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General ask, is anyone in the fandom a pokemon enjoyer with opinions on what IC characters would have and/or be as pokemon?

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Green bean time! I like to think Fírnen is a lanky snaky boy. Long everywhere. Leafy. Turns himself into a pretzel for funsies. Had a LOT of fun with the layering on this one :)

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I think it’s implied as early as Book 1 that having a skewed or dishonest view of yourself can not only hinder you learning your True Name, but if someone else figures it out and tells you, the cognitive dissonance can cause a mental break. Brom says something to that effect, at least.

A lot of the narrative around True Names that I remember focused on that idea of being honest with yourself, being objective. Admittedly I think most of it was to the tune of “don’t let your ego get too big, don’t think too highly of yourself that you ignore your flaws,��� because someone realizing that they’re not actually as good/justified/innocent/whatever as they think can throw them for a loop or worse, but the opposite could be just as true: if your worldview hinges on believing yourself to be a terrible person, figuring out that you’re just, like, normal and decent can screw with your head.

Anyway yeah. Having any sort of skewed perception of who you are as a person is definitely going to impact figuring out your True Name; Paolini puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of learning how to be objective in introspection.

Question: would having a scewed negative view of yourself or multiple insecurities, or things like being neurodivergent or struggling with several negative core beliefs due to trauma, impact your ability to figure it out your own true name? The narrative seems to tell us multiple times that not knowing your own true name could be dangerous and a kink in your armor, but what if your view of yourself is so screwed or you don’t know who you are to where you literally CAN’T figure it out?

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Inheritance Cycle - Christopher Paolini Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Brom & Murtagh Morzansson, Brom/Selena (Inheritance Cycle), Brom & Saphira (Inheritance Cycle) Characters: Brom (Inheritance Cycle), Murtagh Morzansson, Saphira (Inheritance Cycle), mentioned Selena (Inheritance Cycle) - Character, mentioned Eragon Shadeslayer - Character Additional Tags: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Murtagh Morzansson Needs a Hug, and he gets one, Brom Lives (Inheritance Cycle) Series: Part 2 of Brom’s Unwitting Adventures in Fatherhood Summary:

“Was she happy?”

It was a hell of a question to ask a man who’d just gotten into his bedroll.

Or,

Brom’s first conversation as the dad who stepped up.

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Inheritance Cycle - Christopher Paolini Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Brom & Murtagh Morzansson, Brom/Selena (Inheritance Cycle), Brom & Saphira (Inheritance Cycle) Characters: Brom (Inheritance Cycle), Murtagh Morzansson, Saphira (Inheritance Cycle), mentioned Selena (Inheritance Cycle) - Character, mentioned Eragon Shadeslayer - Character Additional Tags: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Murtagh Morzansson Needs a Hug, and he gets one, Brom Lives (Inheritance Cycle) Series: Part 2 of Brom's Unwitting Adventures in Fatherhood Summary:

"Was she happy?"

It was a hell of a question to ask a man who'd just gotten into his bedroll.

Or,

Brom's first conversation as the dad who stepped up.

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Got new markers the other day, decided to try them out on our resident beloved girlboss

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The Ancient Language and True Names: Some Musings

So as a preface, let’s first recount some of the rules of the Ancient Language we’re told/shown through the books (spoilers through Inheritance):

One cannot lie in the Ancient Language

This doesn’t mean you cannot say something objectively untrue—so long as you believe it is true, you can say it (see: Murtagh tells Eragon at the end of Eldest that they are both sons of Morzan, which Murtagh can do because he doesn’t know about Selena having an affair with Brom)

Magic, however, is a bit trickier—intent can go a long way, but a grammatical or syntactical error can obliterate your intention (see: Eragon tries to bless a child, uses the noun form of “shield” instead of the verb form, accidentally curses the child)

So what am I getting at? Well!

In Inheritance, Eragon and Saphira follow a riddle-prophecy to Doru Araeba, the magic-nuked seat of power of the previous incarnation of the Order of Dragon Riders, and find their way into the magically-hidden fallout shelter with a forgetting spell on it that holds several Eldunarya and dragon eggs protected from the magic nuke blast and hidden from Galbatorix’s reach.

Or, put another way:

Saphira Bjartskular, the first new dragon in a century, the only living female out of five living-or-soon-to-hatch dragons (the others being Glaedr, Shruikan, Thorn, and Fírnen), literally the LAST CHANCE for the existence of HER ENTIRE SPECIES… finds out that she isn’t, actually, the last chance. That dozens, a few hundreds of eggs survived, and statistically at least a few of them have to be more females, and dragons will be fewer than before, certainly, and it will be centuries before they reach their previous numbers, but they won’t be doomed to a drawn-out spiral of inbreeding and decline and eventual, final, end.

And then she forgets.

Temporarily! But the memory is removed, excised for her protection and the protection of that precious maybe-future. Saphira’s view of the world, of herself, of her very place in the world, is completely overthrown… and then she returns to what had been the status quo (admittedly with the souls of several other dragons—but functionally this is just Glaedr, multiplied).

The question I pose is: what happened to Saphira’s true name?

On a broader, more generalized scale, the question really is this: what happens to a true name when the memory of a major name-changing event is altered somehow—either by removing the memory of an event that happened, or implanting a false memory of an event that did not happen, or changing the elements of that memory? What rule of the Ancient Language applies here—belief, or The Words Themselves? Is a true name built on memory? On how life experience physically shapes the brain?

Does Saphira wonder at the giddiness in her chest when she thinks of the Eldunarya, quietly thinking that the instinctive chemical reaction is an overenthusiastic response to ghosts that can advise, but never repopulate?

Would Galbatorix, if the battle had gone differently, have been intrigued by the curious lack of I am the last in Saphira’s true name?

