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Practical Guide is back today after its month long hiatus with two new chapters, the Prologue to Book 4 and the conclusion of the White Knight's extra chapter. All in all, I liked the Prologue chapter. Good fight scene, good job setting the stage from an outsider's perspective, good job showing the divided but placated opinions of the Callowan peasantry on their new Queen. Still no confirmation on Cat's Name - she gets called Black Queen repeatedly, but also it is specifically referenced that it is unknown if she is still the Squire. I found it interesting that this is the sixth hero group to come after Cat - where do these people keep popping up from? And why are the Heavens targeting Cat now, vs continuing to go after Black and Co.? Has she stepped past them in danger level, or is she just a weak link with a bright red bullseye on her back? Anyways, this is my favorite ongoing serial and I'm excited that it is back.
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Apr 9, 2018 15:09
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| # ? May 31, 2024 19:43 |
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MOL Oh boy, I hope Quatach-Ichl just mashed his soul into the loop as well
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Apr 9, 2018 16:32
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mossyfisk posted:MOL I think he probably ended up severely wounding either or both Z&Z.
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Apr 9, 2018 16:40
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Nettle Soup posted:The writing in Wandering Inn goes up and down in quality, that chapter wasn't very good tbh. The one after it was kind of interesting. The chapter I read just didn't make any drat sense to me. First part of chapter: Erin :I am keeping a pet slime! I am experimenting on it. Ryoka: It's a monster. That's dangerous. Like the pet skeleton you had that became sentient and went on a murder spree. Eric: No it's not. It's small, and the wizard said slimes don't feel pain and don't think. See look at it. <slime proceeds to strangle Ryoka> Ryoka: See! It is dangerous! What if it gets out and strangles someone sleeping in the inn, like the small child you have living here! Wizards said the skeleton was safe too! Up to that point, the chapter was fine. Then it just took a stupid turn. Erin: ug, ok. I will be really careful. I know it is probably dangerous, but the experiments can help a lot. Ryoka: um, doesn't that seem cruel? We aren't sure it doesn't feel pain. Erin: it doesn't feel pain. It's fine. Ryoka: ok. <Erin learn slime has feelings and is afraid of her.> Erin: oh no. Well, goodbye slime. <Erin tosses slime out the window.> Like, wtf happened in that latter half? Why does Ryoka care about animal experiments when she recognizes how dangerous this fantasy world is. She is pragmatic. She isn't vegan or anything. I am not that surprised by Erin releasing a dangerous monster just outside her inn, but it's still dumb.
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Apr 9, 2018 16:47
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I don't think living in a dangerous world precludes empathy for animals; Ryoka isn't some kind of ultralogical robot vulcan; she's just genre savvy and unfriendly.
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Apr 9, 2018 17:31
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Gitro posted:Maybe because I thought the first bunch were interesting, and Crystal clear's interlude was real good, and then it's just some randos and sveta. This is funny, because Sveta is easily my least favorite of the main group. She's nice and all, but not particularly interesting.
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Apr 9, 2018 19:23
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Wandering Inn:Yeah, being uncomfortable with cutting off chunks from live unanesthetizied animals, is more common than veganism...
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Apr 9, 2018 23:48
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Also (and mind I haven't read what's being referenced so this might be explicitly countered in the text) if the person involved wants the other person to not be keeping and experimenting on it in the first place an appeal to morality makes sense. From just what you laid out it didn't look like a turnaround at all.
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Apr 10, 2018 00:03
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Ytlaya posted:This is funny, because Sveta is easily my least favorite of the main group. She's nice and all, but not particularly interesting. Sveta helped dunk on Scion incredibly hard, so she's alright in my book.
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Apr 10, 2018 04:04
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Gitro posted:Sveta helped dunk on Scion incredibly hard, so she's alright in my book.
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Apr 10, 2018 05:21
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Guy who did Threadbare has a new one started called Bunkercore, which appears to be a LitRPG/Tower Defense mashup, where a normal person becomes the AI for an automated facility.
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Apr 10, 2018 09:50
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Wild Patreon chapter of Wandering Inn this morning. Non-patron readers, look forward to Saturday.
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Apr 10, 2018 14:06
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Ward: When Snag came upon Chris crouched over Cradle and some civilians, for a split second I was convinced we were going to see him eating them/otherwise doing something horrible, and the implication was going to be that whenever he was offscreen during a battle, he'd potentially been wandering around casually committing atrocities.
