opinions on the books and plot line?

[marley]

Pretty sure random ooc topic goes in general board, yes? If not, feel free to shoot me xD

I was just wondering what this site's opinions about the usual Inheritance hot topics.

Like, Eragon and Arya. Do they both deserve to die for being sues? Are you for them as a couple or against them? Does the age difference creep you out as much as it does me?

Shruikan, evil and twisted through a century of abuse and dark magic, or poor tragic cry baby that hasn't bitten his owners head off and needs to wear some big boy pants? (Oh come on, just because I'm playing him doesn't mean I'm blind to his faults.)

Greenie. Thoughts, feelings. I, personally, hate him already xD If it had been a girl.../sigh.

How lame is Eragon's swords name?

How lame is CP's writing? (/ducks and covers)

Wild dragons in other lands...wtf wouldn't they be in contact with their brethren and be aware that a SLAUGHTER had happened and want to wreak vengeance?

And finally--for now--how much ripping off does CP have to do before his fanbase turns on him and demands he be an original mofo already.

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[Formula]

Always seemed like kids books so I never actually read them. =)

Here on the site because it's so free form, and the writers here have given it so much life that I couldn't resist.

[Ze Flying Wraithetti Monstress]

I'm pretty sure this site has more Eragon haters than lovers, actually. XD Or at least people who go, "Despite its many, MANY flaws, I like them... sort of."

Eragon and Arya. Age difference actually doesn't really bother me, unless it's like... physical differences. Like if Arya was wrinkly. That would be creepy. But they're both youngsters, so. HOWEVER, that fails to make up for the fact that it is not an epic romance in the LEAST. The 'love' that Eragon feels really comes off as both his and CP's lust, and who could love Arya anyway? She's surprisingly undiplomatic for a princess, emotionless, haughty, and generally a stone cold bitch. Eragon is irritating, makes no sense, whines, and hasn't gained a shred of character development, and the story's three-quarters over.

I'd go for the first one for Shruikan since CP has an annoying tendency to be horrifically predictable, although the second one's possible too cause Galby is ZOMG EVIL and CP loves to dip into pathos. His characters are pretty... cookie cutter.

I'm actually happy that Greenie isn't a girl, since CP is pretty damn sexist and sexualizes EVERY female in the books- except Angela, and she's based off of his sister IRL. Even the not-so-pretty women had stuff like enormous boobs that jiggle whenever they smile. =P His female characters, except Angela and Birgit, and Birgit's a total rip-off of the Bride in Kill Bill, also suck really bad. And I have yet to hate any dragon- Glaedr was Yoda, yes, and Thorn is probably some angry, over-emotional beast from hell, but they're DRAGONS. =D They are always cool.

Fire? Fire? What kind of a boring name is that? Might as well name it Blazing Blade and be done with it. Fire indeed. Humph.

It isn't as much the quality of the writing that pisses me off as how it switches back and forth. In one paragraph, you have VERY modern terms like 'yeah' and 'sure' and 'hypertension' and then you've got cheap Tolkien imitations like "But is not he the blahblahblah of the scintillating blahblahblahs?" Also, he uses a thesaurus way. Too. Much. Now, USUALLY a thesaurus is a writer's best friend, but CP just ingests the whole damn thing and vomits it all over his books. Before you USE a word, CHECK WHAT IT ACTUALLY MEANS. Sunsets are not violent, females are not comparable to drapes and fingers are not eagle-like, even if they ARE Arya's fingers. If CP just used the vocab he's comfortable with, laid off the purple prose and didn't make so many mistakes in his world-building, like scrupulously clean butcher shops, I'm pretty sure his writing wouldn't be bad at all.

I think dragons only exist in Alagaesia... but you do have a point. The Riders were made as a sort of half-way point for the dragons and the elves; it wasn't like the dragons ALL went and became bonded. I may be wrong, but if Galby didn't kill them too, then where are they?

CP's fanbase may be half and half, but his pro-fanbase is STRONG. They completely destroyed one of my favourite sites in the world, Anti-Shur'tugal, a site for ripping apart Inheritance and later, Twilight. I'm not sure what they see in it, really. Although despite my hatred of pretty much 95% of the Inheritance series, something continues to draw me to it. I dunno. But his fans are all like, "Let's see YOU GUYS write such an epic novel!"

Which brings me to my next point. With Inheritance, CP literally just got really, really lucky. Eragon was originally published by Paolini International, which has only published two other books. None of us may have even heard of it if the step-son of that dude at Knopf hadn't picked it up off some stray bookshelf and LOVED IT TO DEATH for some reason. I have met MANY writers who are better than CP, in writing style, creativity, and world-building, but the writing industry is a tough cookie. Getting something published is one of the hardest things imaginable, and CP was published by his own parents before that guy even came along. He basically got a free ride, in my opinion. So. =/

[Formula]

I've always thought it to be far too easy to get something published, especially when one judges the writers (both popular and unpopular) that are sitting on shelves today. It's just a matter of living with what you've got out there.

.. And, most people don't do their homework so they're unaware of just how simple the process can really be.

At any rate, have any of you considered just creating your own world and building off of that for your role play boards, instead of snatching up the world built by someone you apparently find so talentless?

I also hate that the phrase "purple prose" carries such a negative connotation. Probably because I'm guilty of it, but also because I think that those who incorporate poetry into the base structures of their paragraphs and otherwise are different than people who try to "eat and vomit a thesaurus".. There's a certain flow to be achieved for different styles of writing, and unless someone is blatantly using words in the wrong context, I honestly can't say there's anything wrong with trying to go for an ornate feel in a fantasy novel. =P

A sunset could be violent; streaming across the sky in a way that only can bring to mind violence in its purest essence. Color can evoke all sorts of emotion, can it not? Are sunsets not often of red and orange? Yellow? All of which are known to provoke human anger, violence, etc.

