Chapter 44: Butting Heads
Epistler: Or, as SnarkbotAnya suggested we call it, “Buttheads”. Which describes the entire cast of this novel.
Anyway, this chapter now has the dubious distinction of having been passed over by not one but two sporkers, so now it’s fallen to me. As if I weren’t overposting enough already. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it.
Torylltales: And I, as her faithfulminiontoadyaccomplice acquaintance, have been given the opportunity to help. As though my occasional one-liners are in any way helpful.
SnarkbotAnya: Oh, yeah, and I’m here too. Kinda. My life’s kicking me in the butt and shitting in my Cheerios, but I can still do part of a spork.
Epistler: Naturally, this chapter is also completely pointless. It just happens to be completely pointless with some particularly grody homoeroticism thrown in.
Torylltales: The only thing we’re lacking is leather chaps and a Pride parade float.
SnarkbotAnya:Assless chaps!
Epistler: We open with a brief, dull bit of narration about Roran leading a raid on an Imperial supply train, having been put in charge of his own squad… immediately after being flogged for insubordination. That still Does Not Compute. Naturally, because Roran is Just So Awesome, it’s a smashing success and he doesn’t lose so much as a single guy.
This is what happens when the author wants you to believe that Little Miss Sue is a “brilliant” military commander but also has no freaking idea how military strategy works. Rather than show the actual brilliance and tactics, the author just tells you that their precious Mary Tzu wins with no casualties. Sara Douglass did the exact same thing with Axis, who despite having an unreasonably huge army at his command, never loses anyone in the field (or to disease, which happened a lot in Ye Medieval times when you had a lot of guys camping together in unsanitary conditions in foreign parts. Mass deaths from disease aren't a Thing in most fantasy novels).
Despite having been flogged half to death just a chapter ago, Roran is somehow still able to fight and kills “several soldiers”, and literally the only effect the flogging has had on him is that he’s “stiff and sore” and has “a mat of scabs” on his back. Paolini doesn’t know shit about shit.
SnarkbotAnya: Hell no, he doesn’t. Apparently Roran is trying not to crack these scabs, and hasn’t cracked them yet, even though stretching or twisting should be enough. Fighting? Out of the fucking question. Hell, the ride here should have cracked them up a bunch already too. They should also be itching something awful.
Torylltales: Paolini has obviously never actually had a scab, let alone a “mat” of them. I have a scab on the top of my thumb knuckle right now, where a thin layer of skin was shaved off in a sword fight. Three weeks ago.
SnarkbotAnya: I suppose this constitutes yet more evidence that Paopao has never lived in reality.
Epistler: We’re also informed that the humans and urglegurgles fight well together despite mutually disliking each other. In a rare display of semi-genuine humility Roran doesn’t take credit for this, instead thinking about how Nasuada and Nar Garglewompwomp made it so by picking out troops with “a calm and even disposition”.
Torylltales: That’s not how team building works. That’s not how any of this works.
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Epistler: This turns out to be a lie in any case.
Blah blah, the fight is over and the Varden jackasses are busy dragging the bodies away while Roran does nothing. Well, supposedly he’s “overseeing” the work while sitting on his perfect white stallion of Sueness, but it basically just amounts to hanging around watching.
Torylltales: Which is entitled bullshit. As someone who grew up as a subsistence farmer in a peasant village, Roran’s first instinct should be to get down and help out, not to sit imperiously on his horse like some lord. The soldiers, in a realistic setting, would quickly begin to resent him for that attitude.
Epistler: Then he hears someone yelling in pain and rides over to check it out.
SnarkbotAnya: Which, again, should be cracking those scabs on his back, but as you said, Paolini doesn’t know shit about shit.
Torylltales: I disagree. Given how much he has generated in this book alone, Paolini appears to know plenty about shit. At least how to make it, if not how to recognise it.
Epistler: Some urglewurgles have tied up a surviving soldier and are having fun torturing him by jabbing him with their swords. “Noble” Rrrr-roran comes rushing in and kills the guy with his hammer. Wow, that was so completely unnecessary. He doesn’t even attempt to rescue the guy. I just love how that’s Roran’s first reaction: “Nope, he gotta die”. He doesn’t even bother to ascertain whether the prisoner is beyond medical help or anything. Plus, they have Carn. Y’know, a wizard who can heal people? Ring any bells?
Also, torturing a helpless prisoner really doesn’t sound like something a race of Noble Savages would do.
The head urglebargle, some guy named Yarbog, whines that Roran ruined their fun. Cue a charming display of smug self-righteousness from Roran, who starts lecturing him about whether he’d treat another urgleargh like that. Because Roran knows all about empathy, honest! Yarbog says yeah, sure, because everyone should be tortured before dying so that they can “prove their bravery”. Yuh-huh.
Torylltales: I actually like this moment. I’m a big fan/proponent of nonhuman races that have nonhuman morals and values, and this is one fleeting instance that fits. It makes sense for a race whose lives revolve around honour, warfare, strength and bravery to put prisoners through a trial to demonstrate their worthiness as warriors. I would like this scene even more if there had been some worldbuilding already established about what the urgals believe happens to people who die as warriors (or at least defiantly fighting to the last breath). But knowing Paolini he would have made it way too much like a thinly-veiled Valhalla clone.
