*claws her way out of the ground* I LIIIIIIIVE!
Yes, I’m aware of how late I am with this… Real Life has kind of been kicking my butt for the past month or so. Among other things, I got a job, and am still adjusting to both the time sink and the physical demands of retail. I only hope this sporking ends up being worth the wait.
First off, I must note that there is a certain aspect of this chapter that made me pounce as soon as it became available and snatch it up with my grabby little hands (besides the fact that I have grabby hands with pretty much every sporking chapter, really); and that’s the fact that this is the chapter where Roran gets a damn good beating!
Warning: viewing the above video further than the “damn good beating” line may result in nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, bleeding from eyes and ears, loss of sanity, cranial explosions, and pedal transient paresthesia.
Indeed, my friends, this is Chapter 42 of Brisingr: “The Whipping Post”. The fact that this happens to be the forty-second chapter is really quite fortuitous, as watching Roran be whipped really does feel like the ultimate answer to the Inheritance universe. I still have to quibble with the title a bit, though. As satisfying as it is to picture Roran bleeding heavily from a series of deep lacerations down his unwashed, overly-muscled peasant back, the title is a bit spoileriffic given that this chapter begins with Nasuada trying to decide what Roran’s punishment should be.
You called this chapter “The Whipping Post”, Paolini. We know what the punishment is going to be. There is no suspense in this, only padding. Change the title, or cut this bullshit.
The lack of suspense is further exacerbated by the fact that our first sentence has Roran staring at “a wrinkle in the side of the crimson pavilion”. Paolini is still abusing his favorite color, I see. The next paragraph attempts to rescue the drama by describing his anxiety: how he can’t look Nasuada in the eye, how the “pavilion” feels really hot, and how he’s even getting a headache from the stress. Unfortunately, it falls flat in the face of what came before, and is further undermined by Nasuada sipping wine “from a goblet” while they talk. It’s hard to imagine how Paolini could have written this without noticing that it made Nasuada look like a carefree, irreverent little shit and buried the attempted suspense in unnecessary detail at the same time.
The dialogue is crap, too. Nasuada is whining about having to make a decision, and Roran is basically turning up the Sad Puppy Face and refusing to call her anything but “my Lady”. Well, I suppose now is as good a time as any to start the BDSM jokes… seriously, though, tell me these lines don’t read like a femdom scene.
Roran sat bolt upright and stared past Nasuada… he could feel [her] studying him, but he refused to meet her gaze…
At last Nasuada said, “What am I going to do with you, Roran?”
He straightened his spine even more. “Whatever you wish, my Lady.”
“An admirable answer, Stronghammer… However, your success does not negate the reality of your disobedience… I must punish you if I am to maintain discipline among the Varden.”
“Yes, my Lady.”
I may have cut out some parts, but all of that is in the text, and it just keeps going on like this. Really, the whole scene is far more fun if you imagine Nasuada all dressed up as a dominatrix and Roran shackled to his chair by a full gimp suit. Yessss, Nasuada, beat him, BEAT HIM!
Of course, she doesn’t actually start beating him. Instead, she has to go and ruin it.
Her brow darkened. “Blast it, Stronghammer. If you were anyone else but Eragon’s cousin, and if your gambit had been even one whit less effective, I would have you strung up and hanged for your misconduct.”
*gapes for a moment before slowly picking up her own jaw with her hands*
Nasuada… you… you fucking idiot! You just tipped your hand! You told Roran that he gets preferential treatment! I know you don’t want to piss off the sociopath with a dragon, but if you want to maintain any degree of control over his equally-sociopathic cousin, you do not want to let him know that! You just gave him a big fat license to top from the bottom, you horrible, horrible domme! It’s only the fact that I know there are worse dom(me)s out there that’s saving you from being the worst domme!
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*sighs*
All BDSM jokes aside… I know what that was, guys. It’s something that I have been guilty of in many a first draft, and heck, probably a few later drafts as well. That was a writer realizing that something they needed to happen seemed unlikely and attempting to insert an in-universe explanation via dialogue without thinking about how it made the characters look. Paolini wanted to explain the situation Nasuada is in, but in doing so he just made her look like an idiot.
Anyway, the conversation moves on to Nasuada asking Roran whether he wants to keep fighting for the Varden. He does, of course, continuing with his “whatever you need to do to me” routine like a broken record. Nasuada then says this.
“I hoped you would say that. Tradition and established precedent leave me only three choices. One, I can hang you, but I won’t… for a multitude of reasons. Two, I can give you thirty lashes and then discharge you from the ranks of the Varden. Or three, I can give you fifty lashes and keep you under my command.”
Right. This is a perfect contrast to that line above, where Nasuada showed Roran all her cards. If that line had been omitted and this included, I would have bought it: she’s telling him she has her reasons, but she’s not outright stating any of them. If this was all the information he had, then there would be no way for him to really know whether any of her reasons for not hanging him extended beyond this one infraction.
However, this also brings up something I didn’t really mention in the above quote: the sheer brutality of Nasuada’s proposed punishments. Paolini was probably going for Deliberate Values Dissonance here: hanging and flogging have been used historically by various military forces to punish misconduct. Unfortunately for Paolini, there are several factors working against him. The most obvious is that the Varden are supposed to be our Glorious Enlightened Rebel Heroes, and having them flog their soldiers would seem to go against that image; instead, it paints them as no better than the rest of their world. Contributing to that is the fact that we have no points of contrast. For all we know, the Empire’s punishment for insubordination is less severe than this. Finally, it’s made absolutely clear in this chapter that the purpose of the punishment is to make an example of Roran and thus keep the Varden soldiers in line through fear. Returning to our Glorious Rebellion point above, that is not the behavior of a hero.
That last point is touched on by Roran’s response, which is to ask whether the flogging will be public. Nasuada long-windedly says that yes, they’re bringing exhibitionism into their flogging session. Meanwhile, I’m left boggling at the fact that her little mini-speech actually credits Roran with intelligence. Yes, the peasant man who actively refuses to learn to read is so very intelligent. Just a paragraph ago, he was comforting himself by thinking that fifty isn’t that much more than thirty! Yes, I know it’s to reassure himself, but considering the actual disparity between those numbers, it kind of makes one wonder whether Garrow refused to teach the Sociopath Cousins their numbers as well.
Anyway, Nasuada’s speech ends with another “you still wanna stick with us?” line, and Roran gets angry that she’d question his previous commitment, saying that there’s no way it can be as painful as losing his home and his father. Quit posturing, you pompous ass; your pain at losing your home and family is basically an Informed Trait at this point.
Nasuada actually agrees with Roran’s posturing, which is a bit of an odd point. On the one hand, Nasuada also lost her father in this war, so it makes sense that she would be sympathetic. On the other, we have the aforementioned fact that Roran’s personality has degenerated into a sociopath who barely even pays lip service to his supposed loss and pain, plus the fact that he’s facing this whole thing entirely too confidently. He’s not reluctantly taking on this punishment so that he can continue to do what’s right; no, he’s getting angry that she would dare question his word. That’s not exactly an attitude that’s likely to get you sympathy from others. Another factor to consider is that Paolini has never really explored Nasuada’s feelings surrounding Ajihad’s death; back in Eldest, she seemed to give it pretty much no thought at all, and jumped right into the political scheming without any kind of mourning period. With all of that in mind, this reads less like a callback to Ajihad’s death and more like Paolini having his characters acknowledge his Stu’s Man Pain as the most terrible pain that ever did pain.
In short, what this illustrates is the power of consistently poor characterization to ruin moments that could have been good. If Nasuada had been shown grieving for her father, and if Roran’s personality had not been so thoroughly ruined over the past book and a half, this moment where they realize the connection of having lost family to the war against the Empire could have been genuinely touching. As-is, it feels hollow and forced.
