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ZypherIM posted:Flesnold, I will say that you should at least finish the coil/dinah arc you're in the middle of. In my opinion, wildbow does a good job of constructing a world that is internally consistent. In terms of how serious of a threat the authorities are, just keep in mind that the undersiders are much more a low priority gang in this world (compare the reaction from early in the story with Bakura versus currently). Well, I can at least try to finish out the arc and see how I feel when it's done. Also, appeal to popularity is fallacious. :P In general I have to admit I'm not a fan of the "if you don't like it you Just Don't Get It" attitude in some of the replies here. Personally, I don't feel he's as subtle as people say, but maybe stuff later proves me wrong; he tends to just bluntly say what characters think or feel, for example, and few of them have really felt like actual people to me so far. Pretty much everyone in Taylor's high school life is a cartoonishly evil rear end in a top hat and/or paper thin stereotype who's boring to read about, for example, and some of it has felt a bit too much like Wildbow venting his own issues or revenge fantasies for my liking. That could be uncharitable though; that's like saying "oh, a character in this book murders someone, the author must be pro-murder." I will note, though, that the story really bends over backwards to justify Taylor's worldview even outside of her POV chapters, and it almost feels like an ideology is being pushed at times; it can't be a coincidence that every person with authority in Worm is malicious, incompetent to the point of utter uselessness, or both. I'd also like to address that low priority comment, re: the Undersiders: at the point I'm at in the story, they've repeatedly taken on the entirety of the local Protectorate and Wards teams, as well as New Wave, and come up on top or at least gotten what they wanted every time. Such as that time they crashed a party attended by every single hero in the city, plus a whole squad of PRT guys, and not only got away without a scratch but trounced almost all of them, and when cornered by Armsmaster and Dauntless afterwards, the Travellers instantly showed up and curbstomped them. To the point I'm at in the story, with the exception of Scion showing up and driving off Leviathan (I might count Flashbang vs. Bonesaw, too, since once his brain was fixed he trounced her constructs pretty easily?) none of the heroes have had a single on screen success, and when the opposition is so thoroughly undercut at every opportunity not only is there no tension at all, but when Taylor wins it doesn't actually feel earned, as opposed to Wildbow putting his finger on the scales against characters who are threats in name only. Did she really need a straight up unambiguous (albeit difficult, I'll grant; I'll also grant that this fight is probably the only time a non-parahuman has shown any real agency to this point, with the big guy who helps Taylor) win against Mannequin the second time that character ever did anything, for example? At this point the outcome of a given conflict with her in it never really feels in doubt, meaning there just isn't that investment in what happens anymore. That was something I thought the first arc actually did all right, where Taylor was able to do a good amount of damage to Lung by taking him completely by surprise, but got overwhelmed fast when it became an actual fight. There are some things I like about the story and/or setting, but they tend to be way oversold, made out to be far more impressive and unique than they actually are. I enjoy some of the worldbuilding, but Worm is not the only work to examine some of the effects superpowered individuals would have on society by far, nor does it have a monopoly on exotic powers or using powers in unconventional ways*. Taylor's power is pretty standard in fact, although one of the theses of Worm seems to be what anyone with common sense knows, that control over insects actually isn't a weak power at all if munchkined enough; this too is oversold, I figure, as much like HPMOR was the Less Wrong guy putting on Harry Potter's skin to try to "well actually" that series' setting to death, Worm seems to take "bug control is actually a pretty good power" and escalate it to the point Taylor is basically Squirrel Girl (a Marvel character with the ability to control squirrels; the running gag with her is that she defeats literally everyone with her squirrel control power, even the most powerful characters in the setting like Thanos) but taken seriously/melodramatically. One thing I do like though is the theme of cooperation over competition that is very prominent, though it's about as subtle as a baseball bat to the face. That's pretty much everywhere in the work, from the very concept of Taylor's bug control to there not really being any lone capes to the fact that when the real threats show up (Endbringers et al) everyone, heroes and villains alike, teams up to deal with the problem, and I think in places it's actually decently done. But, again, not as unique as it and its reader base think it is. Milky Moor posted:
