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Speaking of Ward, something has been bugging me about the viewpoint character of Victoria. Namely, she just seems so far removed from Glory Girl of the original story in terms of behaviour and approach. Victoria of Ward is incredibly methodical. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of capes, powers, and how they interact. That's definitely not the impression I was left of her in Worm, where she often just kind of improvised (and relied on her family/sister to paper over her mistakes). She was arrogant and brash, and relied on brute force more than anything else. I get that she'd have changed. The poo poo that happened to her, and the trauma she's carrying, would require her to change in a number of ways. And I can see how she might have decided that, since everything that happened to her occurred in part because she wasn't as clued-in to the threats that were growing around her, she might want to get a better handle on the other parahumans of the city and how they operate. I can buy that pretty easily. It makes sense. But right now, to the best of my recollection, that's not been explicitly established - it's really just my head canon, my way of trying to justify the drastic change in the character between the last story and this one. I'd be a lot more comfortable if Wildbow would just take the time to have Victoria comment on it during one of her many inner monologues.
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Mar 18, 2018 00:20
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victoria sat in on the class on how powers work, voluntarily, during the wards arc of worm, establishing an interest at least, and also its mentioned over and over in ward how shes been immersed in the cape life since birth basically and spent a lot of time studying while in the hospital and recovering information from earth bet after gold morning. sveta comments on it even, as well as it being mentioned in glow worm, as well as in arc 1 when shes clearing out her office. She has a Lot of literature about capes
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Mar 18, 2018 00:26
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ZypherIM posted:ward / rebuttles Well okay, toe-to-toe is a bit strong, but based on everything we've seen thus far, I'm expecting them to immediately get sucked into one hotspot or another and immediately end up in a situation where they have to either stand and fight or completely withdraw- maybe I'm over-estimating everyone else's level of organization and under-estimating how big the area of operations is, but I just can't see them showing up in any meaningful way without getting dogpiled by the other factions. I'm definitely picking at threads though; I suspect the core issue is just that none of the hollow point stuff has resonated with me since the beginning; in spite of the last chapter having been an explicit description of their plan, I still just can't see how they're expecting this to go well. This seems like such an incredibly dangerous and out-of-control way to debut a team of (mostly) inexperienced teenage capes.
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Mar 18, 2018 00:56
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Falstaff posted:Speaking of Ward, something has been bugging me about the viewpoint character of Victoria. Namely, she just seems so far removed from Glory Girl of the original story in terms of behaviour and approach. Her being methodical is definitely new and not something we really saw in Worm. It does seem somewhat at odds with her impulsiveness at the time. But there's nothing saying she couldn't have simply enjoyed researching cape stuff at the time but not necessarily approaching her actual fights in the same manner, in which case her thorough research would follow pretty naturally given all the effort she's been shown to put in to change herself. As for all the things she aren't any more, I feel like Wildbow did a good job establishing the whats and whys during the first big fight myself.
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Mar 18, 2018 01:03
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Insurrectionist posted:As for all the things she aren't any more, I feel like Wildbow did a good job establishing the whats and whys during the first big fight myself. The opening fight had her explicitly talking internally about being too brash and reckless and hurting people, and her focusing on being methodical to counteract that.
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Mar 18, 2018 01:16
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Yeah, but I feel like the news this chapter that she outright enjoys cape and power minutiae and seeing exactly how bloated and excessive her work becomes when not actively restrained is something beyond what you'd get if her natural inclination was the opposite. That's less so the case with other things - you see signs of her arrogance in how she judged Natalie's outfits, she constantly reinforces how she has to quash her impulsiveness in combat and think of ways to fight beyond brute force. You can very much see that they're conscious and difficult decisions she makes.
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Mar 18, 2018 01:40
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Victoria's always been a smart girl who enjoys learning about capes and powers and was taking college level courses on such in Worm... her outward approach has changed a lot, which makes sense bc she's both older and bc she can no longer afford to be impulsive. Developing self-control and awareness of her own emotions is what kept her sane-ish in the hospital, which makes a lot of sense. Like, her body was so hosed up it took an absurd amount of control to even communicate. She also seems to blame her impulsiveness for what happened to her... and she had a lot of time to think about what had happened, even if her lucidity was compromised in that time period bc of the stuff Amy had done to her mind. I find it interesting that as Ward progresses Victoria is able to think about Amy more and more. It makes sense in a way... Amy didn't just hurt her but she was stuck for two years with obsessive thoughts of Amy. So thinking about Amy triggers her because it reminds her of those two years she really hates thinking about, ALONG with the sense of betrayal and the understandable resulting lack of trust. If I was Victoria I definitely wouldn't be comfortable with Amy touching me skin to skin ever again, at the very least, even if I got to the point of being able to talk to her.
