The following ficlet is this picture's fault:




Title The Hand's Doctor
fandom Song of Ice and Fire/Doctor Who
ratings safe for all.
Spoilers None.
Summary Eddard Stark finds someone unusual in the king's throne room.

 
 
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I have been rereading Terry Pratchett’s Nightwatch. In it Samuel Vimes ends up going back in time to when he first joined the Watch and ends up having to mentor himself by accident. There is in the book one part where Vimes goes into one of the watch house’s jail room and finds that it’s been pretty much turned into a torture chamber. He finds people in there that have been hurt so badly that they just aren’t there any more and he puts them out of their misery.

While reading this there is one point where Vimes, contemplating the horror before him, finds and picks up a tooth. I immediately flashed back to Eldest when Eragon is walking amongst the fallen in the battle field and picks idly picks up a tooth and bouncing it around in his hand with his typical blandness.

The differences between the two scenes, though they have a similar action - that of the tooth in the midst of appalling things - their reactions are completely different.

Vimes is actively disturbed at what he finds. He’s fighting back the rage to do things to the few people he’s found in charge.

In a strange kind of dream, he walked across the floor and bent down to pick something that gleamed in the torchlight. It was a tooth.

He stood up again.

A closed wooden door led off on one side of the cellar; on the other, a wider tunnel almost certainly led to the cells. Vimes took a torch out of its holder, handed it to Sam, and pointed along the tunnel -

There were footsteps accompanied by a jingle of keys, heading toward the door, and a light grown brighter underneath it.

The beast tensed...

Vimes dragged the largest club out of the rack and stepped swiftly to the wall beside the door. Someone was coming, someone who knew about this room, someone who called themselves a copper...

He doesn’t bash the guy coming in with the club. The sight of his younger self - Sam- stops him. But still there’s a certain anger that you can see in these words. Vimes lives and breathes being a watchman. It is what he is deep down to the bone and these men have violated this. There’s a certain tenseness in the language and the tooth encapsulates what it is that is wrong here. But he doesn’t play with the tooth. It’s a symbol here, not something to be held and played with.

In Eldest, on the other hand, the tooth is picked up and used much like you would hold a pebble contemplating something. He finds the tooth and no significance is attached to it. It’s just a tooth, much like a pebble would be a pebble in a stream. It’s put there as an action for Eragon to do, but there’s no reason that it has to be a tooth.

He bent and plucked a tooth, a molar, from the dirt. Bouncing it on his palm, he and Saphira slowly made a circuit through the trampled plain. They stopped at its edge when they noticed Jormundur - Ajihad’s second in command in the Varden - hurrying toward them from Tronjheim. When he came near, Jormundur bowed, a gesture Eragon knew he would have never made just days before.

Now honestly, you really could swap out “tooth” with “stone” and there wouldn’t be any difference in the paragraph’s impact. (Also, looking at the sentence I have to wonder why “in the Varden” has to be there. Is Ajihad in charge of other things that require second in commands?) There is no reason that this has to be a tooth. There’s no reason it should be a tooth.

The tooth in Nightwatch is symbolic of what has happened there and what Vimes is going to face. The tooth in Eragon is nothing but an object found in the battlefield but has no significance placed upon it. Which, as a tooth belonging to a human - at least I think it is a human - should at least bring some comment beyond the fact that it is a molar.

Beginning line from a story I'll likely never get around to writing:

"There are many reasons to break up with your boyfriend, he cheated on you, he's a jerk, his father is an eldrich abmonation planning on wiping out humanity with a plague and he never told you. Things like that. Guess which one I had."

If my brain keeps on insisting that the title of my fool story is "Forgotten Motley" and not "Forgotten Fool" should I change the title?

Taken with the webcam on my new laptop.


Quick survey:

Do people think that Brom turning out to be Eragon's real dad was Paolini's idea from the very start or something he retconed to get away from the Star Wars critics?

What is Brisingr about? The plot, I mean. (Cause I'd really like to know).

Random mental image that popped in my head while getting ready for work this morning:

A picture of the virgin Mary with the baby Jesus with the phrase: Abstinence: Sometimes not even that works.


Have Reached Dwarf Ninjas.

Laughing hysterically.

be back soon

Thinking about putting the "everything I learned about fantasy writing" list on a t-shirt. And maybe a couple of other of the weird memonic stuff (in my head) like "Zombies! The answer to Everything!" with pictures for some of them.

Amusing thing I noticed about the little zombie dragons:

Hatchling will die if it doesn't grow up in: 5.43 days.

This hatchling appears to be...dead?

The hatchling will did if it doesn't grow up, but it appears to be dead. =D


Need to create a book cover for Return Again. I'm not sure what to put on it. Thinking about it some more, I'm not even sure why I named it that. Beyond it felt right. Which I guess is the best way to go.

My dreams are weird. I dreamed about Darth And Droids, trying to figure out who Qui-Gon's player will play once Qui-Gon dies. Seriously. That's what my dream was about.