Eragon

@ Baradiel: Oh don't get me wrong, I loved reading them   ^*

. Perhaps it's the fact that CP himself says he's comparable to Tolkien and talks about J.K. Rowling like she's an amateur? Admittedly JKR isn't Tolkien-level either, but I think her books are a little... erm, more polished.

And a second point: There are many aspiring authors out there, I've seen some of them on the internet, and their writing is way better than CP's. If you're one of them it's a little frustrating and insulting that CP gets so much attention and praise when you know your work is of a much better quality but is practically ignored by the public.

edited 22nd Sep '09 11:53:34 AM by melloncollie

Actually, one could make some of the same criticisms of Rowling as an author as one could make of Paolini, to varying extents.

Ripped off other authors? Not nearly as much as Paolini, but the Horcruxes and the Dementors are both arguable examples.

Protagonists are unethical bastards? Oh hell yes. Let's see, we have Dumbledore (manipulates Potter's entire life to make him a living weapon (and illegal-under-International-law child soldier), revealing how little he changed from the "greater good" days of his youth). Also Snape and Sirius Black (two-time attempted murderer, three times if you count the incident with Snape as a teenager). And Potter himself, who's less noble acts include torturing one of the Carrows with an Unforgivable Curse in The Deathly Hallows ("you have to mean it"), and who has quite a temper to say the least.

Potter is arguably a Mary Sue, given how he is portrayed as a wonderful, selfless person despite his arrogance, competetiveness, and violence. Of course, the Voldemort soul fragment in him provides a convenient scapegoat for all Potter's worst misdeeds.

The plot also descends into utter illogic by the end of The Deathly Hallows. The contradictory nonsense involving the wand lore and the means of Voldemort's final defeat inspired me to begin using the term "spellobable" as a magical equivalent to "technobable." Someone should really make a chart to figure out, if wands change owners every time someone's disarmed in a duel, just who exactly each character's wand should logically belong to by the end of the series. :D

Key phrase, methinks: "Not nearly as much as Paolini"

I don't mean to hold JKR up as the pinnacle of fiction literature, but is now the 12th richest woman in Britain   ^*

. I'm not saying popular = quality writing, necessarily, but the gap's gotta count for something.

Now, CP: The typical anti-fan argument is that the only way he got published is because his parents owned their own publishing company (Paolini International LLC) so of course they published their kid's work. Then he got a lucky break from another author really liking his book and showing it to Knopf.

JKR, on the other hand, had to submit The Philosopher's Stone to 12+ different publishing companies. She didn't get published because her immediate friends or family were in that business, she had to do it on her own. I believe an anti-fan would say here, "If CP's parents didn't have a publishing company he'd just be another unpublished nobody".

I did say I enjoyed Eragon and was able to ignore it's supposed flaws, but for me the series went downhill after Murtagh's Face–Heel Turn. I might be biased because he's my favorite, but watching him go from a sympathetic main character to a stereotypical "evuhl" Dragon really brought out all the character development issues the anti-fans bitch about all the time. I also found the sequels anvilicious and "preachy" at times, as well as just plain boring   ^*

. I can find several specific parts that were particularly glaring, if you like. Just let's not go into "Harry Potter vs. Eragon" debates because then I'd be playing devil's advocate

And now that we have established that Eragon sucks, we need to compare it to something else. I vote for Harry Potter. All in favor?

Sorry mellon, couldn't resist

edited 22nd Sep '09 4:52:52 PM by LizardBite

Meh, if Paolini had not had publisher parents, he might still have got published on the twelfth try or so. Its one of those alternate history questions that will never be definitively answered.

Now, I think that Potter was more original and (at least until the last half of Deathly Hallows or so) markedly superior to Eragon. I just don't think Paolini is as bad as some people claim.

I liked Eragon before a bunch of assholes on the internet told me it was rubbish.

How many of you read the reviews of something before reading it? Because let me tell you, THAT'S A STUPID FUCKING THING TO DO. The human brain is fucking HARDWIRED to accept somebody else's opinion as it's own to avoid the trouble of actually formulating one. I read the Eragon books before I visited the TV Tropes page and was repeatedly told it was a piece of litigiteous SHIT, and let me tell you, I fucking loved the first three books when I first read them, and I still do.

