/lit/ - Literature

What a distracting face.

who is that guy?

>>1996011
It's Christopher Paolini, a fantasy author whose claim to fame is writing a novel at 15 or something.

>>1996015
i don't like that

jesus whats with all you terrible tripfags

The picture of him in the inbound of Brisingr he almost looked hot
What the fuck happended.

>>1996027
You realize he's always looked like this, right?

Also, am I the only one who's happy for this guy? He seems genuinely elated to have finally finished the series.

That poor editor though...my god. You could just hear her shrieking inside.

I've decided to pre-order it.
I read the three others so I'm just as stoked as the next guy.
Although he took a long time between Brisingr and This one,
A friend of mine told me he had been shipped in to the meds after becoming a nut thinking he was Eragon (lol wat?)

>The End

I thought people stopped doing that about a hundred years ago...

>>1996035
>A friend of mine told me he had been shipped in to the meds after becoming a nut thinking he was Eragon (lol wat?)
Okay, this is the part where you provide sauce, because that sounds fucking hilarious.

>>1996038
I don't know if there is any sauce, she just said her sister told her. But you're free to google and prove me wrong

>>1996036
I thought adults stopped reading shitty fantasy around the same time

>>1996040
As taken as I am with the idea of Paolini being a raving lunatic only tethered to this mundane world by bestiality and heroin, no Google searches confirm this. I'll have to label you a troll until someone else proves otherwise.

If you're in the mood for a cringefest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3RTcqCg9-c

Paolini is responsible for me abandoning all thoughts of ever writing anything (what's the point) and at least two hours of not wanting to live on this planet anymore after Eragon fell into my hands, complete with glowing reviews on the cover

One of them was actually like "my daughter said lord of the rings was stupid and boring unlike this book"

release on november 8 2011

cool a dragon book to get me in the mood for skyrim

My god, I was going to pre-order the book on amazon and buy a few others but the Shipping and vat costs buttfucked me.
Don't really feel like paying ~9£ for the books themselves and then almost 21£ for shipping itself.
What the fuck man

>>1996051
What was supposed to make me cringe?
Just the fact that he's sort of young and slightly arkward?

So what do most people think of the Eragon series of books? I've never read it myself, nor heard much about it. My girlfriend was really into it for a while but I'll be damned if she knows much about literature.

>>1996083

I only read eragon and it's amazingly generic

Anyone on /lit/ could probably write this as it is just an ordinary bad fantasy novel.

I'm not gonna hide it, I'm jelly as fuck of the revenue this managed to generate

>>1996083
They're a shitstorm of cliches. The first book even reads like Star Wars With Dragons.

Poor orphan and Chosen One has his loving uncle killed by the Nazgul, and then is forced to elope with a dangerous band of merry men in pursuit of a captured princess. Oh, and she's an incredibly hot elf that's so hot you cream your pants just by THINKING about looking at her. Oh and elves are more awesome at everything than humans are.

Oh and the Chosen One gets a dragon. Cause he's Chosen. And then he turns into an elf cause he's so awesome that his human-ness couldn't handle it and he morphed into an elf.

Oh and Darth Emperor is his dad.

>>1996097

the dragon itself is sort of whyboner.jpg though, and I'm quite sure that wasn't intended at all, unless it's only my personal feeling

Shit books. Shit author. Only reason he's sold is because he wrote it at 15 (because he's an autistic shut-in who was homes chooled)

I didn't like Eragon at all, it was very generic and boring.

I bought the sequel however just for kicks one day, and I actually really liked it, as well as the third one. I think his writing matured somewhat, and having two storylines happening with Eragon and his brother and the townspeople was quite well done.

>>1996097
>the Nazgul
He doesn't he actually use that name for creatures in his book?

The nerve.

My god I hated Eragon. Worst shit I ever read.

>>1996152
They're called the Ra'zac.

>>1996134
I echo your feelings. That fucking hammer wielding badass just makes the series.

He makes Dan Brown look like a competent author.

remember when they actually made an eragon movie

>>1996343
What happended with it? I was expecting them to do a sequel, but no, just quiet afterwards.
Did it not do well?