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Mar 18, 2018 01:55
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Vickie's impulsiveness and lack of self-control is exactly why everything happened to her. It's part of why a whole bunch of poo poo happened to Amy as well.
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Mar 18, 2018 02:08
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I guess I don't remember Victoria's academic inclinations from Worm, but I'll take y'all's word for it. I think the reason it takes me aback a bit is because I associate that sort of encyclopedic knowledge of capes more with Taylor, so it seems like a bit of an odd fit for Vicki.
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Mar 18, 2018 02:33
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other than the fact that Victoria was pushy, maybe shallow, and very self-absorbed she didn't get a super huge amount of actual time in the story.
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Mar 18, 2018 02:52
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Yeah Victoria being a power nerd taking college-level courses through a PRT program was mentioned like, all of one chapter, in an interlude chapter, when she wasn't the POV character. I think. I'm really enjoying her as the protagonist.
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Mar 18, 2018 03:07
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well, it was also mentioned in glow worm, and ward multiple times.
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Mar 18, 2018 03:42
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violent sex idiot posted:well, it was also mentioned in glow worm, and ward multiple times.
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Mar 18, 2018 04:48
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Falstaff posted:Speaking of Ward, something has been bugging me about the viewpoint character of Victoria. Namely, she just seems so far removed from Glory Girl of the original story in terms of behaviour and approach. It's kind of the weird problem of Ward. They could pull some reveal like it's Taylor's mind in Victoria's body and it wouldn't feel out of place.
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Mar 18, 2018 05:16
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PetraCore posted:Yeah Victoria being a power nerd taking college-level courses through a PRT program was mentioned like, all of one chapter, in an interlude chapter, when she wasn't the POV character. I think. I did a fairly recent re-read. She was in a course during a Clockblocker chapter, just before the S9 show up.
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Mar 18, 2018 07:27
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Falstaff posted:Speaking of Ward, something has been bugging me about the viewpoint character of Victoria. Namely, she just seems so far removed from Glory Girl of the original story in terms of behaviour and approach. I think its a weakness of it being "rational" fiction and also Wildbow having his compulsion to overexplain everything seeping into his characters.
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Mar 18, 2018 07:38
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What the hell is “rational” fiction?
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Mar 18, 2018 09:29
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here, have the biggest wankfest of an explanation possible: http://rationalfiction.io/story/rational-fiction
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Mar 18, 2018 09:54
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Xun posted:What the hell is “rational” fiction? It's one of the big pillars of webfiction. It's a very specific sub-genre that belongs to a very specific subculture with a very specific worldview, and it is a genre that a lot of people try to ape without much success. At my absolute most cynical, I'd say it is a genre that cares more about rewarding the reader's idea of what it is to be 'rational' or 'smart' more than engaging with the story. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality was Patient Zero of rationalfic. r/rational says of rational fiction: quote:Nothing happens solely because 'the plot requires it'. If characters do (or don't do) something, there must be a plausible reason. What is interesting is, it's a genre typically about using the rational mind to exploit rules and knowledge -- but only the protagonist is the person to ever figure out this secret to ultimate power (almost as if you could say... the plot requires it?) edit: Notice how the above four points are basically there to argue against a band of strawmen, and how the first point especially can excuse anything happening if you give it 'a plausible reason'. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Mar 18, 2018 |
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Mar 18, 2018 10:08
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Milky Moor posted:It's kind of the weird problem of Ward. They could pull some reveal like it's Taylor's mind in Victoria's body and it wouldn't feel out of place. Are we reading the same stories? This thread of thought is amazing to me, the characters are so far apart in almost every aspect. How the characters think, how they view the world/others, how they approach problems, how they respond to setbacks, what they care about, and even more that I could go over are all VERY different. The only things that are similar are.. female, superpowers, and an analytical mind(though even that is different, in what they focus on in a situation). Taylor never really had a huge bank of knowledge (maybe she had more after the time skip, it wasn't something I paid close attention to), and I remember this because it was used as a vehicle to share knowledge with the reader along with the characters. Victoria was already taking college level classes in worm (clockblocker interlude they're in a class and he pulls her out to ask her to ask amy to heal his dad, and she mentions already having taken the class before), and from flashbacks in ward we've seen plenty of that smarter side existing before asylum times. There have been changes, but not on her 'cape geek' side of things.