Another factor working against this potentially interesting moment is the fact that it’s gone as soon as it began. Goodbye, possible connection between Roran and Nasuada’s backstories! Instead, we have to hear about how Nasuada will have one of her magicians handy to heal any lasting damage from the lashes, but they won’t be allowed to heal the wounds completely, and Roran’s not allowed to seek further assistance. Yeah that will definitely help after fifty fucking lashes... save it, guys; I'll get to the big rant when the whip actually comes out.
The date for the whipping is set (as soon asJormungandr Jörmundur can marshal all the troops to watch), and Roran is dismissed, at which point he gives another “My Lady”. At this point, I’m pretty much imagining him in an ill-fitting vest and fedora.
Roran leaves the “pavilion” and gets marched to a tent by the whipping post, and we get a big block description of the thing. It’s boring, and although Roran has to “force himself to look away”, I really get no emotion from that action or the preceding description.
Anyway, Roran sits in the tent and hears people mustering outside. Wait, they’re just mustering the Varden right now for an impromptu whipping session? Everyone is just dropping all their current tasks and walking up to watch Roran get smacked? I mean, yes, I’d definitely be eager to watch Roran get a damn good beating, but don’t these soldiers have anything to do besides watch the Stu?
Oh, wait, I just answered my own question. No, they don’t. Roran is a Stu, and therefore all eyes must be on him at all moments and none of the other soldiers have lives and duties outside of being there when there needs to be an audience for his Big Moments.
Paolini actually tries to show us some tension here, with Roran imagining everyone he knows watching the lashes and sweating like a pig, but it’s two freaking sentences in the middle of a cavalcade of bullshit, and so fails to impress. After that, Trianna comes in and makes Roran strip so that she can give him a medical examination. Okay then.
Once she’s done, and I mean literally right after Roran has put his shirt back on, Katrina comes in, and we’re told that Roran feels “an equal measure of joy and dread” at seeing her. Show, don’t tell, please, Paolini! You were trying for it two paragraphs ago, so I know you get the concept at the very least. Katrina asks Trianna to let her speak to Roran alone, and then they grab at each other for a little bit and say how much they’ve missed each other… or rather, they “whisper” and “murmur” it. Tone down the Said Bookisms, Paolini. They draw apart “just far enough so that they could gaze into each other’s eyes”, I projectile vomit, and then Katrina starts going into hysterics about how this is wrong and she tried to get Nasuada to lay off the punishment. I’m not sure how she even managed to talk to Nasuada; she has no rank and Nasuada is supposed to be busy leading the goddamn rebellion.
Roran says he wishes Katrina hadn’t done that, she asks why, and he replies with a complete non-sequitur about how he refuses to leave the Varden. Um, what? I know you’re enduring the harsher punishment so you can stay, but Katrina doesn’t know anything about that and there is literally no reason for Nasuada to listen to her! Something like “I don’t want her to be angry at you too” would have been eyeroll-worthy, but at least it would have been believable. This is just confusing.
That was apparently Katrina’s cue to break into a bunch of Sue-praise, talking about Roran’s wanton slaughter of two hundred men as “heroism” that should be rewarded. Roran defends Nasuada, saying that he would have done the same in her place and that “it does not matter whether this is right or wrong”. Er, actually, it kind of does, because you guys are supposed to be the heroes!
Katrina then goes all delicate-fainting-flower on us and brings up that fifty lashes is kind of a big deal: “Men have died from being whipped that many times.”
That’s a good point, Katrina, because men have died from being whipped that many times! There are all sorts of ways that whipping can kill you: blood loss, shock, nerve damage, kidney damage… getting whipped is not just kinky funtimes. In fact, any kinkster worth their salt will tell you to never, ever go for the whip if you don’t know how to use it. Online guides advise anyone preparing for a whipping scene to wear protective gear, have a first aid kit handy, avoid the spine and kidneys, and to stay away from bullwhips “unless you have been fully trained and had significant practice”. People who go for the whip before they’re ready can and do severely harm their partners.
But, as I said, this is not kinky funtimes. The person who is going to be whipping Roran is not going to be doing it to hurt him for pleasure; he is going to be actively trying to harm him. On top of that, this is a low-tech medieval setting where the vast majority of people know fuckall about anatomy, so he probably won’t know shit about which spots to avoid. Even if he did and was instructed by Nasuada to hit where it wouldn’t cause permanent damage, fifty lashes is a lot; even someone with extensive training is very likely to land at least one strike a bit wrong.
However, due to information from the first scene of this chapter, we know that Nasuada is not going to be having the whip guy pull his punches or avoid damaging spots. No, she’ll just have a magician look over the wounds afterward and fix the things that would result in permanent damage. It’ll all be fine and dandy!
No, Paolini, that excuse does not fly. If you’re putting Roran in the line of fifty lashes, he’s probably going to go into circulatory shock, whether from the loss of blood or just the pain itself. For those of you who don’t have time to read a whole medical journal on the subject, I present the first two lines of the conclusion (emphasis mine):
Circulatory shock is associated with high morbidity and mortality. Prompt identification is essential so that aggressive management can be started.
In layman’s terms, this is something that is often fatal, especially you don’t catch it and start treatment ASAP.
Again, there is actually more I have yet to say about this, but let’s leave it on the table for now. It will be brought up once we get to the whipping scene and have Paolini’s description to work with.
In light of everything I just said, Roran’s reaction to Katrina’s concern is morbidly hilarious:
“Only if they had weak hearts. Don’t be so worried, it will take more than that to kill me.”
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Oh, you silly man. You silly, silly man. You truly have no idea what’s coming, do you?
Katrina tries to force a smile at her husband’s pathetic attempt at reassurance, then gets all weepy and cries into his chest for a while like the concerned wife stereotype she is. It’s actually a bit disturbing, because his response, “[cradling] her in his arms, stroking her hair and reassuring her as best he could”, reads as a bit… paternal. The verb “cradle” is probably the biggest offender there, but the tone exists throughout. That’s not romantic, Paolini, that’s creepy and a bit sexist.
They hear a horn sound outside, and Roran tells Katrina to go back to their tent and stay there until the flogging is over. She protests, and they have a sappy conversation so cliche that I wanted to gouge my eyes out with a plastic spoon about how she doesn’t want to leave, she shouldn’t see it, he shouldn’t have to be whipped, he couldn’t bear to have her watch, she’d gladly take his place, he wouldn’t let her, and oh god I’m going to throw up again.
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The loathsome lovebirds hug untilJormungandr Jörmundur comes to pick up Roran for his whipping, and Katrina curtsies before she leaves like a good little wimmins. Paolini tries to make the scene tense by having Jormundur say “it’s time”, but all he managed was to make me laugh at the sheer cliche of that line. Roran accompanies him toward the whipping post, and we get this description of the onlookers:
Row after row of the Varden boxed in the area around the post, every man, woman, dwarf, and Urgal standing with stiff spines and squared shoulders.
I cannot be the only one who read that first bit as row upon row of random Varden extras boxing each other’s ears. Terrible word choice, Paolini. I’m also interested to see that the Varden apparently have female human soldiers, because the rest of the paragraph calls this crowd “the assembled army”. Of course, we never see female human soldiers anywhere else, so I can only assume that this was an error. If you’ll notice, Paolini has been flip-flopping on whether this flogging spectacular is just for the military or civilians as well for the entire chapter; this little head-tilter is just the most obvious instance.
Not that Roran notices, of course, because he quickly looks away and has no emotional reactions while being escorted to the whipping post.
At this point, I’d like to call attention back to the structure of this chapter. I mentioned from the outset that the chapter title deflated the payoff for its opening, and I don’t think you need me to tell you that Roran and Katrina’s entire segment is a bloated abomination of poorly-written romance cliches that bogs down narrative momentum. However, those scenes do have a pretty clear purpose: they’re supposed to build up tension for this scene. Now that we’re here, though, we’re getting nothing. There are a bunch of people, but Roran is ignoring them and Paolini can’t even spare a few words to tell us how he feels about the situation. We’ve gone from awkward, bloated setup that pretty much beats us over the head with the characters’ worries to a complete absence of emotion at the moment where Roran’s tension should be reaching its peak.