Sure, when you pick it apart and see that the main protagonist is an unbalanced Mary Sue, everybody except for the minor characters is completely unlikeable and most times unrelateable (sure, Eragon STARTS as Mister Everydude, but then he grows long fucking ears and I think that it's implied he now pisses liquid gold and shits solid diamonds), the prose is purple enough that the colour-blind could point it out and there're so many cliches in it you could use them to pelt a small country to death with if you printed them out ( in pt. 8), but, instead of looking at something from a 'writer's perspective' (and God help the man that uses those words around me, women are off the hook, though):

TRY TO ENJOY THE FUCKING BOOK YOU READ.

EMPHASIS.

Not every book you read is for a school assignment. Not every book you read has to be ripped apart into chunk-sized bites and then spat into the lap of an alagamation of nerds. Some books, YOU SHOULD READ BECAUSE YOU FUCKING LIKE READING.

Lemme go ahead and make an assumption: most of you are writers, or want to be writers, or have once been writers. Perhaps some of you are cooks, too. Lemme ask you writer-plus-cooks boys 'n girls - do you analyze every meal you eat? Do you think " Oh, he obviously charbroiled this in a mixture of dog sweat and pig shit, not cow jizz and rooster droppings like the professionals do it" every time you eat a steak? If so, something's fucking wrong with you. You eat food to stay alive, you read books to keep your brain alive, and that's all we can DO before we all lay down in a God-damn pinebox and're dunked fifteen feet down a great big hole.

Additionally, I thought the cover art was uninspired.

Always touching and looking. Piss off.

Are you being sarcastic, Mister Always?

Because to answer your question about analyzing everything: Yes. That's what makes it enjoyable.

Doesn't mean I can't enjoy "stupid/turn-your-brain-off" stuff too. When I say the last two books were boring, I meant there's not enough FIGHTKILLHACKSLASH and too much "preaching" about atheism and vegetarianism and blah.

Oh, yes, I could do without that, honestly.

And no, I'm one-hundred procent straightfaced right now. I'm reminded of a certain trope.

Additionally, feel free to say 'Always'.

Edit: What the... fuck... is that guy's name. Damn it.

edited 22nd Sep '09 5:22:36 PM by Mister Always

Always touching and looking. Piss off.

Bellisario.

Oh, yeah.

I think I met a Polish guy named Bellisaros once. I think he sold Bibles for a living.

He got ran over by a cake delivery truck, I do believe.

Always touching and looking. Piss off.

Yes, most people read because they enjoy it. However, it's easier for most people to enjoy good books than bad ones. 'Good' books aren't necessarily 'original' books— most people agree that good books are books that present the tropes they use in ways that keep the audience guessing at least a little bit about whether the writer is going to go with a happy, bittersweet, downer, et cetera ending. Protagonists don't always have to be likable (though it helps) but they do have to make us care enough about what happens to them to make us stick around to see what happens to them. All writers borrow from and are inspired by others, but the difference between good writers and those like Paolini is that they do original things too instead of copying everything down to the setting. No, Inheritance is not as bad as many people say, but when something is bad and the creator has shown himself to have a Small Name, Big Ego to boot, it's fun to make fun of it. And after all, getting fun out of it is the whole point of reading fiction, and if it's impossible to do it the way the author intended, why shouldn't we find another way to enjoy the reading experience?

I'm very sad there aren't any 'Eragon is bad' memes. Like 'sparkly.'

So sad.

An useless name, a forsaken connection.

Ha! If you think that's bad, some people in my school think that Eragon is EXACTLY like Lord of the Rings. As in, written in the same universe by the same person. They even threw a pencil at me after I told them it sucked.

Sorry, I can't hear you from my FLYING METAL BOX!

^ I think I just died a little.

~Cocks gun. Aims it at head~

Really? I'm the exact opposite. Once I hear someone express an opinion, my gut instinct is to disagree with them and tear apart every single part of their argument, even if I've previously expressed the exact same opinion myself.