I also think the humans should have been WAY more concerned that their allies think little of torturing captured enemies for the sake of ‘bravery’ or ‘honour’.
Epistler: Instead of which this will literally never be mentioned again. It’s a Big Lipped Alligator Culture-Building Moment.
SnarkbotAnya: Incidentally, the name “Yarbog” kind of makes this guy sound like some kind of pirate urgleburger, or maybe a wannabe pirate who rows a tiny boat around a swamp yelling “Yarrrrr-bog!” at passing travellers. In light of this realization, he will now be referred to by pirate references.
Torylltales: face it, Yarbog is the result of clicking on the Random Orc Name Generator. Other names generated by that site, just now by me, include Ungagh, Yargol, Balogog, Gunag. © Torylltales, 2018.
Epistler: Roran gets all sniffy because the Bog Pirate supposedly just questioned his non-existent “courage”, and tells him that unless he wants to “experience agony the likes of which you cannot imagine” (seriously, he actually says this), he should hand his sword in and do grunt work for the rest of the mission. Hooray for ridiculously over-the-top violent threats! This is so unnecessary. You know what kind of person includes threats and intimidation with their orders to underlings? VILLAINS.
Torylltales: In a better-developed work, Roran would initially feel uncomfortable with making such threats, but does so because he was advised that the urgals would not respect him without overt shows of dominance. Yarbog and co. would mock Roran for his uncertainty and hesitance in delivering above threat.
Epistler: As it is it’s just another example of Roran’s descent into hyper-violent sociopathy, already in progress.
Yar Har Har and a bottle of bog-rum tells Roran to shove it and then challenges him to a trial by combat. Or rather, a wrestling match to determine who’s in charge of “this tribe”. Weren’t we just informed that Nar Garglearglesnarglewargle deliberately picked out guys who had “calm and even dispositions”? And on top of that, it now appears that the arglewargletablefarbles here are all part of the same “tribe”; specifically, the “Bolvek tribe”. Did it not occur to anyone that this would make them more likely to gang up on their commander?
SnarkbotAnya: I guess that kind of shoddy strategy is par for the course in an army led by Nasuada, who does things like going out of her way to let people know when her political hands are tied and making racist jokes about werecats right to their king’s face.
Torylltales: Bolvek, another name courtesy of the Random Orc Name Generator.
Epistler: …by way of Mother Russia, apparently.
Torylltales: You’re thinking of Bolshevik, not Bolvek. The Bolveks are way too manly to have a ‘she’ in the name. Although it’s interesting to note that Bolverk was one of the names of Odin in traditional Norse mythology, and translates roughly to “evil-doer”.
Epistler: Coincidence? I think not. I bet he thought he was being so clever with this.
Roran says trial by combat challenges for leadership are not a thing in the Varden (which given that the Trial of the Long Knives happened is patently untrue) and gets a “fuck you we don’t care” in response. So of course he agrees to this ridiculous challenge instead of, oh, I don’t know, telling the Fail Pirate to sod off.
Torylltales: Roran: “It is not the custom of the Varden to award leadership based upon trial by combat” (seriously, who talks like this?)
Also Roran: *receives a leadership position after trial by whipping post*
In the space of one cut-away chapter, Roran, who is walking around with a “mat of scabs” on his back, has completely forgotten that disciplinary action for insubordination definitely IS a custom of the Varden. This urgal is being insubordinate to his leader, as far as outright mutiny. The established Varden precedent is to discipline himand then award him leadership of a unit. Roran’s policy should be clear.
Epistler: Honestly, Roran is so bone-headedly stupid I’m amazed he hasn’t forgotten how to breathe. Paolini is trying to present this as a necessary sacrifice or whatever, and he’s failing. Hard. This entire setup is just flat-out contrived and only exists to make Roran look “badass”. Instead he just looks like an easily manipulated, weak-willed moron.
SnarkbotAnya: Indeed. The more Roran agrees to, the more he comes across to his soldiers, particularly the urgleblurgs, as a total pushover who they can talk into doing anything. And no, it doesn’t matter that he’s going to win the match via Sue Muscles; he still agreed to the damn thing, so the damage is done regardless.
Epistler: This is a very big and obvious parallel to the scene earlier on where Nasuada also allows herself to be bullied into a stupid tribal “test of strength” and likewise exposed herself as a bad leader and an easily manipulated pushover.
Torylltales: In his quest to prove how strong, confident, and warrior-ly his characters are, Paolini has overlooked the fact that leaders who have true strength and true confidence wouldn’t even entertain a challenge to their authority. Not only are Nas and Roran easily manipulated, but also show a lack of realistic confidence in themselves and grounding in their abilities and limitations. A leader who believes they are infallible and cannot be outdone or properly challenged, and who therefore accepts any challenge that comes along as another opportunity to show off how amazing they are, is a leader who will send their army into ruin on suicide missions that cannot possibly be won. Which, incidentally, is exactly what Roran and Nasuada do (if the story were realistic and had actual consequences for the characters’ decisions and actions).