Oh, sure, I can do that. I just figured people'd be sick of me going "I'm pretty sure I don't like Worm." :V I kind of felt like I randomly kicked down the door going "the thing you like is actually bad" when it was more like I was starting to have serious misgivings. Part of what I'm saying is that I'm concerned I don't really have much to contribute that hasn't been discussed to death by this point. Since I'm stating my own grievances, not attempting to convince people Worm actually sucks or whatever, and the story ended long enough ago that obviously Wildbow isn't going to go back and redo it or anything, I was worried about seeming like I'm just raining on people's parade without any purpose. I'm actually disappointed, because I was really hoping that with the years that have passed since Worm and the experience Wildbow has accumulated, his writing in Ward would be better, but from what you say it seems like no such luck. * I've actually seen someone say they can't go back to any other superhero/superpowers-based media after Worm because everything else out there is too straightforward. That's just a ludicrous overestimate of Worm, and underestimate of everything else out there. Something can be good without being a world beater. Flesnolk fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Dec 18, 2017 |
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Dec 18, 2017 17:30
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Flesnolk posted:... the story ended long enough ago that obviously Wildbow isn't going to go back and redo it or anything, He's editing it pretty heavily for publication. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out in the end... I'm not really feeling Ward just yet, but I think I might still just be mourning Twig.
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Dec 18, 2017 17:58
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Well, fair, but a) hasn't he been saying that for years now? and b) I doubt he's really going to take criticisms like mine into account when revising it.
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Dec 18, 2017 18:05
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Flesnolk posted:it can't be a coincidence that every person with authority in Worm is malicious, incompetent to the point of utter uselessness, or both. The anti-authority thing is pretty consistent in Wildbow's writing, yeah. Though PRT Quest is clearly intended to show that the average PRT director, at least, isn't malicious or incompetent, just someone with an essentially impossible job.
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Dec 18, 2017 19:49
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On authority incompetence; I think if you look back at it in retrospect (when you finish the story and know all the pieces) there really wasn't that much incompetence. Sure, people did not always make the best decisions but they often made reasonable to good decisions with the cards they had available. Taylor having the power to win every encounter is definitely an issue. In this regard Pact and Twig are leaps ahead. This will not really get better, although (thematic spoiler, no explicit plot revealed) in retrospect it is probably best to think of Worm as the story of Taylor after the fact considering (real spoiler;) it a story told from point of view that there had to be a winner of, you know, the incident, then traced back and told as a first-person biography. Kind of like how you can see the Odyssey as the story of Odysseus because he made it back and not as the story of one of the random sailors that got murdered along the way. I also noticed the thing about her power not being weak at all. Bug control is ridiculously powerful to the level of a win button against anything that isn't immune to bugs. Mandatory mention; Twig is definitely his best work so far. It is so much better in character development, plot and pacing than Worm and Pact. Maybe still quite some filler there in the latter half, but can't have it all.
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Dec 18, 2017 22:51
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Namarrgon posted:On authority incompetence; I think if you look back at it in retrospect (when you finish the story and know all the pieces) there really wasn't that much incompetence. Sure, people did not always make the best decisions but they often made reasonable to good decisions with the cards they had available. That in itself is a pretty strong anti-authority view. The overarching theme is sort of that authority is inherently bad, rather than being bad because the "wrong" people are in power.
