The fact that Brom randomly represented himself at Jeod's house after missing for about sixteen years and Jeod was just "nah that shit's crazy! Come in! Oh, and you even have a son? Crazy, crazy..." says a lot about him and their friendship

“We call Lent a ‘penitential season’. It is striking, then, that the symbol with which it begins does not focus so much on personal sin as on our contingence as created beings […] To take the ashes is to confess kinship with this world of dust, to declare our readiness to abdicate pretensions to omnipotence. Standing before God in this way, I profess that I am not God. I admit the chasm that separates me from him. I accept the uncomfortable otherness of God. He is what I am not, yet my being bears his mark. I crave a completion no created thing can give. I walk this earth as yearning incarnate. I am at home, yet a stranger, homesick for a homeland I recall but have not seen.”

— Erik Varden: The Shattering of Loneliness

I'll never get enough of the AUs where Murtagh in some way, at some point ends up in Carvahall instead of Uru'baen. There are so many potential variations of how he gets there and who he stays with and even the little differences have some really fun effects. I'm especially intrigued by the idea of Murtagh growing up there while still clearly remembering Morzan and his dragon and where he came from. I think it makes for an interesting counterpoint to canon where Murtagh can't escape his past and his father's legacy because that's what everyone sees in him. Instead, in Carvahall, his past becomes such a dangerous taboo that it can't even be acknowledged, much less focused on. Rather than his past restricting him in its grasp, it keeps sliding out of his own grasp, defying all his efforts to understand what it means for him and what everyone else might feel about it. Black and blue eyes and gleaming red scales haunt his dreams, but he has to swallow those memories down every time.

Assuming Murtagh grows up with Garrow and Marian, when he first arrives with all his fear, he's determined to never breath a word about any of that. But he gets older and starts to second guess that resolve- Eragon aches to know who his father is and Murtagh hates lying to him. He deserves to eventually know the truth (what Murtagh thinks is true, that is), even if it's painful. And it gnaws at Murtagh's own heart to wonder if his family would accept him if they knew, or if the only thing perpetuating his acceptance is their ignorance. At night, he tosses and turns wondering if he's turning out just like his father, a question he can never answer because he has no reference of Morzan beyond his own dim, scattered memories.

One of my favorite AUs like this that exist inside my brain follows that track and actually stays very close to canon. Murtagh grows up alongside Eragon, and plans to tell him about his past when he turns 16, but before that, the Ra'zac arrive and he's tortured as well as Garrow. He pulls through only to discover Eragon vanished with Brom and he goes to track them down, eventually saving them when they're the ones at the Ra'zac's mercy. Then when he's kidnapped and enslaved, there's so much more heartbreak and guilt because he's pitted against everyone he grew up with and cares for. And maybe Brom gets to live so there can be a reckoning when Murtagh does tell Eragon what he believes about their parentage, following him as he struggles for the courage to face his son and tries to find any way to help his step son, before it's all too late.

For something that goes quite differently, I've been thinking through an AU where both Selena and Morzan live. Selena fakes Murtagh's death to disguise her stealing him away and she and Brom raise him and Eragon in Carvahall. They love and protect them fiercely and the boys grow up safe and happy, but whenever Murtagh tries to ask about the things that happened before, they swiftly shut him down and dissuade him from ever mentioning it out of their own fear of the past. It leaves him feeling out of place and fragmentary. And that comes at a cost when Morzan appears, under orders to search for the egg. Murtagh has to hurriedly figure out what he was never able to, now with so much danger hanging in the balance, because no matter how Morzan could want to treat him, that might not matter against the king's orders. And Selena and Brom have to confront their own snarled relationships with Morzan that were never truly laid to rest. (It also caters to my desire to jerry rig the three of them into a very messy and emotionally charged polycule.)

In that one, I build something more redeemable into Morzan's character (soon I definitely plan to elaborate on why I find that a fascinating angle to take with him). I don't know if anyone would want it, but I wrote a drabble for that AU when Murtagh first sees Morzan again, and I could brush it up and post it. [EDIT: here's the fic] I just love the idea of small town farm boy Murtagh who's peaceful and amiable and also just a little bit off. Like maybe sending the guy who dreams each night about blood red swords and dragon's snapping fangs to go plow fields won't last forever.

You know what I’m incredibly curious about?

Alagaësia’s theatre scene.

Obviously it’s likely been decimated under Galbatorix’s rule; Murtagh comments that the books he’d have been interested in reading growing up in Urû’baen were banned, and plays that old Galby disagreed with would probably have gotten the same treatment. At the very least, if any established theaters and stages in the major cities are still putting on shows during Galbatorix’s reign, they’re either carefully censored fiction or heavily sanitized propaganda, because that’s how an authoritarian regime keeps its grip. How many scripts were burned at his order? How many playwrights censored or killed for their work?