Epistler: The Horny Pirate declares that they have to fight naked. Well, okay, in their underpants. And no weapons allowed. Roran, continuing to dig himself into that “easily-swayed rube” pigeonhole, accepts these conditions. Yarr-bog then adds that this will be a fight “to the death”, and Roran is like, “oh well, if I die it’ll be a necessary sacrifice”. The fuck is with this guy? He’s supposed to be “brave”, but he just comes off as suicidal, and also a glory hog. Don’t you have a pregnant wife at home, Roran?
Torylltales: at least there are no descriptions of Roran’s glistening pecs.
SnarkbotAnya: Or his groin. Which I’m willing to bet is decidedly not hairless… excuse me, I need to bleach my brain now. Why do I do this to myself?
Epistler: Moving right along… the urblewurgles peg out a combat arena (where the hell did they get the pegs?), and Roran and the Horny Pirate both get naked. And then their underlings rub them down with bear grease. One, why was this at all necessary, and two, why the hell were they carrying this stuff around with them in the first place?
Torylltales: Somebody read about ancient Turkish oil wrestling, and it was SO (homo)erotic that they just had to write about it.
Epistler: Carn and some other guy named Loften do the greasing on Roran, and it’s barely one step away from a sensual massage. Couldn’t he just do this himself? And did we really need descriptions of Carn “work[ing] [his] way down Roran’s limbs”? Apparently so.
Torylltales: Paolini also commits a very basic novel-writing mistake: giving a name to a throwaway background character who will never appear again. Loften even has his own Inheriwiki page in which his entry is exactly 17 words long: “Loften was a soldier for the Varden who accompanied Roran on a supply train raid in Brisingr.” Even Paolini dismisses him as merely “another human” in the very same sentence where he is introduced, named, and then discarded. This is Early Elder Scrolls worldbuilding. Not Skyrim or Oblivion, I mean Daggerfall level, where every one of a million randomly generated villagers has a randomly generated name, even though you may never find the same villager twice, or need to. Quantity substituting for quality, breadth standing in for depth.
Epistler: Also, “Loften” is one of the stupidest character names I’ve ever come across. Though admittedly not quite as dumb as “Harden”.
SnarkbotAnya: Heh heh, “Harden”.
We are mature, functioning adults.
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Torylltales: Reminds me of a Russell Peters standup comedy routine about Indian names.
Epistler: Roran checks out the scurvy urgal’s big muscles and thinks about how this won’t be like wrestling Eragon or Baldor back at the farm. Uh…
(No seriously; that’s in there. Did he and Eragon also go at it naked and covered in bear grease? No wonder Eragon was so pissy and jealous when Roran said he was getting married).
Torylltales: Roran basically gives away the ending by contemplating his strategy. While this is finally a bit of common sense from him, it should have been kept secret from the readers until the appropriate moment, giving away Roran’s plan/tactics before the fight’s begun just spoils the climax.
Epistler: The buildup for the actual fight goes on for way too long, and then Yarr-bog rushes in and smacks Roran with his horns, which knocks him over. The scabs on his back tear, but of course this is just treated like an owwie.
SnarkbotAnya: Instead of, y’know, “HOLY FUCK OW MY BACK IS ON FIRE NO THESE AREN’T TEARS I JUST HAVE SAND IN MY EYES OWWWWWW OH GOD MAKE IT STOP”.
Torylltales: As I said above, Paolini clearly has no experience with scabs and the tearing off thereof. Tearing a scab is excruciating, let alone a solid mat of them over a large area. This should disable Roran entirely and give the victory to Yarbog.
Epistler: The last time I ripped a scab off, it bled like crazy all over the place. And it wasn’t even a big scab. Thing was the size of a penny.
SnarkbotAnya: I don’t think we’re actually talking about ripping the scabs off per se, just… breaking them in places. Not that the distinction matters much in this case, though, because breaking a scab also hurts like hell.
Epistler: …pedant.
Horny Pirate charges a couple more times, and then starts coming in sideways and trying to “pull him into his deadly embrace”. But will it be a parody of a lover’s embrace? Seriously, what is with all these bad authors using “embraces” in what are supposed to be dramatic fight scenes?
Torylltales: Personally I prefer a good vambrace, especially if it has that awesome “elvish” overlapping diagonal strips design. You know the kind. Like Elrond wore in the Hobbit movie.
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Now that's what I'm talkin' about.
Epistler: They keep going at it and Roran realises he’s getting tired, so he’d better end it now (like he has the power to do that. If he did, why didn’t he end it at any point previously?). He starts taunting Yarr-bog like the obnoxious manchild he is – seriously, he even sticks his tongue out at him – and the Fail Pirate seriously responds by yelling “Die, puny human!”, a line so cliché and pathetic the other clichés used to shove its head down the toilet at cliché school and then stuff it in its own locker.
Torylltales: Seriously, and Paolini has even quoted this as his favourite line. That and the thing about not messing with dragons because humans are crunchy.
Epistler: …the latter of which wasn’t even his line to begin with.