You know how this could have been better? If Paolini had used one of those in media res openings he loves so much.
Imagine if we had opened up with Roran being led to the whipping post, and all of the steps leading up to it had been shown in flashback as he replayed them in his mind, desperately trying to reassure himself that this is the only way, but still faltering as the post grew nearer and nearer. That could have been effective! Seeing Roran ruminating on how he ended up at the post would have shown that he was anxious, even if he tried to hang onto that self-aggrandizing “I’ll survive it” tone. Hell, it wouldn’t even have broken up the narrative like Paolini’s in media res openings usually do, because there would be a reason for the flashbacks!
Unfortunately, Paolini’s tendency to use a literary tool is in inverse proportion to its likelihood of improving the text.
Back in the actual chapter, the guards tie Roran to the post andJormungandr Jörmundur gives Roran a “leather-wrapped dowel” to bite down on to “keep [him] from hurting [himself]”. Paolni tells us that “the tanned leather tasted bitter, like green acorns”. Oh, so you’ll tell us what leather tastes like, but not give us any emotional reaction from our viewpoint character? Sweet Odin’s gnarly eye socket, this is bad!
There’s a drumroll,Jormungandr Jörmundur reads out the charges, and the guards strip Roran to the waist. Wait, no, they “cut off [his] sackcloth shirt”. Rrrggghh… we are then treated to two especially poorly formatted one-sentence paragraphs.
This whole bit is so poorly-written, I have to do something I don’t think I have actually done in a spork before. I am going to show you the entirety of this lousy setup, starting from the drumroll, and then I’m going to rewrite it. First, the original:
Then a horn and a drumroll sounded, and Jörmundur read out the charges against Roran, and the guards cut off Roran’s sackcloth shirt.
He shivered as the cold air washed across his bare torso.
An instant before it struck, Roran heard the whip whistling through the air.
The formatting is terrible, half the details are irrelevant, and Roran is so emotionless that he’s failing the Turing test. Now, let’s rewrite it:
A horn sounded, and the dull pounding in Roran’s ears was joined by the beat of a drum. He swallowed heavily, barely aware that Jörmundur had begun to speak. The guards gripped the back of Roran’s shirt and ripped it open, allowing the ruined cloth to fall by his sides as gooseflesh sprang up along his neck and arms. He swallowed, his tongue fat and heavy against the dowel in his mouth, and braced himself for the first lash.
He heard the whip’s crack long before he felt it.
THERE, I FIXED IT.
This is the rare “There, I Fixed It” where the end result is longer that what Paolini wrote, because I had to add the tension and emotion that he didn’t. Instead of focusing on the actions ofJormungandr Jörmundur and the guards, I emphasized Roran’s physical reactions: the pounding in his ears, the gooseflesh, the odd swollen feeling of his tongue against the gag. He’s clearly uncomfortable, and that discomfort stretches the seconds into what feels like hours as the first blow falls, so that the delay between the crack of the whip and the sting of the lash feels terribly long.
I’m not going to claim that what I wrote is perfect, but I think we can all agree that it’s a hell of a lot better than what Paolini wrote.
And speaking of what Paolini wrote… here’s the description of the whipping in all its overwrought, unresearched, Gary-Stu-aggrandizing glory.
It felt as if a rod of hot metal had been laid across his flesh. Roran arched his back and bit down on the dowel. An involuntary groan escaped him, although the dowel muffled the sound so he thought no one else heard.
“One,” said the man wielding the whip.
The shock of the second blow caused Roran to groan again, but thereafter he remained silent, determined not to appear weak before the whole of the Varden.
The whipping was as painful as any of the numerous wounds Roran had suffered over the past few months, but after a dozen or so blows, he gave up trying to fight the pain and, surrendering to it, entered a bleary trance. His field of vision narrowed until the only thing he saw was the worn wood in front of him; at times, his sight flickered out and went blank as he drifted into brief spates of unconsciousness.
After an interminable time, he heard the dim and faraway voice intone, “Thirty,” and despair gripped him as he wondered, How can I possibly withstand another twenty lashes? Then he thought of Katrina and their unborn child, and the thought gave him strength.
*takes a deep breath and steeples her fingers*
Let’s set aside the choppy, poorly-worded sentences. Let’s set aside the thesaurus abuse with “spates of unconsciousness”. Let’s even set aside the obvious Stuthor tactic of having the Stu withstand a ridiculous degree of punishment and even noting that nobody can hear the few noises of pain and discomfort he does make. Instead, we are going to focus on how this ties into my medical rant earlier.
Roran should be dead.
Paolini didn’t give us a lot of detail on what he’s experiencing, but what he did give us is highly concerning. Two of the most common and worrying symptoms of shock are confusion/lack of alertness and loss of consciousness, which occur due to a lack of blood flow to the brain. That’s indicative of Stage II or decompensated shock. As the name indicates, decompensated shock is the point at which the body fails to compensate for whatever caused the shock (in this case, pain, nerve damage, and/or severe blood loss), leading to lowered pulse, blood pressure, and respiratory rate. Decompensated shock is extremely dangerous and, if untreated, can quickly degenerate into Stage III, irreversible shock, at which point recovery is impossible due to the cell and tissue damage already sustained.
Roran reached Stage II after twelve lashes. At that point, he needs immediate medical care to stop him from progressing into Stage III. Instead, he gets more whipping. Given the location of the lashes, there’s a good chance that some blows have damaged or will damage the kidneys, reducing their ability to contribute to the body’s compensatory processes and thus speeding Roran’s already-rapid degeneration. After thirty lashes, he loses consciousness. The irreversible threshold cannot be far away at that point, assuming it hasn’t already been crossed. Nevertheless, he receives twenty more lashes before being turned over to the Varden healers.
During that time, as Roran’s body continued to lose blood and fail to deliver adequate oxygen to his brain and other organs, he would begin to suffer tissue damage. After a few minutes of oxygen deprivation, irreversible brain damage is likely. It’s hard to say how long Roran spent on that whipping post, but after timing myself as I mimed cracking a whip and counted each swing, I can safely say that it was probably around two minutes, perhaps longer. That’s definitely getting into the danger zone, especially considering the fact that none of the Varden healers are present in this scene, meaning that after the flogging is done, they have to spend time getting to Roran before they can start tending to his injuries.
By that point, going on everything we’ve been shown, Roran should have progressed to irreversible shock. His brain is dying and several of his internal organs have likely ceased to function. Even if he did survive against all odds, he would do so as a vegetable, or at the very least with severe brain damage. In that case, he would still be likely to die later on as his damaged organs failed to repair themselves… that is, if the cuts on his back didn’t go septic first. The odds are decidedly not in his favor.
In Paolini’s recent AMA, Roran’s over-the-top feats of strength and endurance were called into question. Regarding this chapter, he said the following:
As for whipping, it depends on the whip used. Some would cut you down to the bone. Others might only leave some bad bruising.
I’m not going to mince words: that excuse is bullshit. Despite Roran’s unrealistic endurance, it’s obvious from the way this scene is framed that he’s being hit with one of the nasty whips. Later in the chapter we will see implications that his back muscles were severely damaged, and he will be told to avoid certain movements in order to avoid reopening the wounds. His back coming off the whipping post must look like The Passion of the Christ. There’s no way he would come out of this without significant, lasting damage.
This, Paolini, is why you need to research.
Of course, Paolini would probably respond to that with the preceding paragraph of his AMA answer, which applies to Roran’s unrealistic feats in general:
Roran: throughout history, there are plenty of people who have done things that would seem ridiculous or over-the-top even in a movie. I was reading a couple of books on the history of warfare at the time, and some of the—documented—feats by various warriors over the ages are really, truly incredible. (Musashi is one of the more famous examples.) So I firmly believe that Roran's feats are well within the bounds of possibility.