Or would he have seen exactly what he expected to? I am the last—and hope is lost.

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*waves* Eragon here, too!

not allowed to say Harry Potter, but what was your book series obsession as a teen

mine was definitely Eragon

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Well. This sounds familiar.

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And also fanon’s favorite chew toy

…or at least he’s mine

The main question is will someone torture Murtagh in the new book (again)

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MURTAGH UVEK AND RORAN?!?!?!

oh my god ARE WE GOING TO GET AN UNCLE MURTAGH MOMENT

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If I write more specific/spoilery responses to it I'll be tagging it as '#Murtagh extra content', if you'd like to block that until you get your hands on it!

Y’all know me, y’all know it’s a Bad Day when I’m too tired to stay up even a little later to talk Alagaësia, but sometime in the next couple days I WILL have the energy to share detailed and coherent thoughts on the Murtagh extra bits in the deluxe edition, but for now I shall simply share a spoiler-free rendition of my initial reaction:

AAAUUUUGGGHH ALL MY HEART’S DESIRE!!! ANSWERED!!!!! GIVEN!!!!!! AUGH

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Oh, my friend.

Oh, my friend.

There’s an epilogue to the epilogue and it has flashbacks.

Y’all know me, y’all know it’s a Bad Day when I’m too tired to stay up even a little later to talk Alagaësia, but sometime in the next couple days I WILL have the energy to share detailed and coherent thoughts on the Murtagh extra bits in the deluxe edition, but for now I shall simply share a spoiler-free rendition of my initial reaction:

AAAUUUUGGGHH ALL MY HEART’S DESIRE!!! ANSWERED!!!!! GIVEN!!!!!! AUGH

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Y’all know me, y’all know it’s a Bad Day when I’m too tired to stay up even a little later to talk Alagaësia, but sometime in the next couple days I WILL have the energy to share detailed and coherent thoughts on the Murtagh extra bits in the deluxe edition, but for now I shall simply share a spoiler-free rendition of my initial reaction:

AAAUUUUGGGHH ALL MY HEART’S DESIRE!!! ANSWERED!!!!! GIVEN!!!!!! AUGH

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Alagaësians.

You know what to do.

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Alagaësians. You know what to do.

Propaganda

Moonwatcher: Moonwatcher has the ability to read minds and see visions of the future, including prophecies.

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I’m adding new propaganda specifically for the prequel trilogy that came out very recently: it has cat memes.

Alright buckle up y’all, I’ve got a book series recommendation and propaganda under the cut for any fans of the Inheritance Cycle.

If you read our beloved farmboy-turned-dragon-rider books and had a particular fondness for: the idea of an order of individuals chosen to be both partner and rider to powerful and beautiful magical creatures; Snowfire; an immortal evil that resurfaces in disguised and unexpected forms (specifically referencing the Draumar cult which we now know had influence in Galbatorix’s rise to power); and/or the juicy juicy drama of complicated parent-child relationships, then oh boy do I have a recommendation for you.

Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series, comprising of many, MANY individuals novels, trilogies, and short story anthologies. I don’t currently have a count for the exact total of published books, as I’ve been getting most of these from my local secondhand bookstore, but she’s been publishing these books since 1987 and is still writing them today in 2024.

Since this is such a huge collection, it can be hard to know where to start, so first of all I’d like to assure you that you can start pretty much anywhere, with any of the individual novels or series, so long as you make sure to find the first installment of that series. Personally I started with The Black Gryphon, which seems to be one of the chronologically earliest books; Arrows of the Queen of the Heralds of Valdemar trilogy would also be a good place to start, being the first published Valdemar book, though I haven’t actually read it yet—I only just got my copy today, actually!

At any rate, wherever you start, there’s a lot to look forward to. Lackey has a knack for writing characters with depth and complexity, giving them flaws that are so well balanced by endearments that even at their worst, you can still understand and empathize with them; she absolutely refuses to write idiot-plots, allowing her characters not only to remain consistent with their established characterizations, but also to communicate with each other and allow their relationships to evolve as the characters do. Characters are allowed to make mistakes, be vain and stubborn and prideful, get angry, get jealous, get scared, and yet afterward still be received with love and forgiveness when they apologize. The magic is beautifully described and, at least for me, easy to understand; the schemes are clever, diabolical, and exciting to watch unfold. There is true, pure evil in the villains, and satisfaction in their endings.

There’s also a decent amount of diversity, which may or may not be surprising, depending on what you’ve read of 80s/90s SFF. Of the handful of books I’ve read so far, here are my observations: Lackey writes fantastic and complex women full of depth, emotion, and ingenuity, each as different from each other as their backgrounds would demand. There are several canonically queer characters across the timeline, including a main protagonist. Lackey’s worldbuilding establishes several unique and disparate cultures, drawing clear influence from many non-European real life sources, with featured characters of those cultures given, in my opinion, respectful and appreciative spotlights. There are characters with disabilities, respected both by the narrative and the characters around them. There are also non-human cultures, characters, and protagonists!

As fantastic as I have been finding these books, it would be remiss of me not to add that these books will not be for everyone. They are firmly adult fantasy, and Lackey does not pull her punches when she wants her characters to suffer. There is torture, sexual assault, suicide. Not all of this is graphically described, but some certainly is; most of the graphic stuff I have so far read is of about the same intensity as the torture scenes of Inheritance, but some of the abstractions are much more intense, and I get the sense that some of what I haven’t yet read may be both graphic and visceral. That being said, if you could handle Game of Thrones’ graphic violence and assault but disliked the persistent pessimism of that series, this one might be right up your alley!

Anyway. That’s all from me for now. I’m off to go read about characters bonding with magical creatures somewhat beyond mortal ken and going on fantastic and harrowing magical adventures. :)