SnarkbotAnya: Aw fuck, I’d totally forgotten about that… yet more proof that the man has precisely zero sense of clichés or originality. Hell, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to not know that the concept of originality even exists.
Epistler: Roran gets clawed across the ribs, but then manages to grab Literally Horny Pirate by the horns and throw him down. You know, like a sheep. He then proceeds to rape – uh, pin him down with his knee – and holds him like that for “ten minutes”.
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I know I say this a lot, but how the fuck does anyone know it was ten minutes?
Torylltales: *puts on a recording of Unchained Melody, like in that clay-turning scene from Ghost*
SnarkbotAnya: This is like in shitty creepypastas where people somehow know exactly how many seconds they spent looking at the Creepy Shit of the Day, or exactly what said Creepy Shit of the Day looked like despite looking at it for only a fraction of a second. Sonic.exe is a textbook example of this kind of bullshit. Still, whether you’re writing a random Internet story or a novel, all I can say is STOP THAT. It’s unrealistic and gives the impression that your characters are all robots with a built-in stopwatch function. *flails arms* I AM RORAN-BOT, BEEP BOOP! DANGER, ERGS BROMBINSON, DANGER!
Epistler: Paolini clumsily tries to show the time passing with a bunch of emotionless description of the dirt and an ox lowing, and Roran’s back hurts but doesn’t actually have any effect on him, because again, Paolini has no idea how pain and injuries work.
Finally the Bog Pirate says he gives up and asks Roran to kill him, but Roran “nobly” says no. He adds that “I don’t belong to your race, and I won’t abide by your customs”.
Then why the fuck did you agree to homoerotically wrestle with him in the first fucking place? This is just priceless, you guys. First Roran caves in to every single one of Yarr-bog’s ridiculous demands over a custom he doesn’t belong to and has no reason to respect, all so he can look “cool” by being the only human ever to win a wrestling match with an urglefarglebargledingdong, then has an instant change of heart over following through just so he can look “noble”. Is this guy bipolar or something?
Torylltales: The worst thing is, even in some real life human cultures, the shame of being defeated and not even killed honourably would have made him a pariah, if not suicidal. Just look at seppuku in Japan (ritual suicide of samurai who have brought shame upon themselves), puputan in Bali (mass ritual murder-suicide in preference to being defeated or enslaved), or jauhar in India (self-immolation of women to avoid enslavement or rape by enemy forces when defeat is certain). The stigma of having lost but not died would have haunted Yarbog, leading to festering resentment and hatred that might even result in a murder attempt against Roran.
Epistler: Roran then proceeds to pat himself on the back, telling Yarr-bog that he should go around bragging about how he was defeated by “the cousin of Eragon Shadeslayer”. Yes, just keep pretending that being related to that shithead makes you special, Roran. It’s not obnoxious or egotistical or anything. I don’t care what Joey from Ten Things I Hate About You said – being “cool by association” does not work outside of high school.
SnarkbotAnya: Metaphorical back-patting, of course. Though it probably wouldn’t actually hurt him to do it literally, considering that his scabs are apparently made of topical anesthetic so that they don’t hurt more than is dramatically appropriate.
Also, this whole “go around and tell everyone I beat you” thing just makes what Toryll said up there even worse. To someone from a culture like the urghwhyamialives appear to have, being spared is a grave insult and cause for social ostracism… and being told to brag about the defeat that brought said shame upon them is rubbing a salt-and-lemon-juice cocktail in the raw, bleeding, sucking chest wound.
Epistler: Naturally the Bog-Rum Pirate gives up and Roran is allowed to “hobble” back over to Carn, who gives him a blankie and goes on about what an amazing guy he is and what a great fight that was, blah blah blah Roran is Special.
Roran then pats himself on the back even more: “This won’t be the last fight between our two races, he thought, but as long as we can return safely to the Varden, the Urgals won’t break off our alliance, at least not on account of me.”
Spoilers: The human/urgleyarglewurgle alliance being under threat will never be an issue again. Apparently Roran just magically fixed everything all by his lonesome, because he’s just so awesome etcetera and so forth.
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By Snarkbot’s headcanon, it was not Roran who fixed things, but the Power of Gay, released through the homoeroticism of those ten oily, sweaty, sticky moments. RAAAAIIINBOOOOOWS!
Hilariously, the moment this is over and done with everyone starts acting like they have to hurry and it’s urgent because Murtagh and Thorn might show up at any minute. But you totally had time to waste on a wrestling match, which probably lasted about an hour. I see Paolini has been employing the magical Pause Button again.
Torylltales: Of course, everyone knows that time slows down at suitably dramatic moments.
Epistler: …such as in the middle of fight scenes so Eragon and Murtagh can throw back health and mana potions and Paolini can overdescribe everything.
The chapter ends with Roran yelling orders at people like the huge self-important jerk he is, and he’d better hope Katrina doesn’t find out her man cheated on her with an off-brand orc. Just think of all the nasty STDs those things probably carry.
The next chapter is “Genealogy”, with… oh hey, it’s me!