>>1996097
I agree with this post, but I don't think you adequately expressed how much it is like star wars. its not simply the heroes journey, it is literally the plot of star wars beat for beat. I think Paolini (who thinks hes a very smart young man for having graduated homeschool high school at 15) believed that since the heroes journey was copied by george lucas in the creation of star wars, that plot, as in the literal plot of star wars, was THE heroes journey, and if he copied it that's all he'd be doing.

Let me run through it.

Eragon is a simple farmboy living with his uncle after his mother died. He doesnt know who his father is. He dreams of leaving his simple farm life but can't see how thats ever possible. This all changes when he finds a dragon egg. He goes to ask an old crazy hermit about it for some reason, and the hermit reveals its a dragons egg. The crazy old guy is actually a dragonrider, an ancient order of monastic warriors with powers that kept order in the days before the empire. oh, and he knew eragon's parents.

the egg hatches and eragon raises the baby dragon, blah blah blah

on having returned from the old dragon rider, eragon discovers that his house has been burned down with his uncle inside by the agents of the evil empire. He decides to take the old dragonrider up on his offer to train him and take him on a quest to fulfill his destiny.
(continued...)

>>1996391
they go on a journey to the depths of enemy territory. meanwhile the old dragonrider teaches eragon the arts of his old caste, swordfighting, magic, and, uhh.... the ability to read. its crazy how fast the kid learns all this shit actually.

anyway they team up with a dashingly handsome antihero named murtagh go into an empire prison and break out the elf warrior princess lady, who eragon instantly has a boner for.

the old dragonrider is killed by the agents of the empire. eragon runs away with the elf warrior lady and the dashing antihero. they travel to fortifications of the rebel forces to deliver news of the empire's movements. a battle is coming. and the rebel forces are dearly outnumbered. eragon's the only person that can turn the tide.

in the battle, eragon faces off against an evil dragonrider named durza, who it turns out was his father all along.

oh and then eragon is telepathically contacted by another ancient dragonrider, the very one who trained the other old dragonrider, and demands that eragon travel to meet and train with him

I'm gonna stop there cause thats the end of book 1 and it took me way longer to type that than I thought it would- it would be great to document the crazy unintentional homoeroticism in the second book but that would take up so much time

>>it would be great to document the crazy unintentional homoeroticism in the second book but that would take up so much time

And only one example? I don't remember that, just the shitty plot

>>1996417
okay okay

there's about twenty pages that start out with Eragon and his new master getting naked and bathing together. Eragon finds himself admiring his master's hairless, naked body, which is described in detail for a couple of paragraphs. Then they bathe together, then wrestle together (without putting their clothes back on) and I think at one point eragon's actually sitting on his master's lap, naked

I wish I could type up that passage for you but I don't have my copy of the book anymore

whats great about it is that eragon usually has a terminal case of the "not-gays" with regards to his creepy obsession with the pretty elf lady and its pretty clear that paolini didn't mean any of this to be sexual but his weird isolated homeschooled upbringing left him unable to realize how INCREDIBLY gay that scene is

weird that the editor didnt say anything but then again he didnt say anything about the rest of the book so what do you expect

>>1996429
fuck it I'm gonna go download a copy of the book and copy that passage, it really should be read brb

Can someone run me through what happened in the last two books and what important stuff I should remember?

I have read them and enjoyed them at the time but can't remember and don't feel like reading them again.

>>1996429
Well I forgot that, I'll look up in my book
I also looked up on google and found this
http://eragon-sporkings.wikispaces.com/Brisingr_Four
" “Top that if you can,” he said, and pointed to the inside of his thighs. "
I fuckin lol'd

>>1996457
So if you're homeschooled you're too dumb to realize just how huge a innuendo that is?

Because jeeeesus, the fanfic writers are going haywire.

>>1996496
>Eragon twisted the staff between his hands.Should I? he asked Saphira.

Woah woah woah hold on
What staff are we talking about here?

He wrote it at 15?
He's 27 now, wikipedia says Eragon was published in 2002 (9 years ago) so he would be 18-20 when it was published. He finished highschool at 15.

