#ket rant

If you haven’t learned this already, beneath my exterior veneer is a boiling mass of rage that only comes out at certain times.

I have already had a stressor today. It promises another one tomorrow.

So, along with Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund, I’m now officially putting Halo: First Strike by the same author on the List of Halo Books You Should Read. It’s a direct follow up to the events of the first Halo game and looks to explain some things (and just in general show that Kelly is a total badass ngl she’s incredible) like how Sgt Johnson survived the Flood, how Chief and Cortana got away from the destroyed ring, and how Halsey and the handful of S2s left survived the apparent glassing of Reach.

Nylund writes Halo characters really well. I wish he wrote more than just Fall of Reach, First Strike and Ghosts of Onyx (that’s also a good one! Makes the S3 program even more heartbreaking), but damn if he doesn’t just nail the characterization. 

Today…I go to the coin laundry. And that means I am going to sit down, away from my laptop and away from any other responsibilities, and be forced to read. This. Fucking. Murtagh. Book.

I’ll be the first to admit that most of my ‘research’ over PTSD has been into POW/torture trauma. I’ve not actually delved very deeply into combat trauma. In MIC, and in IC in my opinion, killing soldiers and those attacking the mains is typically viewed with a grim ‘it had to be done’ and in some ways, as terrible as it sounds, I feel like I need to keep that strain of it. None of them have time to stop and think on it too long, and in a lot of ways I think they don’t let each other either. Spiraling into doubt about right or wrong can be so detrimental when you’re on an active battlefield, or in a camp that is pretty nearly always under threat of being attacked.

Looking at it now, I really think that Eragon wouldn’t let himself think about it until after the war and after the rider school is established enough to function without him and Saphira there 24/7. And at that point, while it would hit like a sack of bricks, he has such a support system around him that he isn’t scared of it and understands that it’s a natural and normal response. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. But Eragon, and by extension Saphira, does not go through or experience the war and it’s traumas the same as long haulers like Brom, who has his own different issues separate from the main conflict, Arya, with her 70+ years of frontline experience and torture, and Glen, who has a deeper understanding of psych but a host of his own experiences as a battlefield medic literally choosing who gets to live or die and the loss of his arm and very nearly losing his best friend after watching the other one die.

I still can’t put my finger on Eragon’s feelings. That makes him difficult to write, and don’t get me started on Saphira. She has so much character to her and yet I STILL can’t grasp how to write her in MIC.

I came across a paragraph of dialogue in an old drive doc that I honestly cannot remember where or how it fit into the story that dominated the document. I’ve got little lines that seem so out of left field at the bottom of stories that I’ve later posted (lines removed of course) because I was writing and rewriting parts and just didn’t want to throw away stuff I had already written because it fit at some point. 

If you knew me by my main blog ( @weirdponytail​ ) and were around when I was doing the IC coloring pages over there, you know I’m rather disapproving of Paolini’s choices when it comes to decorative minerals and gems. 

The patterned floors are my nemesis, especially with the choices of minerals. But now? As I stare at a blank coloring page? Now I need to lay down some THICC salt lines.

Paolini. I love ya, mate. But the ‘Star Sapphire?’ 

No. 

Not to be too much of a bitch, but 1. why not call it the Star Ruby?? I know it’s called by it’s dwarvish name and ‘the Star Rose’ but why ‘Star Sapphire’ when it’s RED?! That’s my biggest gripe about it. Not only that but I can’t ever tell if you are actually referring to an actual star sapphire/star ruby!! You never mention the ACTUAL star of light that appears in one! Is it just a giant ruby?!? PLEASE GIVE ME SPECIFICS!

I’m not going to go off about the SIZE because all of Farthen Dur and Tronjheim throw me for a fucking tooth rattling wooden roller coaster LOOP. So, kudos for that sense of enormous scale. 

Anyway here’s some actual star rubies:

So, to explain my recent flurry of Eragon movie things: I’m collecting bits and pieces that show that there were SIGNIFICANT cuts to the movie beyond what we see in the deleted scenes. I’ve even contacted someone who apparently voiced lines for Solembum but was never added and, as far as I can tell, never mentioned in credits beyond what he’s added to his IMDB page. And this is someone who worked in some big animated films! 

Anyway, I’ve also ordered a used copy of the ‘special edition’ of the dvd. It seems I’ve lost the second disc (the one with all the extras) of my old old copy to time and the black hole of my house. There was SO. MUCH. that is mentioned in passing on the extras about money (lack of it), the things they wanted but couldn’t implement (some good, others just horrifically and hilariously bad), and concept art that was actually not all that terrible. It’d be nice for our little corner of the fandom to see what could have been. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is still gawdfuckin’ awful beyond anything that I’ve seen (even the Golden Compass movie, which SWAPPED THE ORDER OF MAJOR PLOT POINTS, wasn’t as bad as the Eragon adaption. 2006 was just a bad year for book-to-movie things....) but this also gives me a chance to pull out the stash of Eragon related merch and extras that I collected when I was a smol who was influenced by the movie and somehow liked it.