Epistler: Or, as SnarkbotAnya suggested we call it, “Buttheads”. Which describes the entire cast of this novel.
Anyway, this chapter now has the dubious distinction of having been passed over by not one but two sporkers, so now it’s fallen to me. As if I weren’t overposting enough already. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it.
Torylltales: And I, as her faithful
SnarkbotAnya: Oh, yeah, and I’m here too. Kinda. My life’s kicking me in the butt and shitting in my Cheerios, but I can still do part of a spork.
Epistler: Naturally, this chapter is also completely pointless. It just happens to be completely pointless with some particularly grody homoeroticism thrown in.
Torylltales: The only thing we’re lacking is leather chaps and a Pride parade float.
SnarkbotAnya:Assless chaps!
Epistler: We open with a brief, dull bit of narration about Roran leading a raid on an Imperial supply train, having been put in charge of his own squad… immediately after being flogged for insubordination. That still Does Not Compute. Naturally, because Roran is Just So Awesome, it’s a smashing success and he doesn’t lose so much as a single guy.
This is what happens when the author wants you to believe that Little Miss Sue is a “brilliant” military commander but also has no freaking idea how military strategy works. Rather than show the actual brilliance and tactics, the author just tells you that their precious Mary Tzu wins with no casualties. Sara Douglass did the exact same thing with Axis, who despite having an unreasonably huge army at his command, never loses anyone in the field (or to disease, which happened a lot in Ye Medieval times when you had a lot of guys camping together in unsanitary conditions in foreign parts. Mass deaths from disease aren't a Thing in most fantasy novels).
Despite having been flogged half to death just a chapter ago, Roran is somehow still able to fight and kills “several soldiers”, and literally the only effect the flogging has had on him is that he’s “stiff and sore” and has “a mat of scabs” on his back. Paolini doesn’t know shit about shit.
SnarkbotAnya: Hell no, he doesn’t. Apparently Roran is trying not to crack these scabs, and hasn’t cracked them yet, even though stretching or twisting should be enough. Fighting? Out of the fucking question. Hell, the ride here should have cracked them up a bunch already too. They should also be itching something awful.
Torylltales: Paolini has obviously never actually had a scab, let alone a “mat” of them. I have a scab on the top of my thumb knuckle right now, where a thin layer of skin was shaved off in a sword fight. Three weeks ago.
SnarkbotAnya: I suppose this constitutes yet more evidence that Paopao has never lived in reality.
Epistler: We’re also informed that the humans and urglegurgles fight well together despite mutually disliking each other. In a rare display of semi-genuine humility Roran doesn’t take credit for this, instead thinking about how Nasuada and Nar Garglewompwomp made it so by picking out troops with “a calm and even disposition”.
Torylltales: That’s not how team building works. That’s not how any of this works.
Epistler: This turns out to be a lie in any case.
Blah blah, the fight is over and the Varden jackasses are busy dragging the bodies away while Roran does nothing. Well, supposedly he’s “overseeing” the work while sitting on his perfect white stallion of Sueness, but it basically just amounts to hanging around watching.
Torylltales: Which is entitled bullshit. As someone who grew up as a subsistence farmer in a peasant village, Roran’s first instinct should be to get down and help out, not to sit imperiously on his horse like some lord. The soldiers, in a realistic setting, would quickly begin to resent him for that attitude.
Epistler: Then he hears someone yelling in pain and rides over to check it out.
SnarkbotAnya: Which, again, should be cracking those scabs on his back, but as you said, Paolini doesn’t know shit about shit.
Torylltales: I disagree. Given how much he has generated in this book alone, Paolini appears to know plenty about shit. At least how to make it, if not how to recognise it.
Epistler: Some urglewurgles have tied up a surviving soldier and are having fun torturing him by jabbing him with their swords. “Noble” Rrrr-roran comes rushing in and kills the guy with his hammer. Wow, that was so completely unnecessary. He doesn’t even attempt to rescue the guy. I just love how that’s Roran’s first reaction: “Nope, he gotta die”. He doesn’t even bother to ascertain whether the prisoner is beyond medical help or anything. Plus, they have Carn. Y’know, a wizard who can heal people? Ring any bells?
Also, torturing a helpless prisoner really doesn’t sound like something a race of Noble Savages would do.
The head urglebargle, some guy named Yarbog, whines that Roran ruined their fun. Cue a charming display of smug self-righteousness from Roran, who starts lecturing him about whether he’d treat another urgleargh like that. Because Roran knows all about empathy, honest! Yarbog says yeah, sure, because everyone should be tortured before dying so that they can “prove their bravery”. Yuh-huh.
Torylltales: I actually like this moment. I’m a big fan/proponent of nonhuman races that have nonhuman morals and values, and this is one fleeting instance that fits. It makes sense for a race whose lives revolve around honour, warfare, strength and bravery to put prisoners through a trial to demonstrate their worthiness as warriors. I would like this scene even more if there had been some worldbuilding already established about what the urgals believe happens to people who die as warriors (or at least defiantly fighting to the last breath). But knowing Paolini he would have made it way too much like a thinly-veiled Valhalla clone.