This demonstrates a fundamental flaw in Paolini’s understanding of writing. In the real world, seemingly-unrealistic things can happen without breaking our suspension of disbelief because, well, it’s the real world. We aren’t going to tune out of reality and find another universe to participate in. In a novel, however, unrealistic events reek of contrivance unless they are worked into the story well, to the point that they seem natural. They can also work as part of the story’s premise, where the unlikely event kicks off the plot. If a character’s story begins when they survive falling 40,000 feet from a disintegrating airplane to land in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, readers will be happy to watch the unlikely survivor as they struggle to get back to civilization. If, on the other hand, a character flying to South America to pursue a plot point survives falling 40,000 feet from a disintegrating airplane to land in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, the results may leave a book-shaped dent in the reader’s wall, especially if they land conveniently close to the MacGuffin.
In summation?
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Back in the land of Alaglag, we cut to Roran waking up in his tent. Katrina is “stroking his hair and murmuring in his ear”, which I guess shows that the creepy parental vibe goes both ways in their relationship, and someone else is smearing stuff all over his back.
It’s Angela.
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We find this out because Trianna objects to her methods, and Angela retorts that she’s surprised anyone survives being treated by Trianna. Trianna is understandably insulted by this, but resorts to putdowns in response, because nobody may make a valid point against a Sue. Angela then says that she “will continue to insult [Trianna] until [she admits] that his back muscle attaches here and not there”. See? I wasn’t exaggerating earlier; that flogging apparently turned Roran’s back into hamburger.
Trianna leaves in a huff, and Katrina finally notices Roran stirring and asks if he’s awake. His response is all raspy, and he coughs, which makes “every one of the fifty stripes on his back” hurt. I doubt Roran can distinguish between all the lash-marks, Paolini.
Angela finishes up with her healing, and Katrina says she wasn’t expecting them to give Roran so much attention. Angela says Nasuada ordered it, and Katrina is surprised; Angela deflects her questions and tells her to tell Roran to avoid lying on his back or twisting too much. He’s awake, you obnoxious turd; just tell him directly! Roran apparently fails to notice that Angela is treating him like he’s not in the room, because he thanks her, and she goes swanning off with an insensitive comment about how funny it is that she’s worked on both his and Eragon’s back injuries and a random, “Watch out for ferrets!”
*grinds teeth* Good riddance. I hate Angela and her faux-quirkiness so much.
Unfortunately, now that Angela’s gone, it’s time for Stu-praise. Katrina compliments Roran’s bravery, talking about how he never cried out or begged for mercy. Yeah, just keep digging that hole, Paolini. This gets more unrealistic and Gary-Stu with every fucking sentence. I mean, just look at what Katrina says next:
“Angela believes that with a bit of luck, you won’t scar too badly. In either case, once you’re completely healed, Eragon or another magician can remove the scars from your back and it will be as if you were never whipped in the first place.”
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Katrina goes to get Roran some tea, and Nasuada comes in. Katrina is understandably not happy to see her, but Roran immediately hops to attention… or, well, tries. He manages to sit up before Nasuada tells him to stop. Katrina then decides to start mouthing off to Nasuada about how Roran needs rest. Combining that with her offscreen tantrum earlier where she begged Nasuada not to have Roran whipped, I can only come to the conclusion that Katrina is an idiot. You’re talking to the leader of the Varden, Katrina!
Of course, this is all just Katrina fulfilling that “hysterical wife overzealous in her defense of her household” stereotype again, as evidenced by Roran’s reaction: to patronizingly put a hand on her shoulder and tell Nasuada that he can totally talk, never mind his crazy little wimmins.
Then we get a continuity error!
Nasuada lifted the hem of her green dress and sat on the small chest of belongings Katrina had brought with her from Carvahall.
Paolini… Katrina was kidnapped by the Ra’zac. A good chunk of this very book was dedicated to Eragon and Roran’s rescue mission. Are you trying to tell me that the Ra’zac let her bring her luggage to the dungeons of Helgrind?
Nasuada fiddles with her dress and tells Roran that she’s got another mission for him. He asks when it is, and she says it’s tomorrow. Katrina is understandably incredulous, but whatever sympathy I might have had is ruined by the fact that it’s just that “hysterical wife” stereotype rearing its ugly head again. She goes off on Nasuada, saying she can’t put Roran back in the field so soon, and… well...
“I can, and I must!” said Nasuada with such authority, Katrina held her tongue and waited to hear Nasuada’s explanation, although Roran could tell that her anger had not subsided.
Read that sentence out loud. Go on, I dare you. Horrible, isn’t it? I must ask again… where the bloody hell was Paolini’s editor?
Nasuada turns to Roran and delivers some exposition about the Varden relationship with the Urgals, with a few interjections from Katrina in between. Apparently some idiot went and murdered three Urgals for no reason, and even though Nasuada had the man hanged, the Urgals are still angry. Nasuada thinks the only way to smooth this over is to make humans and Urgals work together, so she’s putting together a raid with both human and Urgal soldiers… and she’s putting them all under Roran’s command.
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Nasuada… the lashes don’t count for much if you immediately promote the guy. This just makes you look like an idiot! WHY ARE YOU SO INCOMPETENT?
Roran shares my confusion, though for different reasons, and asks her why she's putting him in charge. Nasuada… basically lays out her entire reasoning, and it’s a doozy.
With a wry smile, Nasuada said, “Because you will do whatever you have to in order to protect your friends and family. In this, you are like me, although my family is larger than yours, for I consider the whole of the Varden my kin. Also, because you are Eragon’s cousin, I cannot afford to have you commit insubordination again, for then I will have no choice but to execute you or expel you from the Varden. Neither of which I wish to do.
“Therefore, I am giving you your own command so that there is no one above you to disobey, except me. If you ignore my orders, it had better be to kill Galbatorix; no other reason will save you from far worse than the lashes you earned today. And I am giving you this command, because you have proven that you are able to convince others to follow you, even in the face of the most daunting circumstances. You have as good a chance as any of maintaining control over a group of Urgals and humans. I would send Eragon if I could, but since he is not here, the responsibility falls to you. When the Varden hear that Eragon’s own cousin, Roran Stronghammer—he who slew nigh on two hundred soldiers by himself—went on a mission with Urgals and that the mission was a success, then we may yet keep the Urgals as our allies for the duration of this war. That is why I had Angela and Trianna heal you more than is customary: not to spare you your punishment, but because I need you fit to command. Now, what say you, Stronghammer? Can I count on you?”
Hoo, boy. Let’s take this in order, shall we?
Right, so he’ll do whatever he has to in order to protect his friends and family. That’s nice and all, but how does it make him a good commander? This would also be a lot better as a compliment if you didn’t then go stomp all over it with that gloating line about how you consider all of the Varden your family… which, like hell you do! You talked about that guy who killed the Urgals like slime you’d scraped off your boot! He may have been a stupid racist, but he was still a member of the Varden, and if you try to claim he was no true Varden member because of that, I will hit you over the head with a goddamn haggis for using the No True Scotsman fallacy!
It’s also nice to see that you’re still telling Roran all about the preferential treatment you give him for being Eragon’s cousin. You’re lucky that Roran’s thicker than a New York City phone book, because he could abuse the hell out of that. Heck, he could just abuse the hell out of the fact that you don’t want to kill or exile him!
As for the matter of there being no one above him to disobey… that’s so fucking childish and smug that you can practically hear the smirk in her voice. She clearly thinks this is some amazing loophole. Nasuada, I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but that is a terrible idea. That just makes it look like you’re rewarding him for his disobedience. “I don’t like dealing with your insubordination to other people, so I’ll just give you command so you can’t disobey someone in the field!” This is… it’s fucking asinine. This is Paolini desperately attempting to find some reason to make his Stu a commander, and failing horribly.