But! How much of it was saved? How many actors went to ground with their memorized lines, desperately reciting their roles to themselves to save a story that can no longer be written down? How many went to the Varden, hoping that the rebellion would preserve the culture and stories of hope and history Galbatorix was determined to wipe away?

And how did Brom get into the storytelling business, anyway? He founded the Varden, yes, but who did he found it with? Was it those actors? Was it an actor’s agonized monologue from a famous tragedy that pulled him from his bloodsoaked path of revenge long enough to realize, Oh, I can’t do this alone. I don’t have to do this alone.

Anyway. I think the dwarves’ library in Tronjheim is severely under-appreciated as a bastion of lost media.

fishuary 2024

day 19 - arctic fish: dolly varden (in spawning colors)

One of the issues that I had with the Inheritance Cycle (and it's something that strikes a cord every. Time. I read it) is that Paolini can be pretty vague. I completely understand that he's giving the reader the benefit to be able to work things out themselves (and let's be honest, nothing is more frustrating as a reader than to be treated like a dunce), but when I say vague, I mean story lines.

For example, Angela. All we know is that she's mysterious. Sure great, that's the whole point of getting away with not fleshing out her character.

But you're telling me you can't reveal something that could ALSO add to the storyline?

Maybe it's because I personally am just so invested in the series, that I feel like Paolini could write a thousand books set in Alagaësia, and I wouldn't mind reading every single one. I would have loved to read more about Ajihad. The werecats. Jörmundur. How The Twins became where and who they are...

I guess this is why fanfic exists.

My favourite kind of totalitarian magic hating high queen Nasuada somewhat immediately after that knife trial thingy that had Jörmundur piss his Victoria‘s Secret lace thong.

New overpowered OP OC dropped their a pirate, name is Beldame D Varden and they're known as the Witch King

(They ate the Maho Maho no Mi which allows them to 'manifest' magic and they fly around on their Halberd like a broomstick eheh)

Fishuary Day 18: I Was So Caught Up In Her Beauty I Forgot To Make A Pun

Dolly Parton Trout was right there!!

@fish-daily @fishyfishyfishtimes

I know people are bleeding or whatever, but I would note that 1) fashion, too, is a matter of life and death; and 2) these results make me want to join them.

BEST DRESSED MALE(S):

Varden Lefebvre (basic bitches, you're just simping)

Maksim Kurylenko (you all deserve everything that's happening to you rn for this)

BEST DRESSED FEMALE(S):

Leyla Yilmaz

Eleanor Shipley (yas queen)

BEST DATES:

Leyla Yilmaz & Laurent St. Pierre

Make sure to claim your prizes if you survive the night. Much love. ♥

When Murtagh was in the Varden prison, he was in an averagely large and welcoming room, with plenty of books, good food, a good bed and the girl of his dreams who came to visit him from time to time, as well as being free to receive visitors and being basically full of free time.

Apparently even the saddest character has moments that are happier than my whole life

Eragon and Nasuada are both well loved characters with a lot of good qualities, but they also have some serious flaws and make some grave mistakes. For example, I feel they're objectionable treatment of Murtagh has been discussed relatively often. However, I think they need Way More criticism for how utterly negligent they were in preparing for the confrontation with Galbatorix. Without the outside benefit of genre awareness, it's so egregious how they almost never even try to come up with a plan to kill him. I feel like it springs from inexperience, being overwhelmed, and arrogance, but it's so severe because the ramifications extend to countless lives beyond their own. And no matter the reasons for it, neither of them ever then acknowledge this failing and amend for its consequences, and that is inexcusable. The fact that the first and only plan they ever had to defeat Galbatorix (which immediately fails btw), Eragon came up with hours before the final battle is honestly sickening. Considering their war is justified by a moral basis, the Varden's ethics, specifically in their leaders are all but non-existent.

Why???!!!! It feels like they take no responsibility for their allies! Their concern for them is vague at best and doesn't inform their actions. It's as if they believe that because these people willingly joined their cause knowing they could die, they as leaders are free of blame for anything that happens to them, which is a naive and indulgent misconception. Their decisions still determine those people's fates! And in regards to the eventual fight against Galbatorix, that potential fate they're taking a chance with should they lose is all their allies being slaughtered, down to the very last man. For a start. But Eragon and Nasuada are too young to shoulder that weight as their stations demand and too arrogant to admit their inability, so they just leave it by the wayside.

Mm.

Just imagined one of OG elf squad (Probably Fäolin, it seems like something he’d do) taking a soda can, shaking it up at elf speed for a few seconds, then putting it back in the fridge.

I wonder how many times you can shake a cola can at that speed per second. These are the things Paolini truly needs to answer.

made a fursona cause idgaf anymore

peer review

troutclaw

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elainahalévy: C’est l’heure de se lever. ☀️ @varden-lefebvre