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BENGHAZI 2 posted:The only one I didn't see was the tinker power I'm guessing quick/dirty cybernetics to keep wounded people alive/get them out. But it's really not as clear as the others. While Rain got the ability to cut the chains/bars/locks he himself likely placed, I'm thinking he ran away instead of actually cut them.
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Feb 6, 2018 22:38
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Also the rest of the group completely ignoring someone they apparently hate to this extent is weird, like, it's weird
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Feb 6, 2018 22:42
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Incredibly hosed up possibility, Cradle hired the Fallen to burn down the mall/his store, for the insurance money. And the Fallen, being the Fallen, burned it down with people inside.
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Feb 6, 2018 23:17
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For a while I've thought wildbows best work was his interludes That is 100% the case with PracGuide, between the epilogue to book two, the Ranger chapter, and now a Malicia one
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Feb 7, 2018 01:25
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Dread Emperor Irritant I is second only to Traitorous as best Dread Emperor.
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Feb 7, 2018 16:06
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NinjaDebugger posted:Dread Emperor Irritant I is second only to Traitorous as best Dread Emperor.
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Feb 7, 2018 17:49
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:For a while I've thought wildbows best work was his interludes Your going to love the latest chapters when you get to them. One of the reasons that Prac Guide is so good is that while it has a theme of overturning the old order in the name of efficiency, erraticerrata glories in the absolute batshit grandiose ambition of traditional Evil. He makes it awesome (in the original sense), instead of clearly dumb and dismissible.
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Feb 7, 2018 19:35
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yeah i love the poo poo like heiress' mom being a full on trad evil usurper and malicia just giggling and being like honey, no
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Feb 7, 2018 19:38
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the ranger chapter slaps, dead king spinoff when
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Feb 7, 2018 19:39
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So I gave ascendant bookworm a shot. Does it get interesting eventually? Or good?
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Feb 8, 2018 12:28
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Affi posted:So I gave ascendant bookworm a shot. Does it get interesting eventually? Or good? If your problem is the main character: she gets better. If your problem is lack of action/politics/etc: a lot of that happens later, past what's been translated so far, although some hints of it are already showing. At that point the focus shifts away from technological uplift. Otherwise, it's an isekai novel so it depends on your tolerance for the genre. It avoids a lot of the problems of the genre, primarily by not being a male power fantasy, but is ultimately still about someone ending up in another world and accelerating technology by hundreds of years, which can inherently come across as very Mary Sue-ish due to the protagonist's advantages. For what it's worth, it's pretty educational and goes into excruciating detail about how she does it with fantasy world resources, and she has to fail a lot to get there.
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Feb 8, 2018 13:32
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Uplifting is fine and fun and I'm glad it's not creepy. But I'm going at chapter twenty five of "I need to make paper somehow" with a sprinkling of "oh this is how you make pancakes btw"
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Feb 8, 2018 13:59
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Affi posted:Uplifting is fine and fun and I'm glad it's not creepy. But I'm going at chapter twenty five of "I need to make paper somehow" with a sprinkling of "oh this is how you make pancakes btw" If it's the pace, then uh, yeah, it's slow, and it's got a lot of slice of life stuff mixed in. I'm looking at the list of translated chapters and I can give you a broad idea of what goes on so you can decide if you want to continue: (these are very general) she completes the paper (about 11 chapters off from where you are), starts making merchant connections, learns how to leverage her knowledge (paper, cooking, and otherwise) for money, learns about the societal problems that would prevent her from just flat out inventing everything she wants, learns about her illness, and in a few more chapters, will figure out what she wants to do as a job. That stuff I described covers about 50 chapters, so if that's too slow for you... c'est la vie. But also, I should warn you that this thing only updates once a week and only 63 of about 700 chapters have been translated.
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Feb 8, 2018 14:18
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Eh. Maybe I'll keep it as a slow burn for when there's nothing else to read.
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Feb 8, 2018 14:32
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Here's my new PracGuide thoughts Champion is life Champion is love
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Feb 9, 2018 02:24
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Argue posted:If it's the pace, then uh, yeah, it's slow, and it's got a lot of slice of life stuff mixed in. I'm looking at the list of translated chapters and I can give you a broad idea of what goes on so you can decide if you want to continue: (these are very general) she completes the paper (about 11 chapters off from where you are), starts making merchant connections, learns how to leverage her knowledge (paper, cooking, and otherwise) for money, learns about the societal problems that would prevent her from just flat out inventing everything she wants, learns about her illness, and in a few more chapters, will figure out what she wants to do as a job. That stuff I described covers about 50 chapters, so if that's too slow for you... c'est la vie. This thing is actually quite nice. It's nice to read something that isn't WAR WAR WAR all the time.