Finally, let’s talk about the Urgals. Roran is apparently so good at persuading people to follow him that he’ll be able to easily control a group of humans and Urgals who get along like oil and water. Yeah, um, I know your promotion kind of invalidated the whole whipping thing as a deterrent, but you still had Roran flogged in public, and these Urgals probably saw that! Now you’re putting them under the guy who got whipped. If I were one of those Urgals, I’d take that as an insult! What it says is, “you’re so low in our opinions that we’ll gladly assign you under our criminals.”
In conclusion… no, Nasuada, you cannot count on Roran. Nor can you count on yourself, because you’re an idiot.
Roran poses dramatically, thinks about how big the Empire’s army is, and accepts Nasuada’s commands. With that, the chapter ends.
Good gods. This chapter was so full of failure it just defies all logic. Roran’s a Stu, Nasuada’s an idiot, Paolini doesn’t do any research, and the whole thing is so terribly edited that if you told me that Brisingr was a first draft, I’d probably believe you.
Yes, I’m aware of how late I am with this… Real Life has kind of been kicking my butt for the past month or so. Among other things, I got a job, and am still adjusting to both the time sink and the physical demands of retail. I only hope this sporking ends up being worth the wait.
First off, I must note that there is a certain aspect of this chapter that made me pounce as soon as it became available and snatch it up with my grabby little hands (besides the fact that I have grabby hands with pretty much every sporking chapter, really); and that’s the fact that this is the chapter where Roran gets a damn good beating!
Warning: viewing the above video further than the “damn good beating” line may result in nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, bleeding from eyes and ears, loss of sanity, cranial explosions, and pedal transient paresthesia.
Indeed, my friends, this is Chapter 42 of Brisingr: “The Whipping Post”. The fact that this happens to be the forty-second chapter is really quite fortuitous, as watching Roran be whipped really does feel like the ultimate answer to the Inheritance universe. I still have to quibble with the title a bit, though. As satisfying as it is to picture Roran bleeding heavily from a series of deep lacerations down his unwashed, overly-muscled peasant back, the title is a bit spoileriffic given that this chapter begins with Nasuada trying to decide what Roran’s punishment should be.
You called this chapter “The Whipping Post”, Paolini. We know what the punishment is going to be. There is no suspense in this, only padding. Change the title, or cut this bullshit.
The lack of suspense is further exacerbated by the fact that our first sentence has Roran staring at “a wrinkle in the side of the crimson pavilion”. Paolini is still abusing his favorite color, I see. The next paragraph attempts to rescue the drama by describing his anxiety: how he can’t look Nasuada in the eye, how the “pavilion” feels really hot, and how he’s even getting a headache from the stress. Unfortunately, it falls flat in the face of what came before, and is further undermined by Nasuada sipping wine “from a goblet” while they talk. It’s hard to imagine how Paolini could have written this without noticing that it made Nasuada look like a carefree, irreverent little shit and buried the attempted suspense in unnecessary detail at the same time.
The dialogue is crap, too. Nasuada is whining about having to make a decision, and Roran is basically turning up the Sad Puppy Face and refusing to call her anything but “my Lady”. Well, I suppose now is as good a time as any to start the BDSM jokes… seriously, though, tell me these lines don’t read like a femdom scene.
Roran sat bolt upright and stared past Nasuada… he could feel [her] studying him, but he refused to meet her gaze…
At last Nasuada said, “What am I going to do with you, Roran?”
He straightened his spine even more. “Whatever you wish, my Lady.”
“An admirable answer, Stronghammer… However, your success does not negate the reality of your disobedience… I must punish you if I am to maintain discipline among the Varden.”
“Yes, my Lady.”
I may have cut out some parts, but all of that is in the text, and it just keeps going on like this. Really, the whole scene is far more fun if you imagine Nasuada all dressed up as a dominatrix and Roran shackled to his chair by a full gimp suit. Yessss, Nasuada, beat him, BEAT HIM!
Of course, she doesn’t actually start beating him. Instead, she has to go and ruin it.
Her brow darkened. “Blast it, Stronghammer. If you were anyone else but Eragon’s cousin, and if your gambit had been even one whit less effective, I would have you strung up and hanged for your misconduct.”
*gapes for a moment before slowly picking up her own jaw with her hands*
Nasuada… you… you fucking idiot! You just tipped your hand! You told Roran that he gets preferential treatment! I know you don’t want to piss off the sociopath with a dragon, but if you want to maintain any degree of control over his equally-sociopathic cousin, you do not want to let him know that! You just gave him a big fat license to top from the bottom, you horrible, horrible domme! It’s only the fact that I know there are worse dom(me)s out there that’s saving you from being the worst domme!
*sighs*
All BDSM jokes aside… I know what that was, guys. It’s something that I have been guilty of in many a first draft, and heck, probably a few later drafts as well. That was a writer realizing that something they needed to happen seemed unlikely and attempting to insert an in-universe explanation via dialogue without thinking about how it made the characters look. Paolini wanted to explain the situation Nasuada is in, but in doing so he just made her look like an idiot.
Anyway, the conversation moves on to Nasuada asking Roran whether he wants to keep fighting for the Varden. He does, of course, continuing with his “whatever you need to do to me” routine like a broken record. Nasuada then says this.
“I hoped you would say that. Tradition and established precedent leave me only three choices. One, I can hang you, but I won’t… for a multitude of reasons. Two, I can give you thirty lashes and then discharge you from the ranks of the Varden. Or three, I can give you fifty lashes and keep you under my command.”
Right. This is a perfect contrast to that line above, where Nasuada showed Roran all her cards. If that line had been omitted and this included, I would have bought it: she’s telling him she has her reasons, but she’s not outright stating any of them. If this was all the information he had, then there would be no way for him to really know whether any of her reasons for not hanging him extended beyond this one infraction.
However, this also brings up something I didn’t really mention in the above quote: the sheer brutality of Nasuada’s proposed punishments. Paolini was probably going for Deliberate Values Dissonance here: hanging and flogging have been used historically by various military forces to punish misconduct. Unfortunately for Paolini, there are several factors working against him. The most obvious is that the Varden are supposed to be our Glorious Enlightened Rebel Heroes, and having them flog their soldiers would seem to go against that image; instead, it paints them as no better than the rest of their world. Contributing to that is the fact that we have no points of contrast. For all we know, the Empire’s punishment for insubordination is less severe than this. Finally, it’s made absolutely clear in this chapter that the purpose of the punishment is to make an example of Roran and thus keep the Varden soldiers in line through fear. Returning to our Glorious Rebellion point above, that is not the behavior of a hero.
That last point is touched on by Roran’s response, which is to ask whether the flogging will be public. Nasuada long-windedly says that yes, they’re bringing exhibitionism into their flogging session. Meanwhile, I’m left boggling at the fact that her little mini-speech actually credits Roran with intelligence. Yes, the peasant man who actively refuses to learn to read is so very intelligent. Just a paragraph ago, he was comforting himself by thinking that fifty isn’t that much more than thirty! Yes, I know it’s to reassure himself, but considering the actual disparity between those numbers, it kind of makes one wonder whether Garrow refused to teach the Sociopath Cousins their numbers as well.
Anyway, Nasuada’s speech ends with another “you still wanna stick with us?” line, and Roran gets angry that she’d question his previous commitment, saying that there’s no way it can be as painful as losing his home and his father. Quit posturing, you pompous ass; your pain at losing your home and family is basically an Informed Trait at this point.
Nasuada actually agrees with Roran’s posturing, which is a bit of an odd point. On the one hand, Nasuada also lost her father in this war, so it makes sense that she would be sympathetic. On the other, we have the aforementioned fact that Roran’s personality has degenerated into a sociopath who barely even pays lip service to his supposed loss and pain, plus the fact that he’s facing this whole thing entirely too confidently. He’s not reluctantly taking on this punishment so that he can continue to do what’s right; no, he’s getting angry that she would dare question his word. That’s not exactly an attitude that’s likely to get you sympathy from others. Another factor to consider is that Paolini has never really explored Nasuada’s feelings surrounding Ajihad’s death; back in Eldest, she seemed to give it pretty much no thought at all, and jumped right into the political scheming without any kind of mourning period. With all of that in mind, this reads less like a callback to Ajihad’s death and more like Paolini having his characters acknowledge his Stu’s Man Pain as the most terrible pain that ever did pain.
