family or this little creature that he now was obligated to. This story has never been about Saphira. It’s always been about Eragon. It hasn’t even focused on their relationship as a pair, but only Eragon’s side. And Saphira just stays quiet about it for some reason. I guess because she, like all the other women in this story, is to be “seen and not heard” and exists only to prop up the Manly Man. Because women are weak, or some shit like that.

 

Eragon, of course, doesn’t know. Then he starts talking about the exercises Glaedr made them do in order to try to help them ferret out their true names. And one such exercise was to tell each other of all the flaws that they had noticed in each other. We’re told it was a humbling exercise, but apparently the “humble” part doesn’t stick very well. Glaedr also shares his observations about the two of them, and Eragon says though Glaedr was kind about it, Eragon can’t help but feel stung pride as Glaedr lists his failings. Eragon says he needs to take those into account when thinking about his true name, but that’s all he says besides the fact that his pride is hurt. Not that he’s going to strive to be a better person, or change his ways, or hold true to certain convictions, just that he has to keep his “flaws” in mind while hunting down his true name. Then we’re told about their shortcomings:

 

For Saphira, the hardest thing to come to terms with had been her vanity, which she had refused to acknowledge as such for the longest time. For Eragon, it had been the arrogance Glaedr claimed he sometimes displayed, his feelings concerning the men he had killed, and all the petulance, selfishness, anger, and other shortcomings to which he, like so many others, was prey. 

 

The only reason I’m pointing out this paragraph is because of how painfully unintentionally self-aware the text is. Saphira and Eragon are all of these things, but they’ve either never recognized the traits in themselves or ignore them completely. The fact that Glaedr has to point all this out is laughably irritating in that regard. Worse, none of it matters. Eragon doesn’t try to change his ways, doesn’t try to improve himself. He still goes on to be all of these things, plus even more whiny. I fully believe that this paragraph was written not to be tongue in cheek about the behavior of the main characters, but to prove to us readers, sporkers, and reviewers that the characters weren’t perfect Sues and had depth and were flawed. But that only works if the characters acknowledge said flaws and imperfections from the start and actively throughout the story try to change. And I’m not saying that they can’t ever be angry, petulant, selfish, vain, or whatever else. They’re as entitled to their emotions and feelings as any human being is entitled to theirs. Nobody can go through life being eternally happy, never feeling any negative emotion ever or never thinking about themselves. Not even saints. We’re all human, not robots. What becomes important is how we deal with those emotions, that we recognize those emotions in us and we accept responsibility for those emotions. If we hurt someone in anger, we apologize for that hurt and accept the consequences of our actions. We try to improve. Living is all about learning and if you stop learning, you might as well be dead. The problem here is that Eragon and Saphira never improve. They never change. They become aware of all these things, but it doesn’t matter. Eragon callously ignores fleeing, wounded people when he escapes the collapsing castle at the end. He doesn’t bother to try to stop to help anyone or check to see if there are living people trapped under the rubble of the already-collapsed sections. He doesn’t bother to stop to give the wounded a ride on Saphira rather than forcing them to walk on their broken leg or whatever. He doesn’t bother to heal anyone, either. Saphira just becomes a further non-entity after this, and then spends all of her time getting her brains fucked out by a dragon who’s six months old. And then Eragon just fucks off rather than accepting responsibility for what he’s done and for the people he’s hurt. There are no character developments because of these revelations. Which renders this whole thing a complete waste of time.

 

But of course, despite all this introspection and self-reflection, they still haven’t hit upon their true names. Eragon thinks that all the time they have left is today and tomorrow, and then decides that returning to the Varden empty handed is depressing. Which, I guess is true. How do you explain a big waste of time when you have nothing to show for it? Then he starts wondering how they’re going to beat Galby for the umpteenth time, and talks about how in another few days, they may not have their freedom anymore. They’ll be slaves. He swears and pounds his fist on the floor, because Eragon is consistent only in his temper tantrums. Glaedr tells Eragon to calm down and Eragon notes that Glaedr is shielding their conversation so as to leave Saphira ignorant of what they’re talking about. Eragon whines about how he can stay calm in this situation, and Glaedr says it’s easy to be calm when there’s nothing to worry about.

 

What’s there to worry about? Oh, right, the fact that if Eragon and Saphira can’t get into the vault, they’ll lose to Galby and become slaves for the rest of their lives.

 

Apparently that doesn’t worry Glaedr, and I’m not surprised. These characters always seem to know what the author knows, which is that nothing bad is going to happen to the main characters.

 

Anyway, Glaedr continues talking about how the true test of self-control is staying calm in a situation that makes you want to panic. He tells Eragon not to let anger and frustration cloud his mind, not now, anyway. Eragon needs his head to be clear. Eragon then asks if Glaedr’s always been calm in situations like the one Eragon’s currently in, and Glaedr replies:

 

The old dragon seemed to chuckle. No. I used to growl and bite and knock down trees and tear up the ground. Once, I broke the top off of a mountain in the Spine; the other dragons were rather upset with me for that. But I have had many years to learn that losing my temper rarely helps. You have not, I know, but allow my experience to guide you in this. Let go of your worries and focus only on the task at hand. The future will be what it will, and fretting about it will only make your fears more likely to come true. 

 

You know, the idea of Glaedr breaking off the top of a mountain in the Spine would be kind of neat if it had been any way integrated into the story. This is another thing I really dislike about this story - we’re told any things that happened in the past or off-screen that are so much cooler than what’s on screen, but nothing is tied into the actual story. Like when Glaedr describes being attacked at some elven watch tower. Wouldn’t it have been neat if Eragon remembered the destroyed watch tower he pasted back in Book Three and it turned out to be the very one where Glaedr was attacked? Or here, with this broken mountain, if it was the one Eragon climbed every day, the one near his house? That would be an exciting revelation. But we don’t get that. We don’t get these little flavor texts thing into anything in the story. It’s just there. And it’s even more annoying when combined with the fact that the author has been trying to put this sense of antiquity into the story that literally isn’t there. You want some antiquity? Tie shit like this into the start of the story! That broken mountain could be where Saphira’s egg appeared to Eragon. That tower where Glaedr and Oromis were attacked by the Forsworn could’ve been the tower Eragon passed in Book Three, or the tower Tenga the Never Again Appearing In This Story lived. Instead, what antiquity do we get? Impossibly huge walls supposedly built by dwarves, random elf architecture, being told how wonderful it was when an insanely powerful cult ruled the world. Who gives a fuck? Let me see the ancient world.