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Dec 19, 2017 00:45
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Milky Moor posted:This thread just gets weirdly condescending when people say they don't enjoy Wildbow's stuff. We've had 'go back and read more slowly' (lol), 'listen to this podcast to 'get it' (lol again -- if you have to listen to a podcast to understand a work, then something's gone wrong along the way), lots of people like it (haha really?) and so on. I understand that some posters in here are pretty tied up with the Worm community, but those sorts of responses are not the best way of handling criticism. It is, as mentioned, defensive and condescending. This is something I see happen all the time with media. I think the thing that gets missed is that when someone says "I don't like this story because of X, Y and Z", they almost never actually dislike the story because of X, and even if you do convince them that X is okay it will not change their opinion on the story. X, Y, and Z are usually actually just some things which require some trust or acceptance from the reader, so a reader who is already enjoying the story will have no problem with them, but one who is looking for explanations for why they don't like it will latch onto them as the obvious problems. The seemingly similar but very different case of "I'm enjoying this story but X is bugging me" is where a justification for X may actually be helpful. If you enjoyed Worm but were frustrated with how the story bought into Taylor's biases because you missed the unreliable narrator aspect, then listening to WGW pointing out all the places where it happens will probably ease your frustration. This won't make you enjoy the story if you weren't already loving the good parts, though.
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Dec 19, 2017 01:03
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I find that the concept of the unreliable narrator often gets treated as a crutch, as well. People at times go "unreliable narrator! unreliable narrator!" as if the concept of a narrator potentially being unreliable is some kind of shield proof against criticism as opposed to an artistic device that can succeed or fail on its own merits. Speaking more on it in general than directly about how Worm handles (or doesn't handle) it.
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Dec 19, 2017 01:17
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Speaking of Twig. I'm on 8.X and i'm getting real bored. The kids are entertaining enough, but the story feels like it is progressing very very slowly.
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Dec 19, 2017 01:45
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Flesnolk posted:I find that the concept of the unreliable narrator often gets treated as a crutch, as well. People at times go "unreliable narrator! unreliable narrator!" as if the concept of a narrator potentially being unreliable is some kind of shield proof against criticism as opposed to an artistic device that can succeed or fail on its own merits. Speaking more on it in general than directly about how Worm handles (or doesn't handle) it. Bingo. Plorkyeran posted:The seemingly similar but very different case of "I'm enjoying this story but X is bugging me" is where a justification for X may actually be helpful. If you enjoyed Worm but were frustrated with how the story bought into Taylor's biases because you missed the unreliable narrator aspect, then listening to WGW pointing out all the places where it happens will probably ease your frustration. This won't make you enjoy the story if you weren't already loving the good parts, though. When a story buys into the biases of the narrator, it's called validation. It's about as far from 'unreliable' as you can get. Like, if you're going to play up the unreliable narrator, there should be instances where the story does not buy into Taylor's biases. A chapter where she vastly overreacts to something benevolent, for example. A chapter where she misreads something benign as Proof That The PRT Bullies People. Because that's what trauma does to people. Trauma is not some secret weapon that allows you to see the world clearly. More importantly, if a text requires you to go outside it to understand it, then it has failed. That last point is something you can find in all sorts of Guides To Writing. But that would require her to fumble and fail, to risk changing as opposed to escalating, not to have more and more lampshades hung over why Taylor just keeps winning. Why was Taylor winning? Because Coil kept creating timelines where she won. And after that? Well, there's another reason. Some people might think the explanation is fine, others might recoil from it because it removes the agency of the characters. One of the very first things we are told about Taylor, from what I remember, is that she needs time to prepare and she's bad at improvising. But then she just... isn't. Huge things change on the spur of the moment and she thinks her way through them without difficulty, or things conspire, like the aforementioned Travelers, to bail her out. edit: It's like the big reveal that there are alien shards in people's brains that compel them towards conflict. It's the sort of thing that severely undercuts its own story and doesn't seem to be anything other than justification for the criticism that 'things just keep escalating'. Depending on your perspective on storytelling, it's a piece of worldbuilding that might actively harm the story of Taylor while not really reinforcing it. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Dec 19, 2017 |
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Dec 19, 2017 01:53
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Flesnolk posted:I find that the concept of the unreliable narrator often gets treated as a crutch, as well. People at times go "unreliable narrator! unreliable narrator!" as if the concept of a narrator potentially being unreliable is some kind of shield proof against criticism as opposed to an artistic device that can succeed or fail on its own merits. Speaking more on it in general than directly about how Worm handles (or doesn't handle) it. Yeah, it's often a total non-sequitor that doesn't address the actual criticism in any way. It's similar to saying "well there's a plot device responsible" in response to a complaint about how the Undersiders always win when the person says they like to see the protagonists lose sometimes rather than it being about the victories being implausible.