I also think the humans should have been WAY more concerned that their allies think little of torturing captured enemies for the sake of ‘bravery’ or ‘honour’.
Epistler: Instead of which this will literally never be mentioned again. It’s a Big Lipped Alligator Culture-Building Moment.
SnarkbotAnya: Incidentally, the name “Yarbog” kind of makes this guy sound like some kind of pirate urgleburger, or maybe a wannabe pirate who rows a tiny boat around a swamp yelling “Yarrrrr-bog!” at passing travellers. In light of this realization, he will now be referred to by pirate references.
Torylltales: face it, Yarbog is the result of clicking on the Random Orc Name Generator. Other names generated by that site, just now by me, include Ungagh, Yargol, Balogog, Gunag. © Torylltales, 2018.
Epistler: Roran gets all sniffy because the Bog Pirate supposedly just questioned his non-existent “courage”, and tells him that unless he wants to “experience agony the likes of which you cannot imagine” (seriously, he actually says this), he should hand his sword in and do grunt work for the rest of the mission. Hooray for ridiculously over-the-top violent threats! This is so unnecessary. You know what kind of person includes threats and intimidation with their orders to underlings? VILLAINS.
Torylltales: In a better-developed work, Roran would initially feel uncomfortable with making such threats, but does so because he was advised that the urgals would not respect him without overt shows of dominance. Yarbog and co. would mock Roran for his uncertainty and hesitance in delivering above threat.
Epistler: As it is it’s just another example of Roran’s descent into hyper-violent sociopathy, already in progress.
Yar Har Har and a bottle of bog-rum tells Roran to shove it and then challenges him to a trial by combat. Or rather, a wrestling match to determine who’s in charge of “this tribe”. Weren’t we just informed that Nar Garglearglesnarglewargle deliberately picked out guys who had “calm and even dispositions”? And on top of that, it now appears that the arglewargletablefarbles here are all part of the same “tribe”; specifically, the “Bolvek tribe”. Did it not occur to anyone that this would make them more likely to gang up on their commander?
SnarkbotAnya: I guess that kind of shoddy strategy is par for the course in an army led by Nasuada, who does things like going out of her way to let people know when her political hands are tied and making racist jokes about werecats right to their king’s face.
Torylltales: Bolvek, another name courtesy of the Random Orc Name Generator.
Epistler: …by way of Mother Russia, apparently.
Torylltales: You’re thinking of Bolshevik, not Bolvek. The Bolveks are way too manly to have a ‘she’ in the name. Although it’s interesting to note that Bolverk was one of the names of Odin in traditional Norse mythology, and translates roughly to “evil-doer”.
Epistler: Coincidence? I think not. I bet he thought he was being so clever with this.
Roran says trial by combat challenges for leadership are not a thing in the Varden (which given that the Trial of the Long Knives happened is patently untrue) and gets a “fuck you we don’t care” in response. So of course he agrees to this ridiculous challenge instead of, oh, I don’t know, telling the Fail Pirate to sod off.
Torylltales: Roran: “It is not the custom of the Varden to award leadership based upon trial by combat” (seriously, who talks like this?)
Also Roran: *receives a leadership position after trial by whipping post*
In the space of one cut-away chapter, Roran, who is walking around with a “mat of scabs” on his back, has completely forgotten that disciplinary action for insubordination definitely IS a custom of the Varden. This urgal is being insubordinate to his leader, as far as outright mutiny. The established Varden precedent is to discipline him
Epistler: Honestly, Roran is so bone-headedly stupid I’m amazed he hasn’t forgotten how to breathe. Paolini is trying to present this as a necessary sacrifice or whatever, and he’s failing. Hard. This entire setup is just flat-out contrived and only exists to make Roran look “badass”. Instead he just looks like an easily manipulated, weak-willed moron.
SnarkbotAnya: Indeed. The more Roran agrees to, the more he comes across to his soldiers, particularly the urgleblurgs, as a total pushover who they can talk into doing anything. And no, it doesn’t matter that he’s going to win the match via Sue Muscles; he still agreed to the damn thing, so the damage is done regardless.
Epistler: This is a very big and obvious parallel to the scene earlier on where Nasuada also allows herself to be bullied into a stupid tribal “test of strength” and likewise exposed herself as a bad leader and an easily manipulated pushover.
Torylltales: In his quest to prove how strong, confident, and warrior-ly his characters are, Paolini has overlooked the fact that leaders who have true strength and true confidence wouldn’t even entertain a challenge to their authority. Not only are Nas and Roran easily manipulated, but also show a lack of realistic confidence in themselves and grounding in their abilities and limitations. A leader who believes they are infallible and cannot be outdone or properly challenged, and who therefore accepts any challenge that comes along as another opportunity to show off how amazing they are, is a leader who will send their army into ruin on suicide missions that cannot possibly be won. Which, incidentally, is exactly what Roran and Nasuada do (if the story were realistic and had actual consequences for the characters’ decisions and actions).