 

Eragon sighs and says he knows about everything Glaedr just said, but it’s not easy. Glaedr says of course it’s not easy, because few things of worth ever are. Then Glaedr leaves Eragon alone. Eragon decides to fetch his bowl and walks over to a puddle of water nearby. He fills the bowl with water and then pictures Roran in his mind and scrys him. Roran’s walking next to Horst and Albriech, leading Snowfire. They look tired, but they still have their weapons, so Eragon automatically assumes they haven’t been captured. Then he looks in on Jordy and Serious Ass, and then he spies on Arya, but Arya’s FUCKING WARDS prevent him from seeing her. Eragon stops the spell and tosses the water back where he got it before heading back to their camp. Saphira stretches and yawns and asks how everyone’s doing. Eragon says they’re fine. He drops the bowl back onto his stuff, then gets back to trying to figure out his true name again. It goes on and on and on in this time-wasting fashion, with all the exposition you’d expect and none of it’s really important, mostly because we never actually find out what Eragon’s true name is. But he keeps trying to rearrange the pieces of the same puzzle in different patterns, hoping that something new will come from the same results every time he does it.

 

You know what that’s called? It’s called futility. Futility is doing the same thing over and over, even in different combinations, and expecting different results each time.

 

When the names began to take him more than a minute to say, he realized he was wasting his time. He needed to reexamine his basic assumptions once again. He was convinced that his mistake lay in failing to notice some fault, or in not giving enough consideration to a fault he was already aware of. People, he had observed, were rarely willing to acknowledge their own imperfections, and he knew the same was true of himself. Somehow he had to cure himself of that blindness while he yet had time. It was a blindness born of pride and self-preservation, as it allowed him to believe the best of himself as he went about his life. However, he could no longer afford to indulge in such self-deception. 

 

Actually, people are more willing to recognize their shortcomings than they are willing to fix them. Especially now, since mental health has become more, and widely, socially acceptable. In the past, people were told to “suck it up” or “grow a pair” or whatever euphemism you’d like to use, when they wanted to express their feelings and emotions. We were told to repress our anger and sadness, that the misery and depression we’re experiencing is just a phase or all in our heads. It’s not real. We were brought up to believe men don’t cry and women are “too emotional” and not to be taken seriously when they’re angry or upset. It’s only now those stigmas are changing. Beyond that, it takes a lot of effort to address these problems and a lot of work to actively change them. I hesitate to say “fix” because the reality is nobody is “broken”, so they can’t be “fixed”. It has to be change. Problems have to be addressed and worked on to be solved. It’s always a work in progress. And that’s why I really hate this true name business. It doesn’t allow change. It freezes you into a single spot, unable to change and grow. All that talk about changing one’s true name is bullshit, in my opinion, because you have to want change. If you want to stay a grumpy old bastard because you like being a grumpy old bastard, fine! Be the grumpy old bastard and yell at those kids to stay off your lawn! You don’t have to change to please anybody else! Change to make yourself happy. At the end of the day, you are the only one responsible for *your* happiness. Not your friends, not your family, not even your pet - as great a source of amusement as they can be - but you. And the first step to change is admitting to yourself that you want it.

 

And that’s what makes this paragraph bullshit. Eragon was told about his flaws, then he acknowledged them, but he isn’t making any effort to change. He isn’t making any effort to improve himself. He doesn’t want to change. He’s just like “yup, it’s there, moving on”. A true hero would not only accept his flaws, but strive to be better than those flaws, and he would try to make an effort to change. But not the Sue. The Sue is always perfect, even when they’re a murdering asshole.

 

So he decides to think and think some more, but ultimately he just keeps on failing. It’s been raining, apparently, so the rain gets heavier, and Eragon hates the sound of the rain hitting the puddles, and he hates the sound because he can’t tell if anyone’s sneaking up on them. He tells us that, aside from their first night on the island, he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of the cloaked figures and he hasn’t felt their minds. But he apparently remains conscious of their presence (despite them not being around) and feels like he and Saphira are going to be attacked at any second.

 

Except that would be exciting and we can’t have that. We’re just wasting time here.

 

The day turns to night and Eragon builds the fire and he talks about how the floor of the nesting house reflects the flames. It gleams and the shifting colors often distracts Eragon, because I swear this kid has ADD.

 

Eragon ate no dinner. He was hungry, but he was too tense for food to sit well in his stomach, and in any case, he felt that a meal would slow his thinking. Never was his mind so keen as when his belly was empty. 

 

Actually, I’m pretty sure that having an empty stomach makes thinking harder, not easier, because you’re always going to be distracted by the hunger pains. Or at least I am. I know I can’t concentrate when I’m hungry and I tend to turn into a grumpy bitch until I get some food in me. I do all my best thinking after a good meal. And coffee. I don’t like the feeling of my stomach being empty. It’s uncomfortable. I can understand being too tense to eat, because you’re more likely to throw up than keep it down, but deciding that all your best thinking comes when you’re starving? I doubt that.