In short, what this illustrates is the power of consistently poor characterization to ruin moments that could have been good. If Nasuada had been shown grieving for her father, and if Roran’s personality had not been so thoroughly ruined over the past book and a half, this moment where they realize the connection of having lost family to the war against the Empire could have been genuinely touching. As-is, it feels hollow and forced.
Another factor working against this potentially interesting moment is the fact that it’s gone as soon as it began. Goodbye, possible connection between Roran and Nasuada’s backstories! Instead, we have to hear about how Nasuada will have one of her magicians handy to heal any lasting damage from the lashes, but they won’t be allowed to heal the wounds completely, and Roran’s not allowed to seek further assistance. Yeah that will definitely help after fifty fucking lashes... save it, guys; I'll get to the big rant when the whip actually comes out.
The date for the whipping is set (as soon as
Roran leaves the “pavilion” and gets marched to a tent by the whipping post, and we get a big block description of the thing. It’s boring, and although Roran has to “force himself to look away”, I really get no emotion from that action or the preceding description.
Anyway, Roran sits in the tent and hears people mustering outside. Wait, they’re just mustering the Varden right now for an impromptu whipping session? Everyone is just dropping all their current tasks and walking up to watch Roran get smacked? I mean, yes, I’d definitely be eager to watch Roran get a damn good beating, but don’t these soldiers have anything to do besides watch the Stu?
Oh, wait, I just answered my own question. No, they don’t. Roran is a Stu, and therefore all eyes must be on him at all moments and none of the other soldiers have lives and duties outside of being there when there needs to be an audience for his Big Moments.
Paolini actually tries to show us some tension here, with Roran imagining everyone he knows watching the lashes and sweating like a pig, but it’s two freaking sentences in the middle of a cavalcade of bullshit, and so fails to impress. After that, Trianna comes in and makes Roran strip so that she can give him a medical examination. Okay then.
Once she’s done, and I mean literally right after Roran has put his shirt back on, Katrina comes in, and we’re told that Roran feels “an equal measure of joy and dread” at seeing her. Show, don’t tell, please, Paolini! You were trying for it two paragraphs ago, so I know you get the concept at the very least. Katrina asks Trianna to let her speak to Roran alone, and then they grab at each other for a little bit and say how much they’ve missed each other… or rather, they “whisper” and “murmur” it. Tone down the Said Bookisms, Paolini. They draw apart “just far enough so that they could gaze into each other’s eyes”, I projectile vomit, and then Katrina starts going into hysterics about how this is wrong and she tried to get Nasuada to lay off the punishment. I’m not sure how she even managed to talk to Nasuada; she has no rank and Nasuada is supposed to be busy leading the goddamn rebellion.
Roran says he wishes Katrina hadn’t done that, she asks why, and he replies with a complete non-sequitur about how he refuses to leave the Varden. Um, what? I know you’re enduring the harsher punishment so you can stay, but Katrina doesn’t know anything about that and there is literally no reason for Nasuada to listen to her! Something like “I don’t want her to be angry at you too” would have been eyeroll-worthy, but at least it would have been believable. This is just confusing.
That was apparently Katrina’s cue to break into a bunch of Sue-praise, talking about Roran’s wanton slaughter of two hundred men as “heroism” that should be rewarded. Roran defends Nasuada, saying that he would have done the same in her place and that “it does not matter whether this is right or wrong”. Er, actually, it kind of does, because you guys are supposed to be the heroes!
Katrina then goes all delicate-fainting-flower on us and brings up that fifty lashes is kind of a big deal: “Men have died from being whipped that many times.”
That’s a good point, Katrina, because men have died from being whipped that many times! There are all sorts of ways that whipping can kill you: blood loss, shock, nerve damage, kidney damage… getting whipped is not just kinky funtimes. In fact, any kinkster worth their salt will tell you to never, ever go for the whip if you don’t know how to use it. Online guides advise anyone preparing for a whipping scene to wear protective gear, have a first aid kit handy, avoid the spine and kidneys, and to stay away from bullwhips “unless you have been fully trained and had significant practice”. People who go for the whip before they’re ready can and do severely harm their partners.
But, as I said, this is not kinky funtimes. The person who is going to be whipping Roran is not going to be doing it to hurt him for pleasure; he is going to be actively trying to harm him. On top of that, this is a low-tech medieval setting where the vast majority of people know fuckall about anatomy, so he probably won’t know shit about which spots to avoid. Even if he did and was instructed by Nasuada to hit where it wouldn’t cause permanent damage, fifty lashes is a lot; even someone with extensive training is very likely to land at least one strike a bit wrong.
However, due to information from the first scene of this chapter, we know that Nasuada is not going to be having the whip guy pull his punches or avoid damaging spots. No, she’ll just have a magician look over the wounds afterward and fix the things that would result in permanent damage. It’ll all be fine and dandy!
No, Paolini, that excuse does not fly. If you’re putting Roran in the line of fifty lashes, he’s probably going to go into circulatory shock, whether from the loss of blood or just the pain itself. For those of you who don’t have time to read a whole medical journal on the subject, I present the first two lines of the conclusion (emphasis mine):
Circulatory shock is associated with high morbidity and mortality. Prompt identification is essential so that aggressive management can be started.
In layman’s terms, this is something that is often fatal, especially you don’t catch it and start treatment ASAP.
Again, there is actually more I have yet to say about this, but let’s leave it on the table for now. It will be brought up once we get to the whipping scene and have Paolini’s description to work with.
In light of everything I just said, Roran’s reaction to Katrina’s concern is morbidly hilarious:
“Only if they had weak hearts. Don’t be so worried, it will take more than that to kill me.”
Oh, you silly man. You silly, silly man. You truly have no idea what’s coming, do you?
Katrina tries to force a smile at her husband’s pathetic attempt at reassurance, then gets all weepy and cries into his chest for a while like the concerned wife stereotype she is. It’s actually a bit disturbing, because his response, “[cradling] her in his arms, stroking her hair and reassuring her as best he could”, reads as a bit… paternal. The verb “cradle” is probably the biggest offender there, but the tone exists throughout. That’s not romantic, Paolini, that’s creepy and a bit sexist.
They hear a horn sound outside, and Roran tells Katrina to go back to their tent and stay there until the flogging is over. She protests, and they have a sappy conversation so cliche that I wanted to gouge my eyes out with a plastic spoon about how she doesn’t want to leave, she shouldn’t see it, he shouldn’t have to be whipped, he couldn’t bear to have her watch, she’d gladly take his place, he wouldn’t let her, and oh god I’m going to throw up again.
The loathsome lovebirds hug until
Row after row of the Varden boxed in the area around the post, every man, woman, dwarf, and Urgal standing with stiff spines and squared shoulders.
I cannot be the only one who read that first bit as row upon row of random Varden extras boxing each other’s ears. Terrible word choice, Paolini. I’m also interested to see that the Varden apparently have female human soldiers, because the rest of the paragraph calls this crowd “the assembled army”. Of course, we never see female human soldiers anywhere else, so I can only assume that this was an error. If you’ll notice, Paolini has been flip-flopping on whether this flogging spectacular is just for the military or civilians as well for the entire chapter; this little head-tilter is just the most obvious instance.
Not that Roran notices, of course, because he quickly looks away and has no emotional reactions while being escorted to the whipping post.
At this point, I’d like to call attention back to the structure of this chapter. I mentioned from the outset that the chapter title deflated the payoff for its opening, and I don’t think you need me to tell you that Roran and Katrina’s entire segment is a bloated abomination of poorly-written romance cliches that bogs down narrative momentum. However, those scenes do have a pretty clear purpose: they’re supposed to build up tension for this scene. Now that we’re here, though, we’re getting nothing. There are a bunch of people, but Roran is ignoring them and Paolini can’t even spare a few words to tell us how he feels about the situation. We’ve gone from awkward, bloated setup that pretty much beats us over the head with the characters’ worries to a complete absence of emotion at the moment where Roran’s tension should be reaching its peak.