Epistler: The Horny Pirate declares that they have to fight naked. Well, okay, in their underpants. And no weapons allowed. Roran, continuing to dig himself into that “easily-swayed rube” pigeonhole, accepts these conditions. Yarr-bog then adds that this will be a fight “to the death”, and Roran is like, “oh well, if I die it’ll be a necessary sacrifice”. The fuck is with this guy? He’s supposed to be “brave”, but he just comes off as suicidal, and also a glory hog. Don’t you have a pregnant wife at home, Roran?
Torylltales: at least there are no descriptions of Roran’s glistening pecs.
SnarkbotAnya: Or his groin. Which I’m willing to bet is decidedly not hairless… excuse me, I need to bleach my brain now. Why do I do this to myself?
Epistler: Moving right along… the urblewurgles peg out a combat arena (where the hell did they get the pegs?), and Roran and the Horny Pirate both get naked. And then their underlings rub them down with bear grease. One, why was this at all necessary, and two, why the hell were they carrying this stuff around with them in the first place?
Torylltales: Somebody read about ancient Turkish oil wrestling, and it was SO (homo)erotic that they just had to write about it.
Epistler: Carn and some other guy named Loften do the greasing on Roran, and it’s barely one step away from a sensual massage. Couldn’t he just do this himself? And did we really need descriptions of Carn “work[ing] [his] way down Roran’s limbs”? Apparently so.
Torylltales: Paolini also commits a very basic novel-writing mistake: giving a name to a throwaway background character who will never appear again. Loften even has his own Inheriwiki page in which his entry is exactly 17 words long: “Loften was a soldier for the Varden who accompanied Roran on a supply train raid in Brisingr.” Even Paolini dismisses him as merely “another human” in the very same sentence where he is introduced, named, and then discarded. This is Early Elder Scrolls worldbuilding. Not Skyrim or Oblivion, I mean Daggerfall level, where every one of a million randomly generated villagers has a randomly generated name, even though you may never find the same villager twice, or need to. Quantity substituting for quality, breadth standing in for depth.
Epistler: Also, “Loften” is one of the stupidest character names I’ve ever come across. Though admittedly not quite as dumb as “Harden”.
SnarkbotAnya: Heh heh, “Harden”.
We are mature, functioning adults.
Torylltales: Reminds me of a Russell Peters standup comedy routine about Indian names.
Epistler: Roran checks out the scurvy urgal’s big muscles and thinks about how this won’t be like wrestling Eragon or Baldor back at the farm. Uh…
(No seriously; that’s in there. Did he and Eragon also go at it naked and covered in bear grease? No wonder Eragon was so pissy and jealous when Roran said he was getting married).
Torylltales: Roran basically gives away the ending by contemplating his strategy. While this is finally a bit of common sense from him, it should have been kept secret from the readers until the appropriate moment, giving away Roran’s plan/tactics before the fight’s begun just spoils the climax.
Epistler: The buildup for the actual fight goes on for way too long, and then Yarr-bog rushes in and smacks Roran with his horns, which knocks him over. The scabs on his back tear, but of course this is just treated like an owwie.
SnarkbotAnya: Instead of, y’know, “HOLY FUCK OW MY BACK IS ON FIRE NO THESE AREN’T TEARS I JUST HAVE SAND IN MY EYES OWWWWWW OH GOD MAKE IT STOP”.
Torylltales: As I said above, Paolini clearly has no experience with scabs and the tearing off thereof. Tearing a scab is excruciating, let alone a solid mat of them over a large area. This should disable Roran entirely and give the victory to Yarbog.
Epistler: The last time I ripped a scab off, it bled like crazy all over the place. And it wasn’t even a big scab. Thing was the size of a penny.
SnarkbotAnya: I don’t think we’re actually talking about ripping the scabs off per se, just… breaking them in places. Not that the distinction matters much in this case, though, because breaking a scab also hurts like hell.
Epistler: …pedant.
Horny Pirate charges a couple more times, and then starts coming in sideways and trying to “pull him into his deadly embrace”. But will it be a parody of a lover’s embrace? Seriously, what is with all these bad authors using “embraces” in what are supposed to be dramatic fight scenes?
Torylltales: Personally I prefer a good vambrace, especially if it has that awesome “elvish” overlapping diagonal strips design. You know the kind. Like Elrond wore in the Hobbit movie.
Now that's what I'm talkin' about.
Epistler: They keep going at it and Roran realises he’s getting tired, so he’d better end it now (like he has the power to do that. If he did, why didn’t he end it at any point previously?). He starts taunting Yarr-bog like the obnoxious manchild he is – seriously, he even sticks his tongue out at him – and the Fail Pirate seriously responds by yelling “Die, puny human!”, a line so cliché and pathetic the other clichés used to shove its head down the toilet at cliché school and then stuff it in its own locker.
Torylltales: Seriously, and Paolini has even quoted this as his favourite line. That and the thing about not messing with dragons because humans are crunchy.
Epistler: …the latter of which wasn’t even his line to begin with.
SnarkbotAnya: Aw fuck, I’d totally forgotten about that… yet more proof that the man has precisely zero sense of clichés or originality. Hell, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to not know that the concept of originality even exists.