 

Eragon then ultimately decides to starve himself until he finds out his true name or until they have to leave and go home, whichever comes first. And it’s a shame he just doesn’t die of starvation, because he deserves that kind of miserable fate. Hours go by, and nobody talks, although Eragon remains aware of Saphira’s thoughts and she’s aware of his. Then, just about when Eragon’s about to fall asleep, Saphira yelps and reaches out and slaps the floor with her front foot. This startles Eragon awake and he jumps to his feet and draws his sword. He thinks they’re about to be attacked and then he realizes that Saphira’s sudden yowl wasn’t to warn of enemies, but was to express her excitement. She screams that she’s “done it”, then shoots flames from her mouth. She then exclaims she knows her true name, and she speaks one single line in the ancient language. No, we don’t get to know what it is, though we get a description, but apparently her whole being can be boiled down to ONE SINGLE LINE. If that’s not a subtle way of saying she’s shallow, I don’t know what is. Anyway, after she says her true name, she begins to glow and Eragon describes her as being made of stars. Then we get that description of her true name I mentioned earlier:

 

The name was grand and majestic, but also tinged with sadness, for it named her as the last female of her kind. In the words, Eragon could hear the love and devotion she felt for him, as well as all the other traits that made up her personality. Most he recognized; a few he did not. Her flaws were as prominent as her virtues, but overall, the impression was one of fire and beauty and grandeur. 

 

Sooooo, I have to ask: when she discovers that she might not be the last female dragon in existence, does her true name change then? Who the fuck knows because it’s never addressed! It’s never addressed because of the very obvious fact that nobody knows what gender the dragons inside the eggs are, and the fact nobody asks, but on the other hand because nobody knows what gender these dragon babies are and because nobody asks, the very fact that Saphira’s the “last female of her kind” is suddenly invalidated by a huge maybe. Of course, the truth of the matter is once they get past this section and get the stupid door open once again at the very end of the book, their true names cease to matter and indeed are completely forgotten, save for that one moment where Eragon and Arya have true name sex instead of just doing the actual deed. Thus rendering this whole thing completely pointless. You might as well have just gone old school with a puzzle key Eragon had to solve, like Frodo figuring out the elvish word for friend before the Fellowship delve into the mines of Moria, or have Eragon discover some lock and key mechanism. That, at least, would be more exciting than watching Eragon whine about how his life isn’t fair and why can’t he figure out who he is. Guess what. That’s a question every person is still trying to answer, I’m sure.

 

Saphira shivers and says she knows who she is. Glaedr congratulates her and Eragon tells us Glaedr is muy impressed. Glaedr continues to proverbially kiss Saphira’s ass and tell her that her name is something to be proud of but don’t say it anymore until we’re at the rock and keep your name to yourself, by the way, now that you know it. Saphira says yes, sir and squirms a bit again. Eragon sheaths his sword and goes over to her, and they have a hugging moment, whereupon Eragon begins to cry. Saphira asks him why he’s leaking water, and he says he’s crying because he’s super lucky to be bonded with her.

 

Again, an unintentionally honest moment. Eragon is lucky to be bonded with her. Not that he ever thinks about everything that COULD HAVE happened to him if he had never met her. Like... ever.

 

Anyway, they have a chit chat because Saphira is, what else, super eager to talk about herself. Eragon listens and he’s happy to do so, buuuut he totally feels jealous that he didn’t get to figure out his true name. Because life isn’t fair. Go figure. The little brat wants and wants but never gives. Saphira eventually goes to sleep because why not, and Eragon just sits by the fire and has some self-reflection. Sometimes he talks to Glaedr, but most of the time he remains stuck in his own head. The night wears on and Eragon gets frustrated - because Eragon is a robot and has only two settings: frustration and sociopathic joy in murder - and he complains how they’re running out of time and really they should’ve left to go home the previous day, and no matter what he does, he can’t seem to sum himself up in a few words. Eventually the rain stops, so Eragon decides to go for a walk. Glaedr tells him to leave his shit behind, and Eragon asks why. Glaedr tells him he needs to face whatever he’s going to find by himself, and he can’t learn what he’s made of if he’s relying on anyone or anything to help him.

 

You know, like he has the entire fucking story.

 

Eragon says Glaedr’s advice makes sense, even though he should’ve figured out from day one how to survive on his own without convenient Deus ex Machina, but he still hesitates before he ultimately leaves his sword and dagger and armor behind. He goes to leave the camp and Glaedr warns him to be careful, but get ‘er done. There’s a slight time skip but not by much as we come back to Eragon outside, and he’s happy to see there are stars and moonlight shining through enough for him to see. He bounces on his feet as he wonders where he’s going to go for his little trip, and then he takes off on a light jog through the city. After a little while, to the surprise of absolutely no one, Eragon gets super frustrated and then he starts to run. He listens to the sound of his breathing and the sound of his running footsteps, and he keeps asking himself “Who am I?” and of course, no singing choir of angels magically appears out of nowhere and gives him any answers. Nor does a cardboard cutout of God appear in fake clouds and order him to go looking for the Holy Grail.

 

He runs and runs until his lungs hurt and then he keeps running, at least until he has to stop because his legs and his lungs hurt. Then he leans against a fountain and catches his breath. While he’s doing that, we get an exposition of the surroundings, which are mostly fuck-off huge buildings, and we’re told that this fountain is the center of some vast square-shaped courtyard, which is filled with debris larger than Eragon is tall. He pushes himself off the fountain and turns in a circle, telling us that in the distance he can hear the frogs croaking. Then he catches sight of a slab of stone several yards away from him and heads over to it. Much like Roran’s little stint with that pole back in Book Three, Eragon heaves the stone up off the ground and throws it some distance aways onto the grass. It lands and he’s happy with the thump sound it makes. He heads back to the fountain, undoes his cloak, and then starts going to each piece of debris, picking it up and throwing it away. He does this for a while, telling us that some of the debris is so big, he has to use magic to pick it up, but for the most part, he’s able to use his hands. He’s soon drenched in sweat and tells us he’d totally take off his shirt to do this work, but some of the edges of the stones he’s lifting are sharp and he doesn’t want to get cut.

 

Honey, if they’re that sharp as to cut you, they’re going to cut through your clothes, too.

