Found Family Failure
May. 23rd, 2025 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
epistler posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
antishurtugal_reborn Another thing I've been thinking about today is an aspect of To Sleep which hasn't been discussed as much as it could be, which is what was obviously supposed to be the "heart" of the story. Namely, the crew of the Wallfish and Kira's relationship with them.
What we got was a group of seven characters (LOL SYMBOLISM!! THIS MEANS SOMETHING SOMEHOW!) who fit into one or more of the following categories
And, of course, the newt puns. Which we will also not be discussing ever again. During our sporking everyone pretty much just dismissed all this crap as random stupid details we don't care about. Which is completely understandable.
But when you put all of this together and also factor in the fact that their ship mind is "LOL INSANE", it's painfully obvious what Paolini was going for. It's just that he missed the mark so spectacularly that I for one didn't even pick up on it until now. The dude was trying to make the Wallfish and its crew that thing which is always bad news in his hands.
QUIRKY.
All these trappings are supposed to be an indication as to what loveable misfits these people are so of course poor bereaved, traumatised Kiragon finds healing and friendship among them as they become the best of friends through all their adventures together! I mean obviously, right.
Of course, both the quirky lovableness and the attempts at writing a "found family" theme failed so spectacularly that it's really not surprising that I for one didn't even really pick up on it that Paolini attempted it in the first place. Why is pretty obvious. He still can't write characters who feel like human beings, let alone characters who are likeable, or eccentric without coming across as really annoying. This goes hand in hand with his further inability to write character development - his characters do not grow as people, no matter what they go through. Trig for example starts out as a tactless, greedy asshole. By the end of the book he's... a tactless, greedy asshole. Even given that he's a kid, he hasn't done any growing up at all. Even Kiragon (who is QUIRKY because she plays the concertina) doesn't change. She's still the same selfish whiny jerk she started out as.
He can't write believable friendships either, or romantic relationships. Case in point, Kiragon just randomly hooks up with Falcon Punch and then the relationship gets dropped for the entire rest of the book because Paolini clearly had no idea where to go next with it. There's no proper depiction of her getting to know everyone and them getting to know and like her. Instead they just suddenly like her a lot - for what reason, we have no idea. How did they suddenly jump to "we'd die for Kiragon!"? They just did. This despite the fact that she LIED to them about the Limp Dick suit, threw their entire mission into chaos, proved to be unstable and extremely dangerous, and then dragged them into this whole war. A war she (if indirectly, but it's still her fault for being a fame-hungry idiot) caused. She is never held accountable by them for any of this. She never has to square it with them before they're ready to move on and be pals. Nor does she do anything to demonstrate that she's a nice person they'd even want to be friends with, and I'm not counting rescuing Trig.
That all this falls so spectacularly flat is a major reason why the book is so fucking boring and soulless. So much of the tedious fluff we complained about was words wasted on trying to get us to know and love these idiots and get really invested in their bonds of everlasting friendship. Which Kiragon then just ditches by leaving them anyway, giving us what was probably intended to be a bittersweet ending. Which didn't work for us because, once again, we didn't fucking care.
What we got was a group of seven characters (LOL SYMBOLISM!! THIS MEANS SOMETHING SOMEHOW!) who fit into one or more of the following categories
- Blatant racial stereotype
- No personality
- Boring
- Attempted comic relief who isn't funny
- Insufferable jerk
And, of course, the newt puns. Which we will also not be discussing ever again. During our sporking everyone pretty much just dismissed all this crap as random stupid details we don't care about. Which is completely understandable.
But when you put all of this together and also factor in the fact that their ship mind is "LOL INSANE", it's painfully obvious what Paolini was going for. It's just that he missed the mark so spectacularly that I for one didn't even pick up on it until now. The dude was trying to make the Wallfish and its crew that thing which is always bad news in his hands.
QUIRKY.
All these trappings are supposed to be an indication as to what loveable misfits these people are so of course poor bereaved, traumatised Kiragon finds healing and friendship among them as they become the best of friends through all their adventures together! I mean obviously, right.
Of course, both the quirky lovableness and the attempts at writing a "found family" theme failed so spectacularly that it's really not surprising that I for one didn't even really pick up on it that Paolini attempted it in the first place. Why is pretty obvious. He still can't write characters who feel like human beings, let alone characters who are likeable, or eccentric without coming across as really annoying. This goes hand in hand with his further inability to write character development - his characters do not grow as people, no matter what they go through. Trig for example starts out as a tactless, greedy asshole. By the end of the book he's... a tactless, greedy asshole. Even given that he's a kid, he hasn't done any growing up at all. Even Kiragon (who is QUIRKY because she plays the concertina) doesn't change. She's still the same selfish whiny jerk she started out as.
He can't write believable friendships either, or romantic relationships. Case in point, Kiragon just randomly hooks up with Falcon Punch and then the relationship gets dropped for the entire rest of the book because Paolini clearly had no idea where to go next with it. There's no proper depiction of her getting to know everyone and them getting to know and like her. Instead they just suddenly like her a lot - for what reason, we have no idea. How did they suddenly jump to "we'd die for Kiragon!"? They just did. This despite the fact that she LIED to them about the Limp Dick suit, threw their entire mission into chaos, proved to be unstable and extremely dangerous, and then dragged them into this whole war. A war she (if indirectly, but it's still her fault for being a fame-hungry idiot) caused. She is never held accountable by them for any of this. She never has to square it with them before they're ready to move on and be pals. Nor does she do anything to demonstrate that she's a nice person they'd even want to be friends with, and I'm not counting rescuing Trig.
That all this falls so spectacularly flat is a major reason why the book is so fucking boring and soulless. So much of the tedious fluff we complained about was words wasted on trying to get us to know and love these idiots and get really invested in their bonds of everlasting friendship. Which Kiragon then just ditches by leaving them anyway, giving us what was probably intended to be a bittersweet ending. Which didn't work for us because, once again, we didn't fucking care.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-25 08:17 pm (UTC)(I do like Francine a bit better than Francesca as a name, I've got to say.)
Yeah, it comes across rather perfunctory. The characters could be interesting enough, and having Kira interact with them is a good way to bring potential out of them, but family really isn't the way to go about doing that, and so when Paolini does try to do it that way, it comes out quite wrong (and his absolute lack of understanding of how to do so doesn't help, either). He presumably copied this aspect from some other work and tried to apply it here, but the mould doesn't fit on someone with motivations that are often quite abstract and not very personal, and filling the mould up with foam doesn't hide that fact. I'd just have liked to see more of Kira bonding with people over a shared appreciation of life or something; that'd fit her character better.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-26 06:21 am (UTC)Like Eragon, Kiragon HAS no personal goals as soon as marrying Alanb0t is off the table. She's such an empty shell of a nothing character.
That's the thing, isn't it? Because Kiragon has no interests or anything she has a special love for, there's nothing for them to bond over. Like if she finds out Sparrow loves old movies and she also loves old movies so they have a great time talking about the career of classic 20th century actor Bruce Willis.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-26 05:20 pm (UTC)If Paolini'd actually wanted her to bond with them over mutual interests, he could easily have retconned some in, not to mention that he could have her bond about plants or something, so I think that he didn't care to do that.