You know how this could have been better? If Paolini had used one of those in media res openings he loves so much.
Imagine if we had opened up with Roran being led to the whipping post, and all of the steps leading up to it had been shown in flashback as he replayed them in his mind, desperately trying to reassure himself that this is the only way, but still faltering as the post grew nearer and nearer. That could have been effective! Seeing Roran ruminating on how he ended up at the post would have shown that he was anxious, even if he tried to hang onto that self-aggrandizing “I’ll survive it” tone. Hell, it wouldn’t even have broken up the narrative like Paolini’s in media res openings usually do, because there would be a reason for the flashbacks!
Unfortunately, Paolini’s tendency to use a literary tool is in inverse proportion to its likelihood of improving the text.
Back in the actual chapter, the guards tie Roran to the post and
There’s a drumroll,
This whole bit is so poorly-written, I have to do something I don’t think I have actually done in a spork before. I am going to show you the entirety of this lousy setup, starting from the drumroll, and then I’m going to rewrite it. First, the original:
Then a horn and a drumroll sounded, and Jörmundur read out the charges against Roran, and the guards cut off Roran’s sackcloth shirt.
He shivered as the cold air washed across his bare torso.
An instant before it struck, Roran heard the whip whistling through the air.
The formatting is terrible, half the details are irrelevant, and Roran is so emotionless that he’s failing the Turing test. Now, let’s rewrite it:
A horn sounded, and the dull pounding in Roran’s ears was joined by the beat of a drum. He swallowed heavily, barely aware that Jörmundur had begun to speak. The guards gripped the back of Roran’s shirt and ripped it open, allowing the ruined cloth to fall by his sides as gooseflesh sprang up along his neck and arms. He swallowed, his tongue fat and heavy against the dowel in his mouth, and braced himself for the first lash.
He heard the whip’s crack long before he felt it.
THERE, I FIXED IT.
This is the rare “There, I Fixed It” where the end result is longer that what Paolini wrote, because I had to add the tension and emotion that he didn’t. Instead of focusing on the actions of
I’m not going to claim that what I wrote is perfect, but I think we can all agree that it’s a hell of a lot better than what Paolini wrote.
And speaking of what Paolini wrote… here’s the description of the whipping in all its overwrought, unresearched, Gary-Stu-aggrandizing glory.
It felt as if a rod of hot metal had been laid across his flesh. Roran arched his back and bit down on the dowel. An involuntary groan escaped him, although the dowel muffled the sound so he thought no one else heard.
“One,” said the man wielding the whip.
The shock of the second blow caused Roran to groan again, but thereafter he remained silent, determined not to appear weak before the whole of the Varden.
The whipping was as painful as any of the numerous wounds Roran had suffered over the past few months, but after a dozen or so blows, he gave up trying to fight the pain and, surrendering to it, entered a bleary trance. His field of vision narrowed until the only thing he saw was the worn wood in front of him; at times, his sight flickered out and went blank as he drifted into brief spates of unconsciousness.
After an interminable time, he heard the dim and faraway voice intone, “Thirty,” and despair gripped him as he wondered, How can I possibly withstand another twenty lashes? Then he thought of Katrina and their unborn child, and the thought gave him strength.
*takes a deep breath and steeples her fingers*
Let’s set aside the choppy, poorly-worded sentences. Let’s set aside the thesaurus abuse with “spates of unconsciousness”. Let’s even set aside the obvious Stuthor tactic of having the Stu withstand a ridiculous degree of punishment and even noting that nobody can hear the few noises of pain and discomfort he does make. Instead, we are going to focus on how this ties into my medical rant earlier.
Roran should be dead.
Paolini didn’t give us a lot of detail on what he’s experiencing, but what he did give us is highly concerning. Two of the most common and worrying symptoms of shock are confusion/lack of alertness and loss of consciousness, which occur due to a lack of blood flow to the brain. That’s indicative of Stage II or decompensated shock. As the name indicates, decompensated shock is the point at which the body fails to compensate for whatever caused the shock (in this case, pain, nerve damage, and/or severe blood loss), leading to lowered pulse, blood pressure, and respiratory rate. Decompensated shock is extremely dangerous and, if untreated, can quickly degenerate into Stage III, irreversible shock, at which point recovery is impossible due to the cell and tissue damage already sustained.
Roran reached Stage II after twelve lashes. At that point, he needs immediate medical care to stop him from progressing into Stage III. Instead, he gets more whipping. Given the location of the lashes, there’s a good chance that some blows have damaged or will damage the kidneys, reducing their ability to contribute to the body’s compensatory processes and thus speeding Roran’s already-rapid degeneration. After thirty lashes, he loses consciousness. The irreversible threshold cannot be far away at that point, assuming it hasn’t already been crossed. Nevertheless, he receives twenty more lashes before being turned over to the Varden healers.
During that time, as Roran’s body continued to lose blood and fail to deliver adequate oxygen to his brain and other organs, he would begin to suffer tissue damage. After a few minutes of oxygen deprivation, irreversible brain damage is likely. It’s hard to say how long Roran spent on that whipping post, but after timing myself as I mimed cracking a whip and counted each swing, I can safely say that it was probably around two minutes, perhaps longer. That’s definitely getting into the danger zone, especially considering the fact that none of the Varden healers are present in this scene, meaning that after the flogging is done, they have to spend time getting to Roran before they can start tending to his injuries.
By that point, going on everything we’ve been shown, Roran should have progressed to irreversible shock. His brain is dying and several of his internal organs have likely ceased to function. Even if he did survive against all odds, he would do so as a vegetable, or at the very least with severe brain damage. In that case, he would still be likely to die later on as his damaged organs failed to repair themselves… that is, if the cuts on his back didn’t go septic first. The odds are decidedly not in his favor.
In Paolini’s recent AMA, Roran’s over-the-top feats of strength and endurance were called into question. Regarding this chapter, he said the following:
As for whipping, it depends on the whip used. Some would cut you down to the bone. Others might only leave some bad bruising.
I’m not going to mince words: that excuse is bullshit. Despite Roran’s unrealistic endurance, it’s obvious from the way this scene is framed that he’s being hit with one of the nasty whips. Later in the chapter we will see implications that his back muscles were severely damaged, and he will be told to avoid certain movements in order to avoid reopening the wounds. His back coming off the whipping post must look like The Passion of the Christ. There’s no way he would come out of this without significant, lasting damage.
This, Paolini, is why you need to research.
Of course, Paolini would probably respond to that with the preceding paragraph of his AMA answer, which applies to Roran’s unrealistic feats in general:
Roran: throughout history, there are plenty of people who have done things that would seem ridiculous or over-the-top even in a movie. I was reading a couple of books on the history of warfare at the time, and some of the—documented—feats by various warriors over the ages are really, truly incredible. (Musashi is one of the more famous examples.) So I firmly believe that Roran's feats are well within the bounds of possibility.
This demonstrates a fundamental flaw in Paolini’s understanding of writing. In the real world, seemingly-unrealistic things can happen without breaking our suspension of disbelief because, well, it’s the real world. We aren’t going to tune out of reality and find another universe to participate in. In a novel, however, unrealistic events reek of contrivance unless they are worked into the story well, to the point that they seem natural. They can also work as part of the story’s premise, where the unlikely event kicks off the plot. If a character’s story begins when they survive falling 40,000 feet from a disintegrating airplane to land in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, readers will be happy to watch the unlikely survivor as they struggle to get back to civilization. If, on the other hand, a character flying to South America to pursue a plot point survives falling 40,000 feet from a disintegrating airplane to land in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, the results may leave a book-shaped dent in the reader’s wall, especially if they land conveniently close to the MacGuffin.
In summation?