 

Anyway, Eragon tells us despite his decision to keep his clothing on, he still gets a number of bruises along his shoulders and chest, and scrapes his hands a couple of times. Apparently working like this helps calm him, and it doesn’t require much thought, so he’s just free to think about who he is and whatever he might be. In the middle of this task, while he’s taking a little break, he hears a hiss and looks up to see a monster snail, this one with a shell six feet tall - and all I can think of is WTF why is there a snail with a shell that huge - coming towards him. Eragon talks to it in the ancient language, and no, we don’t get an in-canon translation of it, so we’d have to go back to the glossary to find out what Eragon told it, and I’m too lazy to do that, but basically the gist of it is he’s telling the snail to back off and he doesn’t want to deal with it.

 

The snail kind of stops and studies him for a while, then it hisses and starts to try to circle around to his left. Eragon says “oh no you don’t” and turns with it, then thinks to glance over his shoulder to make sure another snail isn’t about to chew on his testicles from behind. The original snail seems to realize that it’s right fucked, and it hisses at him some more. Eragon decides to be a jerk and teases it about sounding like a teakettle about to boil over, and the snail gets mad at him and charges him. So Eragon does this:

 

Eragon waited until the last moment, then jumped to the side and let the snalglí slide past. He laughed and slapped the back of its shell. “Not too bright, are you?” Dancing away from it, he began to taunt the creature in the ancient language, calling it all sorts of insulting but perfectly accurate names. 

 

Your hero, everyone. Murderer of Mooks, Taunter and Abuser of Wild Animals, King of Sues. Because this is the kind of behavior everyone wants to see from their hero, right? You want your hero to be an arrogant, selfish, abusive asshole, right? Remember when I said that Eragon’s revelations about himself wouldn’t matter because he himself doesn’t strive to change? Well, here’s an example. And I really find myself wishing that another monster snail would velociraptor out of fucking nowhere to chew on Eragon’s testicles. Because he deserves it. Eragon seriously pisses me off here because he comes off as nothing more than a giant bully, taking his frustrations out on an animal who literally doesn’t know any better because it’s never encountered anything like him before. It’s an innocent creature. And Eragon, who fucking knows better, abuses it anyway because he can. Because he has power and he can lord it over this creature. I wish Eragon got a comeuppance at any point in this book, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t even get his ass handed to him, even briefly. He’s either evenly matched or a Deus ex Machina comes and saves his ass.

 

The snail gets even more pissed off, or so says Eragon, and it now starts to call him nasty names for being an asshole. It also keeps charging at Eragon, and of course Eragon keeps dodging. After a bit of failure, the snail goes “yeah, fuck this” and puts some distance between him and the idiot who just won’t lay down and let himself get eaten. Eragon continues to be an asshole, taunting the snail by asking it how it can catch anything when it’s so slow. And of course, the text describes Eragon as having a mocking tone when he says these words and then he does the most childish thing of all, which is to stick out his tongue.

 

Because this sixteen-year-old self-styled “hero of the people” has the maturity of a five-year-old who just realized he can pick his nose and find treasures inside.

 

The snail hisses at him and then leaves. Eragon waits several minutes to make sure the snail is truly gone before he returns to the rubble. Then he talks to himself, saying he should call himself “Snail Vanquisher” (or Snail Abuser, because that’s literally what you did), and he goes back to cleaning up the area. He teases himself a bit by calling himself “Eragon Shadeslayer, Vanquisher of Snails” and how with that title he would “strike fear into the hearts of men wherever [he] went.” Well, you already do that and the fact that you strike fear into the hearts of the men YOU SHOULD BE PROTECTING is a pretty bad sign that you aren’t the hero you quite believe yourself to be.

 

Anyway, now it’s the deepest part of the night when he finally finishes cleaning up the courtyard. Everything hurts, he’s hungry and cold and tired, and he’s got quite a few scrapes on his hands and wrists. He’s now by the northeast corner of the courtyard. He tells us to the north is an immense hall that has seen better days. All that remains of this building are a portion of the back walls and an ivy-covered pillar where the entryway had been. He stares at the pillar for a while, and tells us that there’s a cluster of multi-colored stars shining through the cloud-cover. He feels attracted to these stars for some reason, and decides that they signify something important he should be aware of.

 

And in case you’re wondering, no, these stars have nothing to do with anything.

 

Anyway, Eragon heads over to the pillar and starts climbing up to the top. The pillar is three hundred feet tall, but it feels taller to Eragon as he gets further away from the ground, and he says he’s being reckless and he knows it. I mean, it’s not exactly reckless. It isn’t like he’s weak from hunger and exertion and oh. Yes he is. He shouldn’t have the strength to climb this pillar. And yet he does, and it doesn’t matter if he’s tired and hungry, it isn’t like he misses a handhold and starts to fall and has to catch himself. He’s perfectly safe. His only moment of “oh no danger Will Robinson!” comes when he reaches the halfway mark and the vines get thinner and peel away when he puts his full weight on them. After that he’s a little more careful, but it means nothing, because it isn’t like there’s any tension in this scene. He tells us his grip has almost given out by the time he reaches the top, but hey, the top of the pillar is intact and he can sit on it with room to spare. So now he can have a little rest.

 

He can see the ruined city all around him, and he can also see the faint light from the angler fish frogs, and gasp Eragon suddenly has a revelation about the name of the frogs and to the surprise of absolutely no one, he calls them “angler frogs” in the ancient language. He’s certain that “angler frogs” are their name, and he just automatically knows he’s right because the “words seemed to fit like a key in a lock”. Because it’s just That Easy! How Convenient!

 

Then his gaze shifts to the cluster of stars and decides to have a meditation. He describes the cold, his hunger, and his exhaustion give him a strange sense of clarity and I’m sitting here like how because when I’m all these things I can barely think about anything besides getting warm, getting food, and sleeping. But then Eragon isn’t human, so I guess he gets to skip all these things? Anyway, he starts having an out-of-body experience. As he sits there, he thinks of more names, but none of them fit him. He also tells us that his failures don’t upset him, because he’s thinking too clearly now for any setback he experiences to make him upset. Right... Anyway, he thinks about how he can describe himself in just a few words, and he just continues to stare and ponder the stars.