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Apr 10, 2018 16:32
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Ward 5.y: Well, that's... interesting. This certainly explains why the other members didn't get a share of the theoretical dream power - because there isn't one, or a fifth member (unless they've managed to snow Snag even in death). Are they a broken trigger then? Fun twist with the Speedrunners. I mean, being undercover supervillains seems a little too subtle for the Fallen, but whatever. I guess it makes sense if they're people the Fallen kidnapped and brainwashed into being the fourth family. Wonder what they did for the fifth? A bunch of Trumps? Some dudes with fearsome urban planning or interior decorator powers? Omi no Kami posted:Ward: When Snag came upon Chris crouched over Cradle and some civilians, for a split second I was convinced we were going to see him eating them/otherwise doing something horrible, and the implication was going to be that whenever he was offscreen during a battle, he'd potentially been wandering around casually committing atrocities. Yeah, same. Would have been extra-awful because Snag isn't exactly able to warn anyone now. I mean, I'm sure we'll eventually find out some awful Regent-style stuff about him, but it's nice that he isn't just chowing down on peeps left and right. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Apr 10, 2018 |
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Apr 10, 2018 16:54
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e: goddamn it, quote is not edit!
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Apr 10, 2018 16:59
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Omi no Kami posted:Ward: When Snag came upon Chris crouched over Cradle and some civilians, for a split second I was convinced we were going to see him eating them/otherwise doing something horrible, and the implication was going to be that whenever he was offscreen during a battle, he'd potentially been wandering around casually committing atrocities. Yea I was a bit worried at first. I'm curious as to if the Undersiders knew there was the 4th fallen group hiding in the villains, knew there were traitors but couldn't figure out who (maybe being an unknown fallen branch caused a loop-hole in TT's info gathering power or they got power-napped later on), or if they were sandbagging for a different reason. I have this image in my head of March doing the old cartoon villain trick of tying up a damsel on the train tracks with Foil/Parian. Also existential horror end for Snag, that was pretty rough. Rain has managed to commit to being a hero in all of this, nicely put forward by him aligning with newly enlightened Snag. I hope he hasn't promised anything horrible with March.
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Apr 10, 2018 23:10
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Ward: Hmm... I don't know what's up with the fifth slice of the room. Or rather, I'm not sure if the implication is that it's a broken trigger, that it's someone dead like Snag is now, or that it's a representation of their shards. The problem is Snag only realizes what it is when Rain, Love Lost, and Cradle disappear, aka when he dies. It's really interesting that his emotions snap back to normal as he's dying. My rough guess from what we know is that the hollowness and anger and hate is partially just the exhaustion of the dreams wearing them down, partially the methods they started to use, and partially the influence of the shards. We know shards tend to yank harder on people 'not in line' with the inherent thirst for conflict. And the dreamspace means it's very hard for the people in the cluster to move forward from what happened that day and move past it, and it's exhausting and grinds them down. The thing is, for Rain that's actually kind of a good thing, since he started out brainwashed and hateful and not being able to look away from the pain he and the Fallen caused, from the point of view of the victims, is a big part of what pushes him to be a better person. And it feels like when the dreams broke him down they broke down the stuff the Fallen had shoved on him, but because the others didn't have that poo poo it just ground them down from a more stable position. Of course the really big difference is Rain was able to find a healthy support network where Snag, Love Lost, and Cradle's support network was and is just each other at this point. OOPS!
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Apr 11, 2018 04:31
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ZypherIM posted:Yea I was a bit worried at first. Given the kiss/kill thing that's apparently going on with her cluster, I'm somehow picturing the debrief going Foil: That foul villain! We'll get revenge for you, don't worry. Parian: ...actually, she was quite civil; we just had tea and chatted until you guys came and ruined her plan. Foil: The fiend! Also, when I heard that she'd kidnapped Parian I found myself wondering why March was still alive, and why the Undersiders hadn't hunted her down and and systematically murdered she and her entire team... ...then I remembered that oh yeah, Taylor wasn't in charge at that point.
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Apr 11, 2018 05:31
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Omi no Kami posted:Given the kiss/kill thing that's apparently going on with her cluster, I'm somehow picturing the debrief going
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Apr 11, 2018 06:09
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Silynt posted:Wild Patreon chapter of Wandering Inn this morning. Non-patron readers, look forward to Saturday. Now this is just needlessly cruel.