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Mar 18, 2018 15:14
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Uh, I don't think Ward is 'rational fiction' because Victoria sure isn't the only character operating based on her own knowledge and desires and with a good information base? What the heck. EDIT: Like Wildbow is good about having characters be driven by beliefs and values without that boiling down to 'grrrr evil' or 'I'm good because I say I am!' but rational fiction is a very specific kind of writing that is pretty much always bad. Taylor in Worm is very good at rationalizing stuff to herself so it can come off as that but Wildbow isn't very shy about the fact that she's an unreliable narrator who does bad bad things even if she always thinks it's for a good reason. PetraCore fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Mar 18, 2018 |
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Mar 18, 2018 16:34
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Yea I dunno about "rational fiction". A lot of those things just seem to be tenets of not stupid (or mythological I guess) storytelling. I mean internal consistency in the story? The characters have motivations? Characters solving problems? These seem like some of the lowest bars that any decent fiction has to clear.
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Mar 18, 2018 16:42
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"rational fiction" is a bunch of handwavey nonsensical garbage spawned by one man's pseudoscience cult based on an aggressively bad Harry Potter fanfiction. There's some pretty excellent discussion about how hosed up that whole shebang is in This Thread about the fanfic in question.
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Mar 18, 2018 16:53
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Yeah 'rational fiction' is garbage but not because it's character-based and logical, but because it isn't. Someone calling Ward that is really surprising.
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Mar 18, 2018 18:03
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Xun posted:What the hell is “rational” fiction? tl;dr: lovely stories servin’  But I wouldn’t exactly call Ward that. A well-realized universe that does more than just serve a MC’s goals doesn’ necessarily mean “rational fiction” describes it well.
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Mar 18, 2018 18:26
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Xun posted:What the hell is “rational” fiction? A masterclass in missing the point from the fine folks at TVtropes.
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Mar 18, 2018 22:56
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tGAB's going on hiatus because the author thinks they're burning out. I agree, frankly, so this sounds like a good idea. They claim it's only going to be until April, but they're also talking about a second project and a publication kickstarter. The way these things usually go, the hiatus will be indefinite by Friday. 
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Mar 19, 2018 00:43
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Honestly that's a good thing I think. This entire arc has felt like a rehash of points we already mostly got in the prior few with very little in the way of development and a whole lot of redundant bits. Feels like he's been spinning his wheels for months, basically. With luck he'll be back up to his old quality after taking a break, but I haven't convinced myself yet that that's actually gonna happen. We'll see I guess. The first ~10 arcs of the story are still some of my favorite writing of all time though.
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Mar 19, 2018 04:42
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sunken fleet posted:Yea I dunno about "rational fiction". A lot of those things just seem to be tenets of not stupid (or mythological I guess) storytelling. I mean internal consistency in the story? The characters have motivations? Characters solving problems? These seem like some of the lowest bars that any decent fiction has to clear. Yeah that’s what it sounds like to me from what people say in the thread. Kind of weird (and vaguely insulting? Sad? Idk) that nerds think it needs its own genre 
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Mar 19, 2018 14:56
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Autonomous Monster posted:tGAB's going on hiatus because the author thinks they're burning out. I agree, frankly, so this sounds like a good idea. I know I burned out reading this arc a few months ago, after reading the previous ones not stop. Is Practical Guide done now? No updates after the chapter called "epilogue", and I can't find anywhere that the author talks about plans for it.
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Mar 19, 2018 17:47
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boxen posted:Is Practical Guide done now? No updates after the chapter called "epilogue", and I can't find anywhere that the author talks about plans for it. Practical is divided into books, each of which has its own prologue and epilogue. That epilogue was for book 3. About a month elapsed between the epilogue for book 2 and the prologue for book 3, for reference, though there were a couple of side-stories inbetween. I don't think it's over, but you never know when something is going to just stop updating.