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Dec 19, 2017 02:44
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Milky Moor posted:edit: It's like the big reveal that there are alien shards in people's brains that compel them towards conflict. It's the sort of thing that severely undercuts its own story and doesn't seem to be anything other than justification for the criticism that 'things just keep escalating'. Depending on your perspective on storytelling, it's a piece of worldbuilding that might actively harm the story of Taylor while not really reinforcing it. At the risk of going too deep into WELL ACTUALLY territory, I don't think shards take away people's agency to the extent that the fandom interprets it. I can't remember how much of this is stated outright in Worm itself, but as I understand it, shards' influence on parahumans' brains is usually pretty subtle, with the exception of Thinkers and a few outliers like Echidna and Burnscar. (And even those those cases, it tends to be more a side effect of the power itself than the shard.) Rather than outright mind controlling people, they choose hosts who have a degree of disposition towards conflict in the first place, and then nudge them by making the powers more powerful when used in conflict. Wildbow has even stated that shards' personalities are affected more by their hosts' than vice versa; in particular, the Broadcast shard is more malevolent than it would otherwise be due to Jack Slash's influence. Having said all that, there are an awful lot of plot devices that can serve as convenient explanations for actions that don't quite make sense otherwise. This first occurred to me when I was annoyed by the way Alexandria went down, and realized that this could be explained away by her being set up to fail by Dinah, her own shard, Contessa, or the Simurgh. I'm leaning towards the Simurgh, because it would amusing if the cover story the PRT came up with turned out to actually be true. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Dec 19, 2017 |
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Dec 19, 2017 06:31
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I don't like broken triggers and i don't want any more of them to happen.
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Dec 19, 2017 06:56
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NecroMonster posted:I don't like broken triggers and i don't want any more of them to happen. Oh god. I couldn't agree more. 
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Dec 19, 2017 07:22
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Jade Mage posted:Oh god. I couldn't agree more. 
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Dec 19, 2017 07:23
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Flesnold, I think you see more of the "you're just not getting" it replies because some of your complaints about the events in the story aren't really.. accurate? For example the party they crash is not attended by the entire Wards+PRT and they still cut and run well before "winning" the fight. They've got detailed info on everyone attending and their powers, a precog, multiple chances at the run from Coil's powers, and once the initial ambush is over they're getting run down by 2 of the heroes (you've already been shown that the travelers are working with Coil, and this also sets up how relatively strong the travelers are). The undersiders are a group that can pull off an embarrasing event that has to run from 2 of your heroes, versus a group like the travelers who could likely against all your local guys, versus literally any of the slaughterhouse 9 who would do that and are mass murderers. Yea they're not high priority, in part because the PRT doesn't know about the coil connection or how much info tattletale can get with her power and compared to a lot of other gangs they're willing to just play cops-and-robbers. People bring up unreliable narrator in this work because the views you complain about, like the school admin being cartoonishly evil, keep being shown to not really be that way. The way the writing describes and frames people, and the way Taylor treats or thinks of them, hinges greatly on if they appose her in anything. Almost every time she is confused about why someone is not trusting her, or apposing her, etc it makes perfect sense if you think about what is going on objectively and not what Taylor *thinks*. As an aside, a family member of mine works in our existing school systems and has bitched about a situation very close to this, so I find the additional wrinkle of "accused student secretly a super hero in training" to give multiple reasons for the administration to be on her side that aren't cartoonishly evil (ie 'sophia is monitored by the PRT so clearly it can't be as bad as claimed', or 'a member of the wards wouldn't do that'). @milky: Your statement of "one of the first things we're told about Taylor is she needs planning and is bad at improvising" is exactly the type of unreliable narration I'm talking about. We're actually NOT told this, this is something Taylor thinks about herself. Pretty early on there is a moment where one of the undersiders makes a comment about her being good at improvising which surprises her precisely for that reason. Taylor spends a significant amount of time avoiding and rationalizing away these disconnects, and it is a rather important aspect of her character. If you don't like a story told from an unreliable narrator viewpoint fair enough. Saying you think the story is supporting and reinforcing Taylor's biases (and thusly not actually doing anything with the unreliable narrator bits) is so drastically far from what I got from reading the text, along with a lot of other people's reading of the text, that I have almost no real clue where to begin. Actually I do, because I only recently found out about the we've got worm podcast, and even within the first few episodes they're pointing out and calling bullshit on Taylor's view of things. I don't think you actually need to go outside the text at all to pick any of this up at all, but Wildbow does such a good job of getting you into that character's head space that it can be easy to overlook a lot of things if you're just trucking through the story.