Epistler: Roran gets clawed across the ribs, but then manages to grab Literally Horny Pirate by the horns and throw him down. You know, like a sheep. He then proceeds to rape – uh, pin him down with his knee – and holds him like that for “ten minutes”.
Bow chicka bow wow!
I know I say this a lot, but how the fuck does anyone know it was ten minutes?
Torylltales: *puts on a recording of Unchained Melody, like in that clay-turning scene from Ghost*
SnarkbotAnya: This is like in shitty creepypastas where people somehow know exactly how many seconds they spent looking at the Creepy Shit of the Day, or exactly what said Creepy Shit of the Day looked like despite looking at it for only a fraction of a second. Sonic.exe is a textbook example of this kind of bullshit. Still, whether you’re writing a random Internet story or a novel, all I can say is STOP THAT. It’s unrealistic and gives the impression that your characters are all robots with a built-in stopwatch function. *flails arms* I AM RORAN-BOT, BEEP BOOP! DANGER, ERGS BROMBINSON, DANGER!
Epistler: Paolini clumsily tries to show the time passing with a bunch of emotionless description of the dirt and an ox lowing, and Roran’s back hurts but doesn’t actually have any effect on him, because again, Paolini has no idea how pain and injuries work.
Finally the Bog Pirate says he gives up and asks Roran to kill him, but Roran “nobly” says no. He adds that “I don’t belong to your race, and I won’t abide by your customs”.
Then why the fuck did you agree to homoerotically wrestle with him in the first fucking place? This is just priceless, you guys. First Roran caves in to every single one of Yarr-bog’s ridiculous demands over a custom he doesn’t belong to and has no reason to respect, all so he can look “cool” by being the only human ever to win a wrestling match with an urglefarglebargledingdong, then has an instant change of heart over following through just so he can look “noble”. Is this guy bipolar or something?
“Sure, I’ll wrestle with ya to decide who’s in charge, even though that’s not how us humans roll!”
TEN MINUTES LATER.
“Nah, I won’t kill you. That’s not how humans roll.”
TEN MINUTES LATER.
“Nah, I won’t kill you. That’s not how humans roll.”
Torylltales: The worst thing is, even in some real life human cultures, the shame of being defeated and not even killed honourably would have made him a pariah, if not suicidal. Just look at seppuku in Japan (ritual suicide of samurai who have brought shame upon themselves), puputan in Bali (mass ritual murder-suicide in preference to being defeated or enslaved), or jauhar in India (self-immolation of women to avoid enslavement or rape by enemy forces when defeat is certain). The stigma of having lost but not died would have haunted Yarbog, leading to festering resentment and hatred that might even result in a murder attempt against Roran.
Epistler: Roran then proceeds to pat himself on the back, telling Yarr-bog that he should go around bragging about how he was defeated by “the cousin of Eragon Shadeslayer”. Yes, just keep pretending that being related to that shithead makes you special, Roran. It’s not obnoxious or egotistical or anything. I don’t care what Joey from Ten Things I Hate About You said – being “cool by association” does not work outside of high school.
SnarkbotAnya: Metaphorical back-patting, of course. Though it probably wouldn’t actually hurt him to do it literally, considering that his scabs are apparently made of topical anesthetic so that they don’t hurt more than is dramatically appropriate.
Also, this whole “go around and tell everyone I beat you” thing just makes what Toryll said up there even worse. To someone from a culture like the urghwhyamialives appear to have, being spared is a grave insult and cause for social ostracism… and being told to brag about the defeat that brought said shame upon them is rubbing a salt-and-lemon-juice cocktail in the raw, bleeding, sucking chest wound.
Epistler: Naturally the Bog-Rum Pirate gives up and Roran is allowed to “hobble” back over to Carn, who gives him a blankie and goes on about what an amazing guy he is and what a great fight that was, blah blah blah Roran is Special.
Roran then pats himself on the back even more: “This won’t be the last fight between our two races, he thought, but as long as we can return safely to the Varden, the Urgals won’t break off our alliance, at least not on account of me.”
Spoilers: The human/urgleyarglewurgle alliance being under threat will never be an issue again. Apparently Roran just magically fixed everything all by his lonesome, because he’s just so awesome etcetera and so forth.
By Snarkbot’s headcanon, it was not Roran who fixed things, but the Power of Gay, released through the homoeroticism of those ten oily, sweaty, sticky moments. RAAAAIIINBOOOOOWS!
Hilariously, the moment this is over and done with everyone starts acting like they have to hurry and it’s urgent because Murtagh and Thorn might show up at any minute. But you totally had time to waste on a wrestling match, which probably lasted about an hour. I see Paolini has been employing the magical Pause Button again.
Torylltales: Of course, everyone knows that time slows down at suitably dramatic moments.
Epistler: …such as in the middle of fight scenes so Eragon and Murtagh can throw back health and mana potions and Paolini can overdescribe everything.
The chapter ends with Roran yelling orders at people like the huge self-important jerk he is, and he’d better hope Katrina doesn’t find out her man cheated on her with an off-brand orc. Just think of all the nasty STDs those things probably carry.
The next chapter is “Genealogy”, with… oh hey, it’s me!