Nurseries are not painted yellow very often for this reason.

Fingers could be eagle-like if particularly dexterous, or, if more intentionally compared to talons rather than the whole graceful bird, thin and jabbing or sharp.

.. Women as a set of drapes is a little bit harder to justify, but..

I do think we should be a little kinder to the idea of "purple prose", and not just hate on everything with a flowery feel. Flowery is not always bad, and to always say exactly what you mean can very quickly make things boring. Moreover, everyone's writing being exactly the same would only leave for flavorless texts.

edit:
psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/a/color_yellow.htm

Source for my opinions on yellow, just in case someone was like "wth is she talking about"

[marley]

lol, well, they're more teen books then kid books, but I see you're point.

--

See, the age difference is really gross for me, because it's like Twilight, with Ed and Belly. She's old enough to be his grandma, that's just nasty. I mean, I'm one to write a thousand and one horrible age difference things, but when it gets to the granny, kid thing...just no.

CP does have a thing for cookie cutter...Le sigh. I wish he'd give more depth and life to his characters.

I want Greenie to be a girl, but like...I have special wants for Greenie as a girl xD She'd be really tough, kind of tom boy, and wouldn't like Saphira, although she wouldn't necessarily be anti-Varden. The animosity between the two girls would be so much fun~

Blegh, his writing just pisses me off in general. It's all too horrible and it's mostly him gushing over Arya. Bargh.

Supposedly dragons exist 'in other lands', because Eragon's gonna go in search of them after everything is all finito. Which pisses me off because they should have come to their kin's rescue a LONG time ago if they ever existed. These dragons are assholes already. Which makes me sad, because I really like the concept he had for wild dragons, is my favorite kind of the dragons.

So the pro fanbase is kind of like the twitards? Scary! I hate getting near rabid fans. I think if CP had waited until his mid/late twenties to write Eragon, it would have been a lot better, and I would have liked it so much more, and then the fans would be mildly justified.

Now, see, this I don't really agree with. If trash like Twilight can get published, I officially believe that anything could get published, so it's possible he could have done it for reals, instead of through his parents, considering Eragon and Twilight are on the same level.

[Ze Flying Wraithetti Monstress]

Woot, constructive criticism. Well, you're actually right, Form. Now that I think about it, there have been some flowery things that struck me as really good. Your writing also strikes me as flowery, but in a good way. CP's... is bad. It's like a grossly oversized, disfigured flower that smells so strong it's more comparable to a rotting corpse. I also don't like how I have to whip out my 2500 word dictionary for every single paragraph. D=

As for Greenie... for most writers, she would be awesome like that. But in CP's case, no. He thinks it's AMAZING and worth mentioning in great detail whenever a female is able to break out of the jump-on-a-chair-and-scream-at-a-mouse stereotype. The dragon will either be all wise and mysterious or like... not grow up by the end of Book 4. XP

Really? I thought it was like, there are just other random countries that Alagaesia had diplomatic relations with. Unless I missed that part entirely. Either way, CP has SO MANY plot holes. Like, the very prologue of the book? Arya ALMOST sent the egg to Brom, by herself, and just passed out as a result. If they got a bunch of spellcasters together, the egg could have been safely magicked back and forth between the elves and the Varden. But if that was the case, Arya would never have been ambushed, and then the entire story never would have happened. Unless the egg one day was magicked to Eragon by accident, but still. No captured hot elf chick.

Yup, cept they're... Inheriturds? I dunno. But they're pretty vicious about their opinion. I'd also like to point out that a great number of them are noobs who can't even spell Eragon.

Ah, well I'm speaking from personal experience. I had a friend who visited about eighteen different publishing companies before giving up and having to go to America, and I myself have tried several times to get into magazines, even, and the rejections were always nasty. But ehh, maybe given a few years... but otherwise, I've never really read anything as bad as Inheritance and especially Twilight that was on the shelves. I still blame CP's parents. XD

[Formula]

LOL@INHERITURDS.

Loved.

[marley]

I'm going to bed, but I just wanted to say before i did:

At Formula, as someone who is making their own world, creating their own species and plot lines, I'm just saying it's challenging and hard, and you don't want to throw it away on something with such a short lifespan as rpg's, beside the fact that you would like to be paid for your work. Which is why /usually/ people who go to this trouble are writing a book.

Also, we like CP's world, and his creatures, and the idea he created. He just didn't execute it quite like we wanted him to.

[Formula]

While I agree with you partially, I have to say that I've always found throwing my ideas into role plays (or forming entire role plays out of them) has been a good way to test and iron them out, as it gets some outside opinions on things you may have missed. I created an entire world once with separate races, in-depth and unique, the monsters, the map, the political intrigue, everything..

.. And then someone in the role play asked me what the world's currency system was like. To which I smacked my head and went "d'oh"

The ideas aren't really thrown away in a role play, especially if you stress that it's for an 'upcoming novel' or that they're creatively copyrighted in your rules or site description. In fact, I think it's a wonderful place to actually test your ideas, and moreover, test the reception to them. Remember that most role players are avid readers, and so could be considered a decent sample group to see if people actually care for what you've made. Especially since a good majority of people role play what they primarily read -- i.e. fantasy.

Just don't give your books main plot or side twists away in the role play and your world is intact and may actually end up with a fan base ahead of time. =)

I do understand loving the world someone has created and not necessarily their book line, though, which I guess is why I'm here as well. There are plenty of aspects to these books to keep me fully entertained without actually having to read them, so I suppose that speaks for itself.