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Mar 19, 2018 18:35
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boxen posted:I know I burned out reading this arc a few months ago, after reading the previous ones not stop. quote:And so Book III comes to an end. Big thanks to everyone supporting me on Patreon, I’m quite amazed we made it to three chapters a week. I quite look forward to starting Book IV on the 8th of April, after my usual month-long break between books. First comment on the Epilogue chapter.
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Mar 19, 2018 20:06
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Weird, that's not what comes up for me. Oh well, good to know.
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Mar 19, 2018 23:23
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boxen posted:Weird, that's not what comes up for me. Oh well, good to know. To be fair, it's the first one chronologically and the comments are sorted really stupidly (older comments on top, but default to showing newest page).
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Mar 20, 2018 15:57
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Over the past few weeks I marathoned through The Wandering Inn and in general I loved it. I have to say though, I really hate Ryoka. The reasons why she is easily my least favorite character have shifted over time - in Book 1, it was because her irrational behavior, over the top misanthropy and borderline bi-polar personality snaps were impossible for me to empathize with. Also, her existence as obvious author self insert (Hot Asian chick martial artist who knows everything and is WAY to smart to play along with THE SYSTEM) really sat poorly with me. That said, I'm pretty sure that as the reader we weren't supposed to like her during this stretch, so I was ok with it and she grew out of a lot of those problems after book 1. In the next few books (and still now), her refusal to gain any levels drove me NUTS. At this point she hadn't been offered Deus ex Machina Faerie magic yet, so it was just her being difficult for no reason. Obstinacy in the face of all given advice is not a feature, it's a flaw, but it wasn't played that way by the narrative. Also, I hated the way she figured out that there is a maximum level and that you shouldn't diversify your classes was super frustrating, ESPECIALLY when it turns out to be accurate. She offers up like 3 pieces of anecdotal evidence as support (and even then doesn't overcome the objection of "maybe leveling is just harder when you're older"), but all of a sudden Klbkch and Krshia are like "Holy poo poo why didn't we think of that! No one's ever come to this super obvious conclusion before. Thanks Ryoka, you're such a genius!". Also, and I may be remembering this wrong, but wasn't there a cult or something that preached this same philosophy mentioned in Book 1, as something of a joke? The Levelists? Finally, in Book 4, she at long last returns to Liscor, and when she gets back is weirdly patronizing to everyone she was helping. She won't tell Zel about the Necromancer "in order to protect him", as if he isn't one of the most powerful people on the continent. Who is she to make that call? Same with her refusal to discuss the details of her trade with the Horns. They have the right to know the details of the trade you negotiated on their behalf, bitch. Anyways, TLDR: Ryoka sucks.
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Mar 20, 2018 20:33
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Ward: I feel like a bad reader; the setup for the upcoming havoc is fun, but at this point I'm 110% rooting for hollow point. I like Vicky/Sveta/kinda Kenzie (unless she turns out to be a holographic robot controlled by the Simurgh), but Rain's Rain and it feels like we plain haven't learned anything about the other three members of the team. The Undersiders, on the other hand, have a bunch of awesome people we like and a bunch of dogs, too. I know it's just the protagonist goggles left over from Worm, but I'm irrationally in favor of them coming out on top; I'll bet they could even shoot a toddler in the head or something, and I'd probably be okay with it.
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Mar 20, 2018 21:04
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Omi no Kami posted:Ward: I feel like a bad reader; the setup for the upcoming havoc is fun, but at this point I'm 110% rooting for hollow point. I like Vicky/Sveta/kinda Kenzie (unless she turns out to be a holographic robot controlled by the Simurgh), but Rain's Rain and it feels like we plain haven't learned anything about the other three members of the team. The Undersiders, on the other hand, have a bunch of awesome people we like and a bunch of dogs, too. I know it's just the protagonist goggles left over from Worm, but I'm irrationally in favor of them coming out on top; I'll bet they could even shoot a toddler in the head or something, and I'd probably be okay with it. I'm rooting for Hollow Point too but less because of a lack of love for the new characters and more just because the Fallen are a loving blight that needed removed from the board a long time ago and Victoria can hand-wring all she wants but if nothing's done they'll just continue to spread and rope more people in. Better to cut the rot out than let it spread to the rest of the body.