 

Have we wasted enough time yet? No? Okay, continuing on then.

 

Three shadows fly across the sky and land on the building to his left. It’s those shadow-owls again. One of the three has a snack in its talons. Eragon watches the birds for a while, and they watch him, but ultimately they decide he’s boring so they fly off west somewhere. Now it’s almost dawn, Eragon sees the morning star, and now Eragon finally asks himself the all important question of “What do I want?” And we’re told that, up until this very moment in time, Eragon hasn’t bothered to ask himself that question. Which makes a lot of sense because Eragon is nothing but a puppet, dancing to everyone else’s tune. He isn’t a person, he isn’t an individual with his own wants and dreams and desires. He’s a blank slate that absorbs everything everyone else wants him to be, he imitates and copies until it’s “too hard” for him to cope with those imitations, and even then, he has never been his own person. He’s never been allowed to develop into his own person. Now we’re addressing that fact. So Eragon says he knows for sure he wants to overthrow Galby, but he doesn’t say why, so therefore he doesn’t have much of an opinion for that beyond the “Galby is evil” conversation from Book Two. He also wonders that if they succeed, then what? Apparently he’s thought that, ever since he and Saphira left the valley, they’d return one day. Which is a lie. Eragon never once thought that. Unless the plot required it, Eragon never thought about home. But, here and now, finally, he decides that no, he really doesn’t want to go back home.

 

He had grown up in Palancar Valley, and he would always consider it home. But what was left there for him or Saphira? Carvahall was destroyed, and even if the villagers rebuilt it someday, the town would never be the same. Besides, most of the friends he and Saphira had made lived elsewhere, and the two of them had obligations to the various races of Alagaësia—obligations that they could not ignore. And after all the things they had done and seen, he could not imagine that either of them would be content to live in such an ordinary, isolated place. 

 

Oh, what obligations are those, pray tell? Because I don’t remember you doing anything remotely obligatory for any race. Especially not the humans, whose lives you literally upend for the selfish whims of a girl who thinks she can be a good ruler but has proven time and time again she’s anything but. Literally, Eragon just fucks off to god knows where at the end of the story, abandoning any and all responsibilities to the land and its people. But, you might argue, he freed the slaves! He gave the dwarves and Urgals the ability to become Riders! He freed the land from oppression and torment! He created the Fantasy Olympics! Yes, all that’s true, but Eragon doesn’t do anything for the slaves when he frees them; he literally tells them “you’re free now good luck” and leaves; he doesn’t bother to stay around to help the dwarves and Urgals that might become Riders, instead leaving that to Arya; what oppression and torment are you talking about, exactly? Nasuada forces human magic users to join basically what could be construed as a registry and anyone who refuses gets her gestapo sent after them, and it’s only the humans who have to do this. She also likely has to raise taxes to build back the economy and everything that got destroyed, or she enslaves more people under the guise of “prisoners of war” who now have to labor to “pay” for their crime of being forced to fight on Galby’s side (or really, defy the Varden in some way); and as far as the Fantasy Olympics, as far as I remember, he only makes this offer to the Urgals. He doesn’t run it by any other race and ask if they want to participate. Which, honestly, might cause problems because I don’t see an ordinary human being able to survive a bear hug from an Urgal who wants to impress the ladies. 

 

On the other hand, I do like this revelation, because it’s true. Eragon has seen too much to feel content going back to his podunk little village in the middle of nowhere and raising crops and cows and whatever else. He’s seen too much, done too much. He’d get bored. And you know he would get bored. He could never be content just being a farmer anymore. The problem, though, is that he’d get bored because he isn’t killing people. He isn’t getting the adoration and Sue praise he wants. He’d just be ordinary again. And that he wouldn’t be able to stand. That fact is made apparent in the WormFork book, because Eragon does nothing but whine and complain about how bored he is there, doing all that paperwork. This kid is never happy, I swear.

 

He thinks about how “the sky is hollow and the world is round”, not that that has anything to do with anything, and then thinks this:

 

Even if they did return, what would they do? Raise cows and farm wheat? He had no desire to eke out a living from the land as his family had during his childhood. He and Saphira were a Rider and dragon; their doom and their destiny was to fly at the forefront of history, not to sit before a fire and grow fat and lazy. 

 

Well, that’s a little arrogant of you, isn’t it? At this point, I’d think Eragon would be tired of fighting and killing (you know, like he constantly claims) and would want somewhere he could go where he could be left alone and have some peace. That he’d be done trying to change the world. Instead, what he really wants is, as I said before, the Sue praise and adoration of people. If he’s constantly getting attention, he feels fulfilled. The irony of this is that growing fat and lazy is exactly what happens. He runs off after installing another tyrant on the throne and then complains about all the paperwork he has to do until someone suggests he sit for story time like he’s a kindergartner. The fact is he doesn’t have to be a farmer if he goes back. He could just help rebuild what was destroyed, ultimately, because of him. He could take some responsibility. Not that he ever does, because somehow none of this is his fault. Even if he didn’t want to stay, having a place to go back to would do wonders for his loneliness. Remember how he was complaining that he was going to outlive his family? He doesn’t seem to be complaining about that now, and, if I remember right, he even suggests to Nasuada that through magic he could make her immortal. So he could make the same offer to Roran and Katrina, but he doesn’t, of course. Even if I’m misremembering the whole “use magic to make someone immortal” thing, don’t you think Eragon would want to spend as much time as possible with the family he’s never going to see again? At some point, he’d have to remove himself from the village because everyone he knew would end up dying, and while he could point at someone and say “I knew your x-times great grandfather”, that would start to creep people out. He would have to leave. He’d only find sanctuary among the elves at some point, too. But apparently none of this matters. Maybe I think too much and too deeply. Especially with these characters who are shallower than a baby pool.

