Eragon vs Twilight?

[auroshen]

Eragon has dragons in it. That instantly makes it better than Twilight.

^Has agreement.

[Helix]

Eragon has dragons in it. That instantly makes it better than Twilight.

Agreed.

 

As to an above post, where in the name of god has there been sparklepires other than fanfics, spinoffs, or Meyer's own blasted head?

I'd like to see that.

I'd really like to see that and burn it.

[Dr. Paine]

People who can't handle the detail in these books I doubt would be able to handle any well written books.

Excuse me?

 

There's a world of difference between cramming something full of useless fat and something being well written.

 

... I'm just going to leave it at that, as there is no way anyone can emerge from this happy, but... really, that manages to both be incredibly laughable and a massive insult to good writing everywhere.

 

Besides, if you take issue with Meyer contradicting her plot, you should condemn Paolini for the exact same thing, god knows he did it plenty.

[HawktalonOfRiverClan]

I enjoyed the Eragon books, even though the plot was a combination of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings set in a different time period. I started to read Twilight because my friend is obsessed with it, but I lost interest. Maybe because Bella isn't the brightest person in the world.

[Ruins]

Bella isn't the brightest person in the world.

This. Understatement of the century...

 

Did you know that water is a just tiny bit wet?

[DragonNighthowler]

People who can't handle the detail in these books I doubt would be able to handle any well written books.

 

Is this user deleting her post? Because I can't happen to see them.

 

Anyways, there is a vast difference between well written books and purple prose.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose

 

Show, don't tell.

[Rosedamai]

Is this user deleting her post? Because I can't happen to see them.

 

Anyways, there is a vast difference between well written books and purple prose.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose

 

Show, don't tell.

Must agree with this- purple prose is something like

 

"She sank her ivory white dentures into the fruit that tempted Eve, the carrier of sin and the bane of Adam."

 

whereas normal writing would be something more like

 

"She bit into the apple, making a large crunching noise"

[Wolfsong442]

Comparing Eragon to Twilight to me is like comparing apples to oranges. They both have good parts, but I've come to see that both of them are terribly written books. I enjoy most books because of their story anyway (sans breaking dawn, that god-awful piece of crap), so it doesn't really matter to me. So I'm just going to say Eragon, simply because of the two it's the least terribly written.

[DragonNighthowler]

Must agree with this- purple prose is something like

 

"She sank her ivory white dentures into the fruit that tempted Eve, the carrier of sin and the bane of Adam."

 

whereas normal writing would be something more like

 

"She bit into the apple, making a large crunching noise"

Lol!

 

Loved this comparison. Very well done.

[manticore]

Eragon isn't a terribly written book, it's not a well written book, but it's not trash writing like Twilight.

 

Most of the stuff that bugs me about Eragon is logical fallacies. Like if the elves are Vegan, why do some of them wear leather? And why would there be gold armour? It would be stupid to enchant it to not be soft and heavy. Some of the "natural philosophy" stuff Orrin was doing was ridiculously advanced for the world setting, same case with Oromis teaching Eragon how to work electricity and gravity...if they know what electricity is, why don't they harness it? And they've proved they can essentially make nukes...

 

That said, Eragon is at least a good story. Twilight is trashy romance with "vampires" and "werewolves" with awful "science" used to try to explain it. I'd respect Meyer a bit more if she at least just went "It's magic" and didn't try to put science in there.

 

The Eragon movie was awful though. I'd venture to say it's a worse adaptation of the book than the Twilight movies are.

 

I mean, there's no way in hell they'd ever be able to make the other three movies with all the changes they made to the plot, and all the characters they cut out. They'd have to completely redo it.

 

Then again, I guess there probably wouldn't be enough demand for the other three books.

 

/rambles

[Layn]

what are you talking about? Luke never built an own light saber

quoting this post from several months ago because I just noticed it and feel the need to say:

 

...... yes, Luke DID build his own lightsaber. Where do you think he got the green one from? Therefore, one of the "this is how Eragon deviates from Star Wars" arguments is actually yet another reason Eragon mimics the plot of Star Wars!

Edited November 18, 2011 by Layn

[manticore]

>implying Star Wars doesn't mimic other stories too

[Stromboli]

Sure it does. Any story that follows the Hero's Journey is going to have similarities to Star Wars.

It just happens that Eragon follows the Hero's Journey almost exactly the way Luke did.

[philpot123]

Sure it does. Any story that follows the Hero's Journey is going to have similarities to Star Wars.

It just happens that Eragon follows the Hero's Journey almost exactly the way Luke did.

You cannot ignore the blatant COPYING. It's not merely similarities.

[Stromboli]

I dunno, I feel like if there were grounds to call straight up plagiarism, Lucasfilm would've sued Paolini for everything he's got.