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Mar 21, 2018 06:13
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Angry Walrus posted:I'm rooting for Hollow Point too but less because of a lack of love for the new characters and more just because the Fallen are a loving blight that needed removed from the board a long time ago and Victoria can hand-wring all she wants but if nothing's done they'll just continue to spread and rope more people in. Better to cut the rot out than let it spread to the rest of the body. The thing is, while the Hollow Point people are objectively less of a loving blight than the Fallen, ignoring poo poo like this is how things turn into Fallen-type situations. Quite a few of the HP villains are predators just itching for a foothold, and while I don't think Prancer and Velvet and Moose are in that category, there's definitely a purpose in trying to nip this at the bud. And if you just let a full-scale gang-war break out, a lot of people are going to be hurt that don't deserve it. Even in the category of Fallen soldiers... it's outright stated quite a few people have been compelled into being faithful to the Fallen, including Lachlan who is basically confirmed at this point to have been a kidnapped kid who got successfully broken instead of dying or managing to escape before the breaking. And... as much as I'm excited for the Fallen to be taken down, and I am, I'm nervous about a power vacuum and it feels like some of the Hollow Point factions are planning to take advantage of that power vacuum and move in their human trafficking, drug trafficking, etc. Besides, Victoria and Team Therapy don't want to defend the Fallen. They just want to evacuate innocents and keep Rain from being killed. It really feels like both them AND the Undersiders are on the sidelines of this whole thing, unless Lisa has some long-term plan to take out everyone. Like it feels like Aisha and Rachel are mostly there because they're being paid and because they hate the Fallen, but Lisa is the one I'd peg for having a longer-term plan with this that doesn't involve just letting various supervillain factors fester into even worse rot in the resulting power vacuum. She doesn't have much motive to help Rain, but she does seem to not want to screw over Victoria. EDIT: I'm really interested in where Ward goes after this arc, and I mean like... arc as in literally the wider arc of the immediate Rain situation and brewing gang war.
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Mar 21, 2018 06:30
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Omi no Kami posted:Ward: I feel like a bad reader; the setup for the upcoming havoc is fun, but at this point I'm 110% rooting for hollow point. I like Vicky/Sveta/kinda Kenzie (unless she turns out to be a holographic robot controlled by the Simurgh), but Rain's Rain and it feels like we plain haven't learned anything about the other three members of the team. The Undersiders, on the other hand, have a bunch of awesome people we like and a bunch of dogs, too. I know it's just the protagonist goggles left over from Worm, but I'm irrationally in favor of them coming out on top; I'll bet they could even shoot a toddler in the head or something, and I'd probably be okay with it. I mean, that's totally understandable. You should keep rooting for them while you still can  I love the moments of levity like the uniform horror at Vicky accepting the dinner invite, or Chris' constant attempts to silence Kenzie. Are Vista & Weld basically the only survivors from the BB Wards team? Vista is one of the characters that very consistently gets poo poo on by the Wormverse, so her presence is not a good sign for our heroes. At this point I'm almost hoping Weld bites it during the fight and Vista just goes 'Alright, gently caress literally everything.' The entire story thusfar just being Vista's S-Level Threat origin story would own pretty hard. Edit: She and Sveta can team up to kill everyone in the multiverse, to spare them the pain of being a Wormverse character! Not much else to say, except I'm psyched as gently caress to see a bunch of characters I love die over the next couple chapters! PetraCore posted:EDIT: I'm really interested in where Ward goes after this arc, and I mean like... arc as in literally the wider arc of the immediate Rain situation and brewing gang war. Edit2: Sorry, misunderstood what you said. The next big arc is probably? going to be war with Fundie Earth, although really dealing with the fallout of whoever dies in the upcoming chapters is probably worth an arc itself. Who knows though, WB could definitely surprise us, there's a lot of nasty threats looming on the periphery, not the least of which being the broken triggers. All I can say is, I'm excited! Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Mar 21, 2018 |
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Mar 21, 2018 06:39
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The thing about Vista is that she's capable of causing a hell of a lot of damage (mainly by collapsing a bunch of buildings), but she's also super vulnerable and probably wouldn't last long by herself. Her ability is mostly useful for supporting others.
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Mar 21, 2018 07:16
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