Damn it, I was trying to be restrained.

Obviously, somewhere along the line, my restraint failed. This is a sad day, but not unlikely. Since this budding little thing has few, if any, ties to my normal Internet presence, I feel I can securely go off the deep end without fear of repercussion. You know, I came out as a poli sci major on my LJ in a bit of a backhanded way, and suddenly everyone's hating on the poli sci. Okay, fine, you may hate politics and the man and all they stand for, but have I ever been the marked emblem of the Antichrist? Have I?

That aside, I'm actually meaning to talk about Eragon. (There's just something about a more or less anonymous Blogger account, as opposed to LJ, that makes me feel that in fifty years, erudite people just might find me as the last surviving example of the human race before the ice caps melted and the East Coast washed away and whatnot. I feel clever.)

So, Eragon. That novel that everyone loves to hate. I've never read it. I've never read it? What am I doing here?

So my Eragon story starts...whenever it came out. Many moons ago. My mother brought it home from the library, explaining to me that it was written by a person of an age approximating mine, I ought to be at the very least interested in the fact that he had been published. I believe I looked at the cover, read the author's blurb, and ignored it for the duration of its three-week stay. Eventually it went back to the library, and I more or less forgot about it. I later found out that his parents basically managed the publishing deal for him, being High and Mighty in that field. I am still uncertain about how much of an influence his parents had on its publication, but it didn't seem that I could learn a lot by studying the author's career.

Flash forward to a few months ago. I hear through the grapevine that Eragon is being made into a movie. My reaction: "It was that popular?" Apparently, yes! A stunning hit in the preteen boy population, as I am now finding. And lo, movie rights and such came into play. I was mildly intrigued and inspired again, then remembered that this was the one with the High and Mighty parents, and lost interest and inspiration again. By this time, I had veered around to writing my own characters again, but not terribly successfully. Eragon was once again forgotten, since really, it never had much of a bearing on me as a person, as a writer, or as a reader.

Timeshift! Roughly a month ago, I, in the depths of boredom, begin delving pretty heavily into the world of fandom_wank and its sister groups, where no fandom escapes without a healthy dose of criticism in the midst of the wank. And, lo and behold, Eragon wank was surfacing. Simultaneously, my LJ friendslist was quietly exploding with the Eragon backlash. The general tone: disgust. Apparently Eragon was your basic young hero story with nothing overall to recommend it, and somehow it had finagled its way into being published with too-shiny movie to top it off. Heresy, I say! This continued on through the debut of said movie, which was slammed by what looked like every critic on the planet. Bashing Eragon was what the cool kids were doing, and try this beer, too.

This was all going down around NaNoWriMo. I'd steamrollered through over 30,000 words in about six days, finished early despite a late start and a week of writing apathy, and was just about set to finish, flesh out, and edit the finished product when I came down with a pretty severe case of stage fright. I felt I couldn't plot worth a damn, couldn't create dynamic characters even if my life was worth it, had too much dialogue, and all those lovely things. I have to say, this mindset wasn't the one I would have chosen to get me through my first college finals, but there it was.

So, in my depths of homework-avoidance, quickly flagging self-esteem as a writer, and many late nights on the Internet, something of a protest began to form in my head whenever I ran across these Eragon-bashings. It wasn't anywhere near coherent, as I opened many a comment window, tried to think how to articulate what I wanted to say, and consistently failed. "Masses of teenagers finagling their way into being published? Lead me to it!" was one of the main contenders, as was "On behalf of no one, I'd like to say that teenage writers aren't always that bad...wait, who the hell am I kidding? I've seen fanfiction.net."

After a few days of writer's block combined with some truly dramatic yet bleak despair, I realized four very important things:

a) The Intarwebs Are Not Srs Bizness
b) Being discouraged by Eragon, directly or indirectly, was just lame
c) I stand the same chance of being rejected for lousy writing as everyone else
d) I should probably apply myself to my finals first, though.

And lo, I applied myself to finals, and scraped my way through the end of my first college term! Rejoice, rejoice, the vacation has come! Eragon-the-movie also faded from the public eye, as all things that are not Harry Potter do, and life in general moved on. The Eragon saga has ended.

What do I take away from this? (I'm taking something away from this? It's Eragon.) Mostly the lesson that when in the depths of lack of writerly esteem, do not go to F_W to restore your faith in yourself or humanity, but instead remember that not only The Intarwebs, but Life is Not Srs Bizness Ok. In fact, taking yourself seriously? Fatal.

This has been my greatly belated weighing-in on Eragon, the book I knew about before it was popular but never actually read. It's been cathartic, and by that I mean fun. But also cathartic.