Back in the land of Alaglag, we cut to Roran waking up in his tent. Katrina is “stroking his hair and murmuring in his ear”, which I guess shows that the creepy parental vibe goes both ways in their relationship, and someone else is smearing stuff all over his back.
It’s Angela.
We find this out because Trianna objects to her methods, and Angela retorts that she’s surprised anyone survives being treated by Trianna. Trianna is understandably insulted by this, but resorts to putdowns in response, because nobody may make a valid point against a Sue. Angela then says that she “will continue to insult [Trianna] until [she admits] that his back muscle attaches here and not there”. See? I wasn’t exaggerating earlier; that flogging apparently turned Roran’s back into hamburger.
Trianna leaves in a huff, and Katrina finally notices Roran stirring and asks if he’s awake. His response is all raspy, and he coughs, which makes “every one of the fifty stripes on his back” hurt. I doubt Roran can distinguish between all the lash-marks, Paolini.
Angela finishes up with her healing, and Katrina says she wasn’t expecting them to give Roran so much attention. Angela says Nasuada ordered it, and Katrina is surprised; Angela deflects her questions and tells her to tell Roran to avoid lying on his back or twisting too much. He’s awake, you obnoxious turd; just tell him directly! Roran apparently fails to notice that Angela is treating him like he’s not in the room, because he thanks her, and she goes swanning off with an insensitive comment about how funny it is that she’s worked on both his and Eragon’s back injuries and a random, “Watch out for ferrets!”
*grinds teeth* Good riddance. I hate Angela and her faux-quirkiness so much.
Unfortunately, now that Angela’s gone, it’s time for Stu-praise. Katrina compliments Roran’s bravery, talking about how he never cried out or begged for mercy. Yeah, just keep digging that hole, Paolini. This gets more unrealistic and Gary-Stu with every fucking sentence. I mean, just look at what Katrina says next:
“Angela believes that with a bit of luck, you won’t scar too badly. In either case, once you’re completely healed, Eragon or another magician can remove the scars from your back and it will be as if you were never whipped in the first place.”
Katrina goes to get Roran some tea, and Nasuada comes in. Katrina is understandably not happy to see her, but Roran immediately hops to attention… or, well, tries. He manages to sit up before Nasuada tells him to stop. Katrina then decides to start mouthing off to Nasuada about how Roran needs rest. Combining that with her offscreen tantrum earlier where she begged Nasuada not to have Roran whipped, I can only come to the conclusion that Katrina is an idiot. You’re talking to the leader of the Varden, Katrina!
Of course, this is all just Katrina fulfilling that “hysterical wife overzealous in her defense of her household” stereotype again, as evidenced by Roran’s reaction: to patronizingly put a hand on her shoulder and tell Nasuada that he can totally talk, never mind his crazy little wimmins.
Then we get a continuity error!
Nasuada lifted the hem of her green dress and sat on the small chest of belongings Katrina had brought with her from Carvahall.
Paolini… Katrina was kidnapped by the Ra’zac. A good chunk of this very book was dedicated to Eragon and Roran’s rescue mission. Are you trying to tell me that the Ra’zac let her bring her luggage to the dungeons of Helgrind?
Nasuada fiddles with her dress and tells Roran that she’s got another mission for him. He asks when it is, and she says it’s tomorrow. Katrina is understandably incredulous, but whatever sympathy I might have had is ruined by the fact that it’s just that “hysterical wife” stereotype rearing its ugly head again. She goes off on Nasuada, saying she can’t put Roran back in the field so soon, and… well...
“I can, and I must!” said Nasuada with such authority, Katrina held her tongue and waited to hear Nasuada’s explanation, although Roran could tell that her anger had not subsided.
Read that sentence out loud. Go on, I dare you. Horrible, isn’t it? I must ask again… where the bloody hell was Paolini’s editor?
Nasuada turns to Roran and delivers some exposition about the Varden relationship with the Urgals, with a few interjections from Katrina in between. Apparently some idiot went and murdered three Urgals for no reason, and even though Nasuada had the man hanged, the Urgals are still angry. Nasuada thinks the only way to smooth this over is to make humans and Urgals work together, so she’s putting together a raid with both human and Urgal soldiers… and she’s putting them all under Roran’s command.
Nasuada… the lashes don’t count for much if you immediately promote the guy. This just makes you look like an idiot! WHY ARE YOU SO INCOMPETENT?
Roran shares my confusion, though for different reasons, and asks her why she's putting him in charge. Nasuada… basically lays out her entire reasoning, and it’s a doozy.
With a wry smile, Nasuada said, “Because you will do whatever you have to in order to protect your friends and family. In this, you are like me, although my family is larger than yours, for I consider the whole of the Varden my kin. Also, because you are Eragon’s cousin, I cannot afford to have you commit insubordination again, for then I will have no choice but to execute you or expel you from the Varden. Neither of which I wish to do.
“Therefore, I am giving you your own command so that there is no one above you to disobey, except me. If you ignore my orders, it had better be to kill Galbatorix; no other reason will save you from far worse than the lashes you earned today. And I am giving you this command, because you have proven that you are able to convince others to follow you, even in the face of the most daunting circumstances. You have as good a chance as any of maintaining control over a group of Urgals and humans. I would send Eragon if I could, but since he is not here, the responsibility falls to you. When the Varden hear that Eragon’s own cousin, Roran Stronghammer—he who slew nigh on two hundred soldiers by himself—went on a mission with Urgals and that the mission was a success, then we may yet keep the Urgals as our allies for the duration of this war. That is why I had Angela and Trianna heal you more than is customary: not to spare you your punishment, but because I need you fit to command. Now, what say you, Stronghammer? Can I count on you?”
Hoo, boy. Let’s take this in order, shall we?
Right, so he’ll do whatever he has to in order to protect his friends and family. That’s nice and all, but how does it make him a good commander? This would also be a lot better as a compliment if you didn’t then go stomp all over it with that gloating line about how you consider all of the Varden your family… which, like hell you do! You talked about that guy who killed the Urgals like slime you’d scraped off your boot! He may have been a stupid racist, but he was still a member of the Varden, and if you try to claim he was no true Varden member because of that, I will hit you over the head with a goddamn haggis for using the No True Scotsman fallacy!
It’s also nice to see that you’re still telling Roran all about the preferential treatment you give him for being Eragon’s cousin. You’re lucky that Roran’s thicker than a New York City phone book, because he could abuse the hell out of that. Heck, he could just abuse the hell out of the fact that you don’t want to kill or exile him!
As for the matter of there being no one above him to disobey… that’s so fucking childish and smug that you can practically hear the smirk in her voice. She clearly thinks this is some amazing loophole. Nasuada, I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but that is a terrible idea. That just makes it look like you’re rewarding him for his disobedience. “I don’t like dealing with your insubordination to other people, so I’ll just give you command so you can’t disobey someone in the field!” This is… it’s fucking asinine. This is Paolini desperately attempting to find some reason to make his Stu a commander, and failing horribly.
Finally, let’s talk about the Urgals. Roran is apparently so good at persuading people to follow him that he’ll be able to easily control a group of humans and Urgals who get along like oil and water. Yeah, um, I know your promotion kind of invalidated the whole whipping thing as a deterrent, but you still had Roran flogged in public, and these Urgals probably saw that! Now you’re putting them under the guy who got whipped. If I were one of those Urgals, I’d take that as an insult! What it says is, “you’re so low in our opinions that we’ll gladly assign you under our criminals.”
In conclusion… no, Nasuada, you cannot count on Roran. Nor can you count on yourself, because you’re an idiot.
Roran poses dramatically, thinks about how big the Empire’s army is, and accepts Nasuada’s commands. With that, the chapter ends.
Good gods. This chapter was so full of failure it just defies all logic. Roran’s a Stu, Nasuada’s an idiot, Paolini doesn’t do any research, and the whole thing is so terribly edited that if you told me that Brisingr was a first draft, I’d probably believe you.