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Dec 19, 2017 09:36
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unreliable narrator is at its best usage when the narrator ends up being even more gooder at winning than she appraises herself as
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Dec 19, 2017 09:51
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Yeah, I have to admit, that post misses the thrust of the point.
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Dec 19, 2017 10:07
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People say Taylor wins a lot and I don't really understand that. She "wins" the same way through the whole series, starting with the Lung fight all the way to the very end - pyrrhic victories where her objective is technically accomplished at some terrible cost. She loses so much over the course of the story, in terms of friends, family, and personal health/well-being - it would be really hard for her to lose more without the story coming to an abrupt conclusion because she's loving dead. Her arc is literally this tiny upspike at the beginning (coming out of that bathroom) into a long slow terrible down slide over the course of a million words. But I guess she doesn't die in any of the fights - thus; victory? 
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Dec 19, 2017 11:04
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Milky Moor posted:This thread just gets weirdly condescending when people say they don't enjoy Wildbow's stuff. We've had 'go back and read more slowly' (lol), 'listen to this podcast to 'get it' (lol again -- if you have to listen to a podcast to understand a work, then something's gone wrong along the way), lots of people like it (haha really?) and so on. I understand that some posters in here are pretty tied up with the Worm community, but those sorts of responses are not the best way of handling criticism. It is, as mentioned, defensive and condescending. Actually if you don't like twig you should be put to the guillotine
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Dec 19, 2017 15:26
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Flesnolk posted:Well, fair, but a) hasn't he been saying that for years now? and b) I doubt he's really going to take criticisms like mine into account when revising it. Turns out a literal million word story takes some time to edit when you're writing another story at the same time
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Dec 19, 2017 15:27
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Anyway I'm gonna interruot the eight millionth iteration of this stupid fight to remind you that ward updated andquote:“Iced tea, please,” I said, noting the use of ‘pop’. A lot of people from a lot of regions had gathered in the megalopolis. Religious war between soda and pop confirmed as main plot of Ward
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Dec 19, 2017 15:30
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Jade Mage posted:Oh god. I couldn't agree more. I stepped back and took a break in the middle of that scene because somebody's brain being nailed to a point in space by their power sounded SEVERELY unpleasant
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Dec 19, 2017 23:37
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Coca Koala posted:I stepped back and took a break in the middle of that scene because somebody's brain being nailed to a point in space by their power sounded SEVERELY unpleasant The girl aspirating on her own vomit while all Victoria can do is hug her got me good.
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Dec 19, 2017 23:59
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I'm not honestly sure I can continue, that poo poo hosed me up. Like, I've never been this uncomfortable reading fiction before. I just really want to know what Yamada is up to, she was one of my favourites from Worm. I hope Sveta made it through everything too. 
