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antishurtugal_reborn2025-06-10 06:40 pm
epistler) wrote in antishurtugal_reborn2025-06-10 06:40 pm
Entry tags:
Some Thoughts On Falconi
It is FREEZING here and my heater doesn't reach the bedroom. I am a very chilly Epistler right now.
Anyway, I've been re-reading our spork of To Toss In A Bin of Garbage and had some thoughts about the character of Falconi and also his "relationship" with Kiragon.
To begin with, I don't think that until now I've picked up on just how much of a terrible person this guy is. He caused his sister's death and his view on that is "eh, I shouldn't have to FEEL BAD ABOUT IT because that's not fair to ME". He extorts a bunch of refugees for profit in the middle of a war - in other words he's no better than those scum in the real world who take desperate people for every penny they've got, then dump them on a leaky boat in the middle of the ocean where a whole lot of them drown (and then the country they hoped to find safety in condemns the victims as "criminals" because they didn't come over there "in the correct way", but that's neither here nor there fuck the government and fuck Scott Morrison he can shove that award for "leadership" up his arse). Not only that but he also endangers all their lives and essentially says "screw you I'm changing course without consulting you because this weirdo I just met said there would be more money in it for me".
He also essentially kidnapped Greg after they found his crashed ship, and installed the guy in the Edible Snail despite his being incredibly unstable - something Falconi subsequently either ignores or mocks. He's an ass to his crew in general. He's an ass to Kiragon (more on this later).
He's also, in quite a noteworthy fashion, a complete dolt who makes some of the worst decisions I've ever seen. The most obvious of those would be choosing to trust Kiragon so much that he's prepared to drop everything just to do what she wants at no benefit to himself or anyone except her, putting the lives of the crew he supposedly loves so much in danger in the process (so much so that two of them nearly die outright). He has no motivation for getting involved in the war other than "Kiragon says so", and is even stupid enough to agree to the whole Staff of Blue sidequest which is launched on the basis of no evidence other than, once again, Kiragon says so, gets Trig the Annoying shot in the neck, and costs a bunch of lives. Not to mention that it unleashes the Seeker, which would have been a big deal if Paolini was any good at following through on fucking anything. And there's never any convincing reason as to what causes him to have a change of heart and start Fighting The Good Fight instead of only being out for himself and (allegedly) his crew. We don't even know when that supposedly happened.
Why didn't he get super pissed at Kiragon... well, EVER? She's the reason all this happened, from the war to the maiming of Sparrow to Trig's near-death - the latter all for the sake of a superweapon that they didn't even get, so the kid copped it for no gain at all.
Instead he decides to harass her, to the point of physically grabbing her when she says no to spending some time with him. Then he sexually assaults her by forcing a kiss on her. Then, shudder... they ultimately have TEH SECKS.
This is something else that really bothers me, other than how fucking CREEPY and badly written the sex scene was. It's the lack of a proper lead-up to this moment. Why is he even interested in her to begin with? She has a completely miserable personality when she has a personality at all, she's done nothing but make everything worse since the moment she showed up, she actively and deliberately endangered everyone's lives by knowingly walking around them with a murderous alien parasite on her which could be contagious on top of everything else... yet Falconi, who supposedly loves his crew so much, doesn't even CARE? And indeed is prepared to have SEX with that thing? Isn't he at least worried about his own safety? Forget STIs; sticking his dick in that parasite could have done anything to him.
And then having inflicted that horrorshow that should never have happened on us, Paolini just... drops it for the rest of the book. Are they supposed to be in love now? We never find out. Did he think throwing in some casual sex would make this thing more "mature"?
There's one final thing about Falconi that bugs me. Let's see now...
1. He's hyped up to be a Super Kewl badass space bastard with his stupid grenade launcher that has a name
2. He's repeatedly described as "dark" and/or "hairy"
3. He Gets The Girl for no reason
4. He has an Italian surname. One that ends in "i" no less.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure this asshole is yet another self insert. He gets WAY more description than the freaking main character. Among other things.