2. Oh, and I can never figure out why everybody hates good King G, who really hasn't done anything bad. (Don't know how to quote)

Seriously? There are tons of examples. Bringing back slavery, enslaving the eldunari, having the urgals destroy Yazuac, and slaughtering a village for having a few traitors. Not to mention the fact that under the riders rein the people had much better lives and there was not nearly as much poverty.

I can understand why some people don't like Eragon (and the author) but the part that drives me crazy is people who think that Galbatorix is a good guy.

I think we do. Does "Single Shining Tear" count as a meme? If not, I propose "VEGAN ELVES??"

How about "A wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world?"

Swordplay and writing blog. Purveyor of weeaboo fightin' magic.

Or SPIKE BABIES?

Swordplay and writing blog. Purveyor of weeaboo fightin' magic.

I mildly enjoyed Eragon the first read-through, though I didn't like it as much as Harry Potter and my own personal guilty pleasure, The Lost Years Of Merlin. I recognized that most of it was extremely cliched, but I could deal - sci-fi/fantasy are my favorite genres. Then Eldest came out, and I read through it, and mildly enjoyed it...but was very confused about several plot points, and it felt tedious a lot. So I decided to go back through it again.

...I'm pretty sure I got such a horrible headache that I had to stay home from school the next day.

That's right folks, Christopher Paolini destroys kids' educations. >__>

Admittedly, a lot of my hate was then amplified by Anti-Shurtugal pointing out all the Fridge Logic inherent in the series, and if I read them again, I'm not sure whether or not I'd find them as bad as I remember. But I do remember them being clunky and cliched enough that I have no particular interest in picking them back up, or blowing money on Brisingr that could be better spent elsewhere like my video game addiction. I do try and keep the Inheritance Cycle page as clean as possible, though...

ETA: ...The Lost Years Of Merlin doesn't have a page? This must be remedied ASAP.

edited 22nd Oct '09 12:23:33 PM by Wild Knight

The blind man walking off the cliff is not making a leap of faith.

The books have serious problems, such as being derivative of other, better works, and the rather disturbing Moral Dissonance.

That said, I don't think the books are legitimately bad. Some of the stuff the Hatedom throws out (see: Rooting for the Empire) is, in my opinion, patently stupid. I do not think the books are So Bad Its Horrible, or So Bad, It's Good. More along the lines of So Okay, It's Average or (as I made up) So Bad Its Lame, with Guilty Pleasures.

Fanfiction I hate.

I actually enjoyed the first book, despite knowing it was intensely derivative. The second book, not so much (CP, just... stop abusing your thesaurus, seriously). Considering how much I hate derivativeness nowdays I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy them second time round, though.

Anti-Shurtugal was a great site. Everything on it made sense. I mean sure, the blatant ripoffness is pretty obvious, but that site pointed out so many flaws that I hadn't noticed or thought about seriously. Also, it was as objective as a hate site can be. I kinda miss it.

Still, this series is not as bad as many claim. I've read much worse. The Llandor series, for example, literally has every flaw of this series x5 (minus perhaps the purple prose). Inheritance just happened to get popular.

ETA: Rooting for the Empire annoys me. The argument seems as follows: Galbatorix is a badly written villain (fair enough), Eragon can be interpreted as a sociopath (I can see your point), therefore Galbatorix is a good guy. This... does not make sense.

edited 24th Oct '09 2:15:25 AM by Xi Whoeverski

In the beginning... it was a nice day.

I know though that some people take issue with Paolini cos his parents effectively got his foot on the ladder for publication

Eragon isn't heart-eatingly terrible as some of my friends claim but I guess it certainly isn't much good eithr

And yeah the people who over-think it and decide the token badguy Empire are the goodguys kind of trip over their own logic; if anything, it just means everyone's awful

@Mister Always: When I first read Eragon all I knew about the series was that it had dragons and was being made into a movie, and I still thought it was horrible.

So Yeah...

You are not alone, and you are not strange. You are you, and everyone has damage. Be the better person.