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Feb 9, 2018 04:05
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Nettle Soup posted:This thing is actually quite nice. It's nice to read something that isn't WAR WAR WAR all the time. Yeah, I binged what was translated and really getting into the general mood and atmosphere and then was like "oh. I have to wait like forever for more".
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Feb 9, 2018 04:59
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My greatest regret with translating Bookworm is that I can’t put it out at anywhere close to the same insane breakneck speed at which the author originally spewed it out. It reads a lot better when you read a chapter every day or two, rather than one every week or so.
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Feb 9, 2018 05:08
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ward 4.4 holy poo poo Kenzie
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Feb 9, 2018 09:22
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Nothing too surprising in the latest ward chapter, but really great fleshing out of some of the characters. Saw someone theorize that Kenzie might be using a combination of stuff we've seen (writing on her paper with holograms instead of actually marking up the sheet, her anti-camera tech stuff at the warden's hq) to mask physical signs that she is over-extending herself. Basically makeup, tinker style! Also between this chapter and the last one I've found myself feeling that the group isn't a lost cause, though it'll be really rough on everyone as they get there.
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Feb 9, 2018 09:45
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NecroMonster posted:ward 4.4 holy poo poo Kenzie It's super great and not worrying at all that that's just the stuff Houndstooth was comfortable saying while she might have been watching and/or listening. Ashley definitely surprised me this chapter, in a good way. Her reaction to Houndstooth says to me that her sociopath act is at least partially that, an act, although one she's clearly internalized. I guess you'd have to internalize some pretty horrific stuff to fit in with the S9, especially when we know what happens to those who don't fit in, like Cherish. I have to say, I wasn't really that engaged with Ward for a while, but Shade (the 4.x chapters) has made the whole thing really click for me. I appreciate setup and worldbuilding as much as the next guy (possibly moreso), but I'm really excited to be getting into what feels like the meat of the story.
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Feb 9, 2018 09:53
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Random rear end in a top hat posted:Ashley definitely surprised me this chapter, in a good way. Her reaction to Houndstooth says to me that her sociopath act is at least partially that, an act, although one she's clearly internalized. I guess you'd have to internalize some pretty horrific stuff to fit in with the S9, especially when we know what happens to those who don't fit in, like Cherish. I think act is sort of the wrong way around to look at it. She's a Slaughterhouse 9k clone. When they made those things they had to make sure they ended up how they wanted them to be, slaughterhouse maniacs but still roughly the right "person" so they shoved all their original memories into their heads and emphasized all the creepy terrible stuff. Probably Bonesaw did some other horrific Bonesaw things to their brains too. The original Ashley before her criminal career and eventual Slaughterhouse membership was probably just a "normal" person not actually someone with sociopaths tendencies or anything like that at least. So our Ashley is a normal person who got a whole bunch of artificial memories and had all the terrible criminal stuff emphasized. But its not quite real, none of it is. She's got plenty of human empathy, her I'm actually a villain thing does not have the weight of a real lifetime of criminality and mass murder behind it. But its still in her head, its still emphasized over all the memories too. So she's in a weird position where she's in a group of people who she genuinely cares about, who want to go out and be Big drat Heroes and it conflicts with her own drives. The end result is that as long as she's comfortable she acts like a bit of a bitchy friend. When she's upset at the group or doesn't know how to handle a situation she reflexively just goes down the I'm Evil and so I Don't Care path, which we've seen can be terribly self reinforcing when people push back against that and she goes further down it. When you're being awful to her friends well. Walking away there was probably quite a feat of maturity and restraint on her part. I'd predict that over the course of the series we're going to see her act more and more like the slightly bitchy friend and a lot less villain as she builds up real memories and experience as her own person instead of the hosed up simulacrum of a person that Bonesaw made originally. Or to put more succinctly. She's has a "lifetime" of artificial memories that tell her to act like one and the downside of having normal empathy, a support network and a handful of friends who insist on being nice to her. Anytime you see her act like a Big Evil Villain Who Doesn't Care you can be fairly sure she's upset and does not know how to cope with the situation.