[Rosedamai]

You cannot ignore the blatant COPYING. It's not merely similarities.

Not to mention Paolini's despicable quality of writing.

 

Seriously, everyone in the story is either in love with Eragon or hates him. *rollseyes* They immediately fall to their feet basically worshipping him or tries to kill him. What's the point?

 

Plus, if you're going to use archaic language-like "aye"- please make it believable, like LOTR did, make it convincing, other people should at the same time use what we think are "old-fashioned" words or words that sound "lofty." You can't have him talk like some geeky boy half the time and emulating some Shakespearean character the next. Heck, I'm just an amateur writer who spends far more time thinking of plots than actually writing them, but my characters at least use words that consistently reflect their status in life. Not to mention that more often than not, writers who use archaic language often fail to deliver.

 

I'm actually annoyed by his choice of words more than anything else, really. Once you realize that people who are in different age groups, have different status, different gender, experiences, and in different time periods use different words, then your writing just becomes that much more beautiful. I don't see that in Paolini's writing. For example, lots of words that we commonly use to stress objects/experiences/etc, such as "Hey dude, that's amazing!" were not as commonly used some decades ago, as they were seen as too "strong" a word choice. Another classic example can be A Clockwork Orange-the writing really shows how words used in slang actually aren't randomly picked, they have this reason as to why they're picked and thus form a pattern. It's the lack of these diversity of words that I find most problematic, as it makes the writing lose its vivacity.

 

I don't think I need to talk about word choices and usage in Twilight , as it's a bit obvious what my opinion of it is going to be, but while I'm disappointed with that one as well (such as the lack of difference in how Edward speaks and how Bella speaks, despite one being a 100 yrs older than the other) I think it could be excusable(barely) as it's written from the point of a teenage girl in love, whose vocab reflects her (tempted to say lack of intellect) personality, her age, and so on. However, Eragon's supposed to be this hero, this savior with a humble background. If so his speech patterns and words should have changed from using plain words, simple grammar structure, and perhaps a bit of a rustic flavor, to one that sounds more learned, more reflective of the world around him, and more enlightened, somehow. Oh, and this is supposed to be in a middle-age setting, so I'd expect the vocab and speech pattern to fit that too. But it didn't. You might say that well, it can sound too old fashioned and boring-a counterargument to that would be the Game of Thrones series. It's almost perfect in its vocab choice and grammar structure of the times without alienating readers, and also reflects character changes. An example can be the way Sansa talks-at the beginning, she's more eloquent, her words are more lofty, but as she undergoes hardship, her choice of vocabulary and grammar structure weakens. I love these little details-which probably make me as a writer a very bad one, as I spend huge amounts of time into these small but significant details, and as a reader a very picky one-and GoT is a perfect example of how it can be achieved. Or look at the Dresden Files, say- Harry Dresden has a far different way of speaking than, for example, the Leanandsidhe or even the elders in the White Council. How we speak reflects a lot about our personality and such, and I found it very annoying that in Eragon this wasn't properly developed-they all sound the same, or have a faux-noble type of speech that sounds pretentious.

 

Yes, we live in a society that's more or less equal, but we still see such differences in how people speak and such. We speak differently according to our culture, status, and even within one nation, according to which region we live in. For example, a native Texan who grew up in an agricultural setting is not going to use the same words or expressions or grammar structure to describe something that, say, a harvard professor is going to say. I'm, with my Asian background notwithstanding, is pretty much bilingual, but my word choices and grammar structure is probably different from Americans, or Europeans. So back in the middle-ages, when cultures were more segregated from one another, and there were obvious class distinctions, one's speech patterns would have been vastly different. In fiction, you can see this in LOTR, between the way the men of Gondor talks and the men of Rohan talks. The Rohan people talk way more about horses, fields and such, whereas people in Gondor are more focused about other things. I also find their speech patterns different, but this is a personal experience and others may not see it that way, so I won't go into it here. Anyways, bear in mind that we're still humans in general, who share a similar lifespan, similar ways of thinking, and a (rather) similar way of forming a society (won't deal with extremes here-I meant that we prefer to live as a group). So just imagine the different style a non-human, in Eragon an elf, a dwarf, and an urgal, would use. Elves have way longer lifespans than humans, so their conception of time would be very different. An urgal has a more primitive form of society, so their speech patterns would reflect that. A dwarf, unlike a human, has adapted to a subterranean way of living, so their vocab would reflect that. These are just the few examples I can think of off the top of my head, but there are really a million different distinctions and their speech patterns would reflect that. I think most people would agree that the book would have been more fun if its vocab alone reflected these differences, perhaps creating mini conflicts or a source of humor. I find this in the Hobbit-the way Bilbo speaks is way different from the dwarves, he has a more lighthearted tone, same with the elves in that book. In LOTR the distinction isn't as clear, but it's still recognizable-a good example would be Gimli and Legolas talking about the glittering caves and the forest of Fangorn respectably. I think it was in the third book.