> And then they start comparing bruises.
> No. Really.
> Loosening the ties on the cuff of his left shirtsleeve, he pushed back the soft lámarae—a fabric the elves made by cross-weaving wool and nettle threads—revealing a rancid yellow streak where his shield had mashed against his forearm.
> [Roran] unlaced his left boot, pulled it off, and rolled up the leg of his trousers to expose a black stripe > as wide as Eragon’s thumb that slanted across his quadriceps.
> Then it's Eragon taking his shirt out of his trousers to expose his stomach and Roran showing bruises from falling down some rocks. And then Eragon drops his pants.
> No. Really.

Oh lawd. Is this really in the book?

>>1996507
It is in my version, they changed the meat into 'deermeat' and made him have some sort of underpants still on.

It still says he pointed at his groin and that he twisted his staff.
Still gay

>>1996512
yeah, paolini tried to quietly edit those passages once people pointed out how homoerotic they really were. I'm not sure but if I recall correctly he edited almost all of >>1996429 out of the second printing of the book

Whats more homosexual writing the unintentional homoerotic passages or then being ashamed and quietly trying to edit them out?

>>1996526
there used to be a website/blog/forum thing against paolini called anti-shurtgul and they made a point of not making fun of the homoerotic stuff (on the main site- in the forums it was a constant topic of discussion) because they were pretty sure paolini was an actual closeted homosexual and thought it was morally wrong to treat those passages as if they were inherently "bad"

I bring this up because it's a problematic issue. on the one hand I have no problem with homoeroticism in my literature, and I don't want to make it seem like I have a problem with gay people. on the other hand, its hilarious that paolini wrote those passages without any realization of how gay they really were. is it possible to make fun of those passages without implying on some level that homosexuality is a bad thing?

>>1996537
I was just thinking about it and I think it is okay as long as you're thoughtful and careful about it. Because it's not the homoeroticism that's funny as such, there's nothing wrong with it, it's that he was completely ignorant of what the implication of that stuff is. As long as you keep that the target of the joke instead of "lol paolini is gayfaggot" then I think it's okay

>>1996526
I don't think paolini is gay (not that theres anything wrong with that) he spends a lot of time crafting his ideal female in the elf lady Arya, but seems to have trouble relating her as an actual person (probably because hes never had an actual relationship)

I think those scenes are extremely homoerotic, but they're homoerotic in the manner most expressed by straight males. It's about admiring the ideal male form, the ideal male beauty. It probably gave paolini a boner to think about this hard-muscled hairless elf body, but not because he wants to fuck that elf, but because he wants to embody that elf's masculinity.

>>1996537
I dare say that people are just poking fun out of all the innuendos in the books.

>>1996549
You know, this whole thing could be pretty easily summed up by saying "it's the Aspergers". The guy has no idea how to properly relate to women, and the blatant homosexual overtones in his story soared right over his head as he was writing it. That sort of silly shit is common for people with various forms of Autism.

I will say, out of all the faggy Elves in literature, his Elves were the faggiest.

>>1996563

>vegetarians with respect for all life, lose their shit over stealing life energy from insects to fuel magic
>wear leather, slaughter enemies on the field of battle

That shit made me drop the series when I was like fourteen.

I keep a copy of the first book in the very bottom-back corner of my bookcase. Every now and again I pop it open and read a bit of it, just to remind myself of what passes for publishable quality these days. It's refreshing to know that I'm still above that bar.

You could spot the horror in the editor's eyes.

>>1996868
This.

>>1996589
I hate that kind of shit, but mostly because recent evidence has shown that plants exhibit neuron-like processing through hormones and that this, if true, means that there's little meaningful difference between a plant's life and an animal's.

>>1997089
>there's little meaningful difference between a plant's life and an animal's.
You're fucking stupid, you know that?

What really fucking makes me angry is that he seems ELATED that he's finished with the series. It's supposed to be like a good friend leaving for the last time, jackass, not like masturbation.

>>1996868
AWKWARD ENCOUNTER ENGAGED

She msut laugh herself to sleep after reading his manuscripts.

>>1997100
I dont think that's that unusual. I think around the time paolini was writing the third book (which originally was gonna be the last book, but he had to split up halfway through) he had grown up a little and come to realize how intensely mediocre his work was, but he was trapped in his obligations, both contractual and I guess you could say moral, to complete the series.

you can see shades of this in eldest, where paolini makes efforts to retcon away problems from the first book while simultaneously trying to change the tone. He experiments in the second book, and most of those experiments end terribly, but thats because he is not a developed writer.