Anyway, I've been re-reading our spork of To Toss In A Bin of Garbage and had some thoughts about the character of Falconi and also his "relationship" with Kiragon.
To begin with, I don't think that until now I've picked up on just how much of a terrible person this guy is. He caused his sister's death and his view on that is "eh, I shouldn't have to FEEL BAD ABOUT IT because that's not fair to ME". He extorts a bunch of refugees for profit in the middle of a war - in other words he's no better than those scum in the real world who take desperate people for every penny they've got, then dump them on a leaky boat in the middle of the ocean where a whole lot of them drown (and then the country they hoped to find safety in condemns the victims as "criminals" because they didn't come over there "in the correct way", but that's neither here nor there fuck the government and fuck Scott Morrison he can shove that award for "leadership" up his arse). Not only that but he also endangers all their lives and essentially says "screw you I'm changing course without consulting you because this weirdo I just met said there would be more money in it for me".
He also essentially kidnapped Greg after they found his crashed ship, and installed the guy in the Edible Snail despite his being incredibly unstable - something Falconi subsequently either ignores or mocks. He's an ass to his crew in general. He's an ass to Kiragon (more on this later).
He's also, in quite a noteworthy fashion, a complete dolt who makes some of the worst decisions I've ever seen. The most obvious of those would be choosing to trust Kiragon so much that he's prepared to drop everything just to do what she wants at no benefit to himself or anyone except her, putting the lives of the crew he supposedly loves so much in danger in the process (so much so that two of them nearly die outright). He has no motivation for getting involved in the war other than "Kiragon says so", and is even stupid enough to agree to the whole Staff of Blue sidequest which is launched on the basis of no evidence other than, once again, Kiragon says so, gets Trig the Annoying shot in the neck, and costs a bunch of lives. Not to mention that it unleashes the Seeker, which would have been a big deal if Paolini was any good at following through on fucking anything. And there's never any convincing reason as to what causes him to have a change of heart and start Fighting The Good Fight instead of only being out for himself and (allegedly) his crew. We don't even know when that supposedly happened.
Why didn't he get super pissed at Kiragon... well, EVER? She's the reason all this happened, from the war to the maiming of Sparrow to Trig's near-death - the latter all for the sake of a superweapon that they didn't even get, so the kid copped it for no gain at all.
Instead he decides to harass her, to the point of physically grabbing her when she says no to spending some time with him. Then he sexually assaults her by forcing a kiss on her. Then, shudder... they ultimately have TEH SECKS.
This is something else that really bothers me, other than how fucking CREEPY and badly written the sex scene was. It's the lack of a proper lead-up to this moment. Why is he even interested in her to begin with? She has a completely miserable personality when she has a personality at all, she's done nothing but make everything worse since the moment she showed up, she actively and deliberately endangered everyone's lives by knowingly walking around them with a murderous alien parasite on her which could be contagious on top of everything else... yet Falconi, who supposedly loves his crew so much, doesn't even CARE? And indeed is prepared to have SEX with that thing? Isn't he at least worried about his own safety? Forget STIs; sticking his dick in that parasite could have done anything to him.
And then having inflicted that horrorshow that should never have happened on us, Paolini just... drops it for the rest of the book. Are they supposed to be in love now? We never find out. Did he think throwing in some casual sex would make this thing more "mature"?
There's one final thing about Falconi that bugs me. Let's see now...
1. He's hyped up to be a Super Kewl badass space bastard with his stupid grenade launcher that has a name
2. He's repeatedly described as "dark" and/or "hairy"
3. He Gets The Girl for no reason
4. He has an Italian surname. One that ends in "i" no less.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure this asshole is yet another self insert. He gets WAY more description than the freaking main character. Among other things.
no subject
Seeing it all laid out like that, I think you have a point. Falcolini does tick all the boxes for a Christopher self-insert, aside from him not being the main character.
no subject