 

Just my two cents on what I find problematic with Eragon, even if we set aside the obviously similar plot.

Edited November 18, 2011 by ylangylang

[Cori]

Eragon is a Gary Stu and Bella is a Mary Sue--or, to be precise, an Angst Sue. Neither of them are good characters, and their supporting characters have about as much personality as a plywood board.

[Nasa13]

True both are overly used cliches but I personally like the Eragon series better because the love story is extremely minor. unlike in Twilight where the whole story circles around a cliche love triangle. Plus Eragon in my opinion is far more believable. 'Human love elf' is far more likely to happen than two immortal enemies not killing each other over a mortal girl. Plus it's stupid how many girls go insane over the Twilight movies.

 

But Warhammer 40,000 trumps any and all. Glory to the Emperor!!!!!

[DragonNighthowler]

True both are overly used cliches but I personally like the Eragon series better because the love story is extremely minor. unlike in Twilight where the whole story circles around a cliche love triangle. Plus Eragon in my opinion is far more believable. 'Human love elf' is far more likely to happen than two immortal enemies not killing each other over a mortal girl. Plus it's stupid how many girls go insane over the Twilight movies.

 

But Warhammer 40,000 trumps any and all. Glory to the Emperor!!!!!

Pity I'm Tyrannids!

 

Anyways, yes, both are full of Mary Sue and clichés. I find Eragon to be more fun to analyze as in; "What NOT to do...", since at least it has a plot. That's something that can't be said about Twilight, which are basically the delusions of a bored house wife that drag on for 2000 pages.

[Cori]

I like reading Twilight to laugh at the juvenile style of writing and the horrible grammar.

[Rosedamai]

I like reading Twilight to laugh at the juvenile style of writing and the horrible grammar.

Yes, basically twilight doesn't have a saving grace, in the vocab and grammar department at least.

 

But Eragon could have been a terrific book-hence my long post on vocab and grammar structure that could have been changed.

[DragonNighthowler]

Yes, basically twilight doesn't have a saving grace, in the vocab and grammar department at least.

 

But Eragon could have been a terrific book-hence my long post on vocab and grammar structure that could have been changed.

I don't think it would have been terrific, but it would have been enjoyable at least. Had Paolini planned ahead the plot, tried not to sidetrack with pointless sidequests, constructed his characters to flesh them out in 3D, worked on dialogue (to make it natural, not to sound like an insufferable wiseass), and picked a good flow by not bombing us with similes, methaphorical constructions and endless descriptions, yeah, it would have been an enjoyable read.

[Ruins]

I enjoyed Eragon mainly because I like dragons and partily because it was a good read on a long journey; yes, it's not a very good book or literature at all, but I think it's good fun if you don't take it too seriously. It was a great big slice of stupid to stop me from gnawing my own fingers off in boredom all the way from Suffolk to Scotland. I enjoyed the Temeraire series much, much more when it came to characterisation, setting and general writing style. The people in it actually acted like people.

 

I could not get beyond the first three pages of Twilight.

[Rosedamai]

I don't think it would have been terrific, but it would have been enjoyable at least. Had Paolini planned ahead the plot, tried not to sidetrack with pointless sidequests, constructed his characters to flesh them out in 3D, worked on dialogue (to make it natural, not to sound like an insufferable wiseass), and picked a good flow by not bombing us with similes, methaphorical constructions and endless descriptions, yeah, it would have been an enjoyable read.

I would have especially enjoyed the book more had it actually be done from the viewpoint of someone who's life is at stake, rather than a faux-hero who does what he wants out of revenge. For example one of the Varden. Now that would have been interesting. Why would he/she have joined the Varden? Why did the dwarves let the Varden reside in the mountain? What are the tactics of the Varden? How did the different people in the Varden get along(I'm assuming that people are recruited from all over the land)? How does Eragon change the dynamics within the Varden? What was the Varden like before Eragon came? These are all questions that could have been asked and enrich the novel instead of writing it off as a piece of dialogue, patiently explaining away and frustrating the reader. I find that sometimes novels are more enjoyable if you read it from the viewpoint of someone who's not making decisions per se but who participates in the action-possibly because they're the ones who are facing real danger, unlike commanders or nobles who usually only make decisions. Captain Kirk, for example, was a very fun character because he precisely did not act like a normal captain would-a normal captain would just have made decisions and that would have been it.

[TheDarkCynder]

I don't hate either of them, but neither really pique my interested. I read the Eragon series to half of Brisingr and got bored. I only read a few pages of Twilight before I put it down.