 

Then he thinks about Arya and how if he and Saphira live in Palancar Valley full time, he’ll never get to see her. Which isn’t remotely true, but considering Eragon always uses his little brain when it comes to Arya, it might as well be. But it’s also nice to see that Eragon’s learned nothing from his whole “see Arya as a person” arc. Anyway, Eragon finally admits that he doesn’t want to go back and he feels a cold tingle crawling down his spine. He says he’s always known that he’s changed since he, Brom, and Saphira set out to track down the Ra’zac, but he clung to the belief that he was still the same person. Now the moron finally realizes that he isn’t the same kid who set out all those months ago. He isn’t that kid anymore. He doesn’t look like him, doesn’t act like him (well, that’s debatable), and he doesn’t want the same things now as he did then. He takes a breath and releases it and feels a truth sink into his bones. He says aloud that he wasn’t who he was. Then dawn breaks over the island and Eragon suddenly thinks of a name, a name he hasn’t thought of before of course, and suddenly he’s so sure of himself now. He says the name, and his body seems to vibrate, like if Saphira came over and hit the pillar he’s sitting on.

 

Pretty sure if she did that, the pillar would fall. Just saying.

 

Anyway, he gasps and finds himself both laughing and crying. He’s laughing because he’s succeeded and is super happy and he’s crying because every failure, every mistake, is now obvious to him and he can’t delude himself anymore. And if you’re expecting this to carry over and make him a better person, I’ve got some snake oil you might be interested in. Eragon says he isn’t who he was, but he knows who he is, and then we get a small paragraph about his true name, and if you’re wondering what it is, so am I, because his name - like Saphira’s - is never written out.

 

The name, his true name, was weaker and more flawed than he would have liked, and he hated himself for that, but there was also much to admire within it, and the more he thought about it, the more he was able to accept the true nature of his self. He was not the best person in the world, but neither was he the worst. 

 

Says you. This kid murdered a boy his age or a little older or younger than himself in cold blood. He murdered soldiers while laughing and taking joy in the fact they couldn’t touch him. He contemplated genocide against an entire race of people because he didn’t like them, and also considered visiting genocide upon an entire dwarven clan because they were mean to him. He’s selfish and self-centered. He treats his bonded partner as a prop and mistreats a little girl, whom he cursed to a life of pain. He abused a helpless, blind, wounded, unarmed old man because he could and because he had the power, and his arrogant excuse was that his position afforded him the right to abuse this man rather than seek justice from an impartial party. He destroyed, maimed, murdered, abused, and otherwise did evil things to the entire population and then doesn’t bother to stick around to help out everything back together. He even wimps out when Nasuada demands he heads up her magic gestapo! I’d say he’s definitely one of the worst people in this book. I’d say Roran holds the title as the worst person in the book, with Nas a close second, and Eragon bringing up third place. And I say that only because at the very least Nasuada and Eragon didn’t on-screen murder a little girl and threaten another with physical and sexual abuse if she didn’t comply with what they wanted.

 

Eragon says he won’t give up. He then tells us that he takes comfort in the fact that his identity isn’t set in stone. He can improve himself if he wants to. Key words - if he wants to. Which he doesn’t. Even though he swears to himself that he would be better in the future, even though it’s going to be so hard. Eragon, stop lying to us. You don’t change. You’ll never change.

 

Also, I enjoy how Eragon says he can improve himself and change his true name, but he didn’t afford that same thought to Murtagh and Thorn. He jumped straight into “let me kill you!” when they first showed up, then switched to “you can save yourselves if you just change your true name, but let us kill you!”, and then switched to “let’s save them but kill them if we have no choice”. Mm. I love the smell of hypocrites. Kind of like browned butter. Or burnt bacon.

 

Anyway, Eragon is still laughing and crying and he tries to hug the sky. Eventually he stops crying and laughter and he just feels calm and happy and resigned. Despite Glaedr’s warning not to, Eragon says his true name again, and shivers because of it. Still trying to hug the sky, Eragon stands up on the pillar and jumps to his death! Oh no! No, I’m kidding. He really does jump from the top of this 300-foot tall pillar, but just before he hits the ground he uses magic to stop himself and gently land on the ground with no more effort like he was stepping down stairs. He goes back to the fountain and grabs his cloak, and then runs back to the campsite because he’s super eager to tell Saphira and Glaedr his true name.

Comments

[pangolin20]

At least I didn’t land on Brisingr, he thought as he pried scales of cold mud from his leggings.
Whereupon Brisingr burst into flames, burning Eragon severely, forcing him, Glaedr and Saphira to return to land as fast as possible, thus missing the Eldunarí from the Vault of Souls, and being defeated and enslaved by Galbatorix.
But no...
For the first time in the entire series, Eragon says that he “always” felt like Angela could see right through him and understand everything about him.
She probably understands him so well because in most respects, other than the whining, she is exactly like him. Just as cruel, arrogant, murderous and such.

[ignoresandra]

And amazingly enough, his sword does not catch on fire as it should have done, what with him saying “Brisingr” even in his mind. It’s still the ancient language, right? So shouldn’t the sword have erupted into flames?

I would actually like it if the sword did burst into flames every time he said or thought "Brisingr" in its presence. It'd honestly be really funny if the sword set fire to so many of his friends and possessions that he was like "This isn't worth it at all, I regret making such a big deal over my special sue sword".

Because those things could eat Saphira.

But if they ate Saphira, this story would be over. I'm on team frog.

And it still bothers the hell out of me that a person’s entire being, entire identity, can be spelled out in a few words.

I think that the existence of true names (for people) in Paolini's writing has less to do with any thought he put into it himself and more to do with where he's getting the stuff he's ripping off. True Names are a big deal in certain mythologies and sets of folklore - Irish immediately comes to mind. It wouldn't surprise me if he thought the idea was cool and incorporated it without thinking of the implications on the story or how to justify it or really anything he could really play with when it comes to true names. There's writers who use true names to legitimize trans people, for instance, as well as writers who have it that the idea of there being a true name is a lie, and other people who've done the work to play with this concept. Paolini does none of it, which is one of the reasons it rings so flat.