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Feb 9, 2018 11:40
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blastron posted:My greatest regret with translating Bookworm is that I can’t put it out at anywhere close to the same insane breakneck speed at which the author originally spewed it out. It reads a lot better when you read a chapter every day or two, rather than one every week or so. You're doing a really great job on the translation, though! It's super readable, which a lot of translated stuff really isn't.
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Feb 9, 2018 12:22
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I want everyone here reading Ward to think about the implications of someone who is pathologically desperate for and seeking affection and human contact also being the best in the world at surveillance Imagine someone who just wants to be your friend, but has unhealthy ideas about how to do that. Now imagine they can spy on you all the time in their quest to figure out what you want from them Kenzie is the scariest member of the group, imo. Not because of some life or death situation but because she's basically a stalker waiting to happen and I'd be massively surprised if we didn't get some crazy chapter where she snaps and the Scooby Gang has to deal with her crazy poo poo while also being under constant surveillance
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Feb 9, 2018 13:37
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:I want everyone here reading Ward to think about the implications of someone who is pathologically desperate for and seeking affection and human contact also being the best in the world at surveillance I'm predicting when she snaps everyone will find out that she has just been constantly doing crazy poo poo and had them all under crazy surveillance the whole time.
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Feb 9, 2018 16:10
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Same but flip it, they find out, they shun her, and she turns into a nightmare stalker horror villain
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Feb 9, 2018 16:14
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Yeah, based on how other Wildbow stories have gone it's hard to imagine how this doesn't turn into Kenzie being a really bad villain.
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Feb 9, 2018 20:06
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I'm still hoping that the big bad ends up being Ashley making good on her threats about becoming the best supervillain after telling them that's the plan the whole time and getting brushed off.
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Feb 9, 2018 20:27
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OCD with rejection and abandonment issues is a bad enough combination to start with. Giving her this skill set on top of that is just loving horrible.
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Feb 9, 2018 23:53
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So the main direction of Ward is that powers really mess you up and all capes are broken?
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Feb 10, 2018 00:35
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I just love this team of hosed up people being "mentored" by a serial abuser who is maybe unaware that she is a serial abuser and they are definitely unaware she is a serial abuser I'm sure this whole situation is going to turn out great.
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Feb 10, 2018 01:06
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Do you mean Victoria? How’s she a serial abuser? (I might have missed something.)
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Feb 10, 2018 01:31
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blastron posted:Do you mean Victoria? How’s she a serial abuser? (I might have missed something.) She spent several months or years of her life blasting her adopted sister with her love aura. And don't feel bad, not everyone picked up on this.
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Feb 10, 2018 01:45
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NecroMonster posted:She spent several months or years of her life blasting her adopted sister with her love aura. And don't feel bad, not everyone picked up on this. Are we sure she was doing this intentionally?
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Feb 10, 2018 02:32
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Pussy Quipped posted:Are we sure she was doing this intentionally? She wasn't doing it intentionally, but that doesn't matter.
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Feb 10, 2018 02:37
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she acknowledges her need for attention/adoration in the most recent chapter
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Feb 10, 2018 04:01
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NecroMonster posted:She wasn't doing it intentionally, but that doesn't matter. It matters quite a bit when you frame it as "really bad person in a power of power over them". Also phrasing it as serial implies this is a recurring issue. Her aura isn't a love aura either, its awe/fear. Nothing explicitly says that she was actually doing this, though I think Wildbow said somewhere that Victoria (at least pre-ward, she seems to have much better control now) couldn't fully turn her aura off. This leads to the theory that Amy's relative isolation combined with constant awe for Victoria eventually lead to her falling in love with Victoria. Even if this is true, the situation now is extremely different. Victoria has much better control over her aura now, and what Amy did to her is slaughterhouse 9 levels of hosed up (so I highly doubt Victoria would want that to happen again). If this was something to actually be worried about, she'd be using her aura as a blanket effect, or keeping it at a low hum, or anything except how she explicitly has been using it for the entire story so far.
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Feb 10, 2018 09:59
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Yeah it's definitely more nuanced than Victoria blasting Amy with love rays all the time, the fact that their family basically emotionally neglected her EXCEPT for Victoria is at least as much to blame
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Feb 10, 2018 11:06
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To follow up on last night's thing remember also that emotion powers don't just do their thing, their thing is affected by how someone feels about the person projecting the aura to start with To switch to the new chapter: some quality puns this chapter
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Feb 10, 2018 17:58
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"Victoria was a serial abuser" isn't the worst Worm-related hot take I've ever seen, but it's up there.
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Feb 10, 2018 18:19
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