He's right on par with other nerdy fantasy writer kids his age, and he lucked out with a series of increasingly improbable events that lead to him being published on a large scale for one, promoted well for another, and having such a generic, borderline-plagiarized plot that it would be immensely popular with children and young adolescents who havent read/seen enough to be bored by it.

Paolini could be a good fantasy author some day, if he doesn't let his early successes forever taint him. As it stands, his writing now resembles a fanfic author's. he needs to reconcile that he really lucked into success, and go through a stage of tireless effort and self-criticism. maybe even submit future manuscripts under an assumed name to avoid getting picked up by opportunists.

First time I've seen someone be relieved to finish their series.

>>1998389
Really?

57 posts and 3 image replies omitted. Click Reply to view.

Anyone else think CP is one of the hotter authors out there?

The people who actually think Eragon isn't boring and generic are the ones who haven't read Lord of the Rings.

>>1999693
He looks like a factory second Jonathan Safran Foer

I never read this guy's stuff and find the vitriol towards him kind of strange, if not really unexpected from 4chan. >>1997181's post is very good and humane and really vibes with the way I was feeling reading all these "WHAT KIND OF FAG IS HAPPY TO FINISH A SERIES OF BOOKS HE WAS UNDER CONTRACT FOR BEFORE HIS BALLS DROPPED" comments. I know he's doing fine for himself but I still feel bad for the guy!

>>1999700
hey thanks for calling my post humane anon, best compliment I've ever gotten on /lit/

>>1996015

I wrote a fantasy novel at 15 too, OP. Difference being, my parents didn't own a publishing company. It's no accomplishment worth talking about. He's a halfway decent storyteller, but the books are poorly-written, derivative shlock.

>>1997181
This jibes with the impression I got of Paolini during his early days. When he was still a teenager-early-twentysomething, he would say shit publicly that was just embarrassing to read. declared that he aspired to embody the power of Tolkien at his best and the lyrical beauty of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, was commissioned to write a review of the latest Harry Potter book and was at times condescending to the much more successful and (and I know /lit/ will hate me for saying this) skilled author.

But you got the impression, from his earnest enthusiasm for his own work, as well as the shallowness of his references, that he was simply naive. He was overall probably marginally better read than the average kid his age, spent his whole youth isolated and indiscriminately encouraged, and he managed to make a huge success of himself. Why would he question that he was a skilled writer?

But no matter how naive he was, after a certain age, having experienced a few things, read some more, he had to suspect (that is, unless he suffered from some kind of mental defect) that he wasnt the genius he had thought himself to be. I remember an interview with him, Pullman, and someone else, where he talked about how he couldn't read Eragon anymore because there were so many parts that made him cringe. Of course its important to note that this was in the midst of writing eldest, which was an even worse book by basically any metric. That makes sense though. Eragon was basically fanfiction, Paolini shoving everything he thought was awesome in one story, whereas Eldest was him trying to to find his own voice. Since his writing was still deep in adolescence at that point, trying to be "original" just highlighted how everything good in his story was stolen in the first place.

I could totally see Paolini in a few years just absolutely shunning the Eragon fandom and denouncing the books.

As bad as Paolini's books are, I have yet to see a single original piece of fiction on /lit/ that surpasses them. I mean this. And I'm on here all the time, so I read just about every amateur fiction thread that comes through.

I think this says a lot more about the quality of /lit/'s writing than Paolini's, but I thought I'd point it out.

>>1999814
Totally agree with you on both counts. I think its more of an issue of /lit/ not being a good place to get good criticism than an issue of the overall quality of writers on the board. I know I'd never post my writing here because all I'd get would be rabidly negative responses, boringly positive ones, or vague/outright terrible advice. the only people who submit to /lit/ are people who aren't really all that serious about it.

I'd say this is true for most online writing communities, actually. I think it might be because it takes a lot of attention and effort to provide a decent critique of even a very short story and most people are more interested in stroking their ego than helping other writers.

>>1999730
:)

polite sage