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Dec 20, 2017 06:33
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There was a bunch of poo poo technically worse in Worm. The big difference here I think, is the lack of agency, the lack of someone or something to lay the blame at the feet of.
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Dec 20, 2017 06:57
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I guess I was the only one reading that scene over lunch.
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Dec 20, 2017 07:00
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Jade Mage posted:I'm not honestly sure I can continue, that poo poo hosed me up. Like, I've never been this uncomfortable reading fiction before. I just really want to know what Yamada is up to, she was one of my favourites from Worm. I hope Sveta made it through everything too. we saw sveta in the interlude episodes preceding worm 2 beginning. she's doing okay.
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Dec 20, 2017 09:08
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Do webserial authors usually take well to criticism or would it be an futile effort resulting in getting dogpiled by fans?
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Dec 20, 2017 10:31
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Xun posted:Do webserial authors usually take well to criticism or would it be an futile effort resulting in getting dogpiled by fans? The only one I can vouch for is myself, and I'd welcome honest criticism -- hell, I've reached out to certain people in this very thread for it! I don't recall seeing any of the 'big names' take criticism one way or the other.
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Dec 20, 2017 11:03
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Wildbow actively solicits criticism in the parahumans irc and probably elsewhere
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Dec 20, 2017 11:18
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My experience is that most webserial authors will appreciate criticism. I guess it does depend on how you phrase it and I won't guarantee they'll agree obviously but most of them actively want to improve their writing and criticism is helpful for that. Although if you post your criticism in the comments you probably do have a good chance at getting dogpiled by fans?
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Dec 20, 2017 15:13
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Parahumans IRC? Probably #worm, #ward, or if you want to get pretty technical, maybe #writing. There’s probably going to be one or two people that are eager to jump on and answer while not having high signal answers, but some might (especially if it’s been asked a lot). Expect standard IRC-level  from people that aren’t WB.If you can catch WB on a non writing day you might get an acknowledgment or response?
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Dec 20, 2017 18:00
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NecroMonster posted:There was a bunch of poo poo technically worse in Worm. The big difference here I think, is the lack of agency, the lack of someone or something to lay the blame at the feet of. There's someone to lay the blame on. Taylor murdered Zion, therefore causing the malfunctions.  although this does remind me of my personal most "well, guess I have to be a villain" superperson in Worm there is effectively no constructive use of Breed's powers, the best he can possibly do is produce parasites in surplus corpses and use them to kill serious threats in a horrible but not particularly tactically useful way the ethical option for him would be to become an accountant or something and maybe apply to desecrate a corpse for some self-defense tools Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Dec 22, 2017 |
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Dec 22, 2017 01:48
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Breed probably wouldn't have gotten that shard if he wasn't likely to use it in the first place if that makes you feel any better.
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Dec 22, 2017 05:17
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I'm glad that Ward is apparently going to be about what I suspected from the name but also different and also we're going to start seeing the glow worm poo poo work in Ward is shaping up to be tight
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Dec 23, 2017 06:40
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I suddenly really, really like the direction Ward is going in. Victoria is gonna end up joining these guys and it's gonna be great. Jessica Yamada remains the best character.
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Dec 23, 2017 15:20
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She's going to end up being the Xavier to their X-Men and one of them is going to turn into a villain, that's my prediction
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Dec 24, 2017 06:40
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A bunch of people are going to end up dead in totally horrible ways and everything will be depressing and/or heartbreaking but the whole thing will be capped off with a bitter sweet note.
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Dec 24, 2017 07:37
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The Shortest Path posted:I suddenly really, really like the direction Ward is going in. Victoria is gonna end up joining these guys and it's gonna be great. i'm glad to have a more prominent normal human character. i'd also like it if there was mention of ordinary human intellectuals discovering novel stuff with the alien tech rather than relying purely on thinkers and tinkers for tech. i imagine thinkers would have huge blind spots in their thinking - certain kinds of cognitive biases scale up with intellect.
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Dec 24, 2017 09:18
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