Good lord, what kind of building code standards did the Riders have to equate a three-story tall building to “absolutely useless”?

"No it needs to be bigger!"

"Jorun, I realize your wife left you, but-"

"Shhhh. Big. Ger. Now."

Or, you know, you could fix the problem. Get rid of the vines and fix the roof?

This would actually be a good metaphor for the process of figuring out who you are and putting your mental house in order. Sometimes sitting around puzzling over something doesn't help, and you can think of something interesting just by doing. Eragon should know this as a poor farm boy, but god forbid he actually do something. It'd also justify, from a literary standpoint, why even mention in the story that they moved to a building.

And Saphira just stays quiet about it for some reason.

A reason that Saphira stays quiet is that they're joined by an unbreakable magical bond that seems to cause extreme discomfort (To Saphira, at least) if they're separated. Saphira is literally unable to get away from Eragon, to get enough distance to clear her head (Even if she gets distance, it doesn't matter because the magic causes her such discomfort it nearly drives her to distraction) or to make a serious threat/promise to leave him which is the only thing that'd stand a chance of getting through to him and making him work on the ways he takes her for granted and basically abuses her. Saphira's, arguably, trapped in the stickiest form of abusive relationship.

[pangolin20]

I'm on team frog.
Me too.

As for true names, it seems really unlikely you could capture someone's true name with just some words or even sentences. An identity is just way too complex for that. I think a true name would rather be like an impression of someone, a whole set of feelings and thoughts and experiences that capture someone's identity. It would be less easy to use than just words, but it would be much more complete.

[epistler]

At least I didn’t land on Brisingr, he thought as he pried scales of cold mud from his leggings.

Why the hell is the mud already dry if he only just landed in it??

And amazingly enough, his sword does not catch on fire as it should have done, what with him saying “Brisingr” even in his mind. It’s still the ancient language, right? So shouldn’t the sword have erupted into flames?

And then there's the fact that the whole flaming sword thing is %100 pure triple distilled pointless. It doesn't change anything, or play any role in the plot. He barely even uses it! Instead it's just a stupid random detail Paolini threw in because his psychotic dad thought it was cool.

Then of course we have the whole thing about Ergy and Saphira discovering their True Names. The main problem I have with it other than how ridiculously short the timeframe is is that this is just not how one reaches that level of self-understanding. Coming to truly understand yourself takes time, and genuine life experience which means suffering - and I mean REAL suffering, not a heap of spoilt brat whining because dinner was cold or the pretty girl said no to a date. And above all it requires being honest with yourself.

Eragon does none of this. He doesn't do any genuine soul-searching. He isn't honest with himself about his shortcomings, because he instantly dismisses them as no big deal rather than allowing himself to see how his flaws have affected his behaviour (for example his arrogance and violent tendencies causing him to kill people when it was completely unnecessary), which could (and should) have led to a desire to actually improve on himself and become a better person. If you merely glance at your flaws before shrugging them off forever, then it means you haven't learned a damn thing.
And, of course, Eragon has never really suffered - or at least he hasn't learned from what he has suffered. Losing Garrow and Brom didn't teach him anything about empathy, or how short life is. Losing his home didn't give him any sympathy or insight toward the refugees this idiotic war he's fighting have created (and nor has his own grief and loss given him any empathy toward the widows and orphans the Varden are likewise leaving in their wake). Learning about different cultures and races hasn't broadened his horizons - he's as narrow-minded and arrogantly judgemental as ever. Nor have the so-called privations of war taught him a damn thing about stoicism or self-sacrifice - he still demands and expects comfort and luxury as he wants it, when he wants it, and whines like a toddler when he doesn't get it. And nor has he learned anything about how to be humble and unselfish, because as you say he gets miserable and sulky unless he's surrounded by people giving him free shit and singing his praises.

In short, Eragon hasn't changed because he hasn't learned, and that is clearly never going to happen. This whole "I have reached enlightenment!" bullshit Paolini is trying to spin in this chapter is so laughable it's pathetic.

[torylltales]

That's also the reason Paolini's protagonists are still just as spoiled and self-centred in his latest book (To Sleep) as in his first book. And why his writing has barely improved, from terrible to bland. And why even after 20 years of writing (sorry, 'being a published author') he still can't escape from the "spoiled self-insert is given lots of cool gifts and powers without needing to work for them" wish-fulfilment model.

Paolini has grown as a writer just as much as Eragon has grown as a character.

[epistler]

Ah yes, and then there's the part where you, as the author, need to be honest with yourself before you can write good character development or indeed good anything. I mean okay Paolini here acknowledges that Eragon is arrogant and petulant and has anger problems, but you definitely don't get the impression he actually thought about it, or any of the implications involved. There's just no insight here at all.

[epistler]

It means you have to look objectively at what you've written and how people are responding to it. If multiple people all point out the same thing, then you have to take that on board and do something about it. Paolini for example responds to common criticisms of his writing (the plagiarism, the endless dropped plot threads, the horrible protagonist) by laughing it off or making excuses. Hence he hasn't learned anything from those mistakes because he refused to recognise them for what they were, and therefore he hasn't gotten any better even after all this time. If he actually took the accusations of Eragon being an arrogant bloodthirsty shithead seriously, then he could have made it an acknowledged flaw (rather than having him dismiss it while everyone continues to kiss his Sue ass)and then introduced some genuine character development as a result (eg Eragon realises he's an awful person and does something about it, or there's a plot twist where it turns out Eragon was always supposed to be a bad person and the story isn't a heroic saga after all but actually the tale of a villain's rise to power).

[epistler]

How come nobody has sued him yet for this?.

Probably because he ripped off older material. If he'd done it with a contemporary who he was directly rivalling for sales, (like this fool did https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/how-kaavya-viswanathan-got-charged-with-plagiarism/231043 ) he probably would have been taken to court. The old established classics don't really have much to lose, and very little to gain from suing some idiot whose books will probably be forgotten sooner or later.

[epistler]

Holly molly.

It's so cute how you say that instead of "holy moly". ^_^

Didn't something like it happen to Jk as well, but ended in nothing?.

It certainly did, and it's a pretty hilarious story which I covered right here! https://antishurtugal-reborn.dreamwidth.org/154961.html

[epistler]

It was because of something about the muggles, some nonsense like that.

Yup. This woman claimed Rowling stole the word from her. I remember hearing about it on the radio back in the day. Turns out said woman was a liar.

Dunno, but nowadays if you do it you are in trouble. Right?.

Well, I don't know if you'd be eligible for a plagiarism case, but people would definitely complain if only because the word has just become far too recognisable these days to appear in anything else without being really distracting.

btw I started Sword and Shadow, and it is great. I envy your writing and style, not gonna lie.

Aw, thanks! I had a lot of fun writing it.

It is great and simple, flawless in my opinion.

Well, I don't know about flawless but I'll definitely agree on simple. I've always believed in writing in a way that's straightforward and only as complex as it needs to be, with none of that dancing around with fancy language and metaphors and such when you can just come out and say it.
By which I mean that someone like Paolini might write something like "the swordblade contained the hues of a frozen glacier high in the ancient mountains of the Spine", but I would stick with "the sword's blade was blue-grey and shone like ice".

[epistler]

Nah, I haven't published anything yet and won't do until I am ready.

I meant "you" in the figurative sense.

And when Harry became famous in my country, like Artemis, Percy Jackson and the Hunger Games, I never heard about it.

Can I ask what country that is?

[epistler]

I don't want to sound rude or anything, but no.

Ah, fair enough. Just a bit of idle curiosity on my part - no need to answer if you don't want to. :)

[snarkbotanya]

OK, so... I don't want to come off as presumptuous, but since you mentioned things moving to your country, would I be correct in assuming that you're not a native English speaker? Because if that's the case, I might be able to give some advice about how to improve your written English with that in mind. I actually teach English as a foreign language as a job, so I have experience with this.

[snarkbotanya]

OK, so a couple pieces of advice I'd give here, and in general would be to be careful with contractions and compound words.

For contractions, you should be especially careful when not contracting causes you to lose a verb or a pronoun as in these cases:

that for sure
is getting better

Both of these need contractions ("that's" and "it's," respectively), but differ in which component is missing. For the first, remember that English really hates leaving out the verb "to be." For the second... this is an issue I see a lot in students who speak Latin languages, or any other language where the verbs conjugate based on person and number. I don't know if your native language conjugates that way, but if it does, it's worth noting that English verbs can't identify the subject like that, so you really need a subject noun or pronoun.

For compound words and phrases, the advice I would give is remember to Google the compounded version, because that will typically tell you whether you've compounded words that don't like to be compounded, used a compound that means something different than the separate words you wanted to use, missed a hyphen, etc. A couple examples here would be...

straight up weird
getting better everyday

"Straight-up" takes a hyphen when it's used as an adjective. You will see it without the hyphen, but in those cases it's being used as an adverb, e.g. "pointing straight up."

"Every day" means exactly what it sounds like it does, but "everyday" the compound is actually a different thing entirely: it's an adjective meaning "ordinary."


I should note that one thing I do like is that you are using some idioms. Lack of hyphenation aside, "straight up weird" does show that you understand the term "straight-up" as meaning "completely" or "wholly." You also used "true that," which is an ungrammatical yet very commonly used phrase in casual English. You wouldn't want to use it in prose, but it does add a nice bit of flair to casual conversation. Just remember to check the spelling/phrasing before using an idiom if you're not sure about it, or you might end up writing "holy moly" with too many L's.

English is a tough language, but keep practicing and you will indeed get better every day.

[pangolin20]

The name, his true name, was weaker and more flawed than he would have liked, and he hated himself for that, but there was also much to admire within it, and the more he thought about it, the more he was able to accept the true nature of his self. He was not the best person in the world, but neither was he the worst.
Don't forget he visited genocide upon the Ra'zac and burned a baby alive.

[epistler]

and burned a baby alive.

While enjoying the sound of the thing screaming in agony, no less.

[pangolin20]

I know. He is one of the worst characters I've ever read, and we are supposed to like him.

[epistler]

It's downright offensive if you ask me. I can't name a single likeable trait that he actually has. Not one.

[epistler]

I mean really - pursuing this thought further - he's not brave, he's not smart, he's not witty or insightful, he's not kind-hearted and compassionate (LOLNO), he's not noble or honourable in any way shape or form, he's not charismatic, he's not intelligent, he's not creative... all he is is cruel, selfish, dishonest, power-hungry, unimaginative, pig-ignorant, and stupid as hell. Of all the awful characters I've ever encountered in fiction, he very easily takes the prize as the most worthless of the lot.

[pangolin20]

Exactly. Some villains can be as worse, but they are more bearable, because they have at least some interesting trait about them. Eragon...for all he adds to the story, he could be cut out.

[epistler]

That's very true. He's supposed to be the hero but he spends something like 90% of the series doing absolutely nothing. Nothing relevant, anyway. In the scheme of things Saphira is way more important, and once he's played his role of getting her to hatch Eragon is a useless lump of superfluous fat. He's not even the leader of the so-called heroic resistance. The only role he plays in the war is acting as the Varden's tank while other people are calling all the shots.

[redwyvernheart]

So I did find this to be one of the more interesting chapters from the green book. Still I was disappointed to death that no one’s true name was revealed. At time I thought the author couldn’t come up with a true name for his characters and that the concept was bs. I tried to figure out my true name and the true names of my friends/family. I even went so far as to try to ask coworkers if they could figure out theirs or if they thought it was possible. It wasn’t until Snarkbotanya figured out some of the characters true names that I realized it could be done. I was able to figure out my true name and the name of my dragon. It wasn’t really what I expected not as dark as I thought it would be but as eragon describe I felt happy in finding it but also very sad. But as I formed the phase I realized that’s it. It’s what my true name would be.