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Apr 11, 2018 08:34
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Ward: So I feel dumb at taking so long to realize this, but the Undersiders aren't a criminal organization anymore; unless Tattles did something really bad since GM (well, got caught doing something really bad), chances are they all kept their pardon and are basically a friendly rogue team. Maybe it's just because of how much our narrator dislikes them, but until we saw all the friendly interactions between they and the Wards this chapter, I'd assumed they were still considered a major villain team.
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Apr 14, 2018 15:15
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Omi no Kami posted:Ward: So I feel dumb at taking so long to realize this, but the Undersiders aren't a criminal organization anymore; unless Tattles did something really bad since GM, chances are they all kept their pardon and are basically a friendly rogue team. Maybe it's just because of how much our narrator dislikes them, but until we saw all the friendly interactions between they and the Wards this chapter, I'd assumed they were still considered a major villain team. Its not her history with the undersiders, its purely her history with Tattletale as far as I can tell. She has a friendly conversation with foil and her disposition towards Imp and Bitch seems to mostly be vague dislike.
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Apr 14, 2018 15:17
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Tzarnal posted:Its not her history with the undersiders, its purely her history with Tattletale as far as I can tell. She has a friendly conversation with foil and her disposition towards Imp and Bitch seems to mostly be vague dislike. Honestly, if you're not her friend and your opinion of Imp after more than a few seconds of interaction is just vague dislike, you're a pretty darn patient person. (I reread a few bits of worm recently, and nearly all of my favorite post-timeskip moments are the Aisha comedy beats. There's a bit where they're riding in a dragonfly and she asks Defiant to describe in detail his opinion of and experience with robot poontang, and will not shut up about robot genitals until Taylor physically interposes herself to prevent violence and/or further hilarity from ensuing. It's a weird and jarring interruption to what is otherwise a dead-serious section, but it works surprisingly well. I basically imagine 95% of the interactions Imp has with non-friends and allows them to remember are like that.)
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Apr 14, 2018 15:28
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Ward: I'm pretty certain that Victoria's wound is going to get worse and worse as the fighting goes on, until the point where she doesn't have much of a choice other than getting Amy to patch her up. It's the perfect way to force the issue and it's been long enough that it kinda needs to happen
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Apr 14, 2018 15:45
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The Shortest Path posted:Ward: I'm pretty certain that Victoria's wound is going to get worse and worse as the fighting goes on, until the point where she doesn't have much of a choice other than getting Amy to patch her up. It's the perfect way to force the issue and it's been long enough that it kinda needs to happen I think, if things get bad enough she needs the special medical care, Riley is also an option. But Riley is an option that might be even worse for Victoria than Amy, because Riley is the one that fully set Amy off, Riley has a long and storied history of mutilating people where Amy only did it once, and Riley's work needs to be double-checked by Amy anyway so either way Amy would be touching her. Just going with Amy from the start actually seems like the less traumatizing hypothetical option.
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Apr 14, 2018 19:36
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PetraCore posted:That would be interesting and certainly make sense. Victoria's got a basic patch job but what she needs is to go and get more full care before she can rejoin the fighting, but that's also not what she's going to do because she feels the drive to contribute even at her own detriment. If things go well it could hold and not get much worse, but I doubt things are going to go that well... namely, leaving the bullet inside her is a good idea for a quick patch because digging bullets out cause more damage in the short term and is best done in the proper environment. But it also means the bullet can do more damage if the wound is hit or if she's up against someone who could do something with that. Even if the bullet doesn't come into a play an open wound that's been freshly stitched is a pretty obvious weak point. Counterpoint: Riley didnt make Victoria love her. you have a point that Amy would have to check her work though, so most likely Victoria is gonna opt for a regular hospital no matter what. Scars are cool, right?
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Apr 14, 2018 19:50
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Error 404 posted:Counterpoint: Riley didnt make Victoria love her. Like, as readers we know that Amy never intended any of that, that she was immediately horrified by what she'd accidentally done, and that the way she handled fixing Victoria was, as described, a very mature and ethical way to go about it that also demonstrated much more control over the use of her powers than she'd had at the time she made Victoria attracted to her. I suspect Victoria knows this too, as much as anyone can be sure of anyone else's intentions. But from an in-universe perspective, the fact that Amy hosed her over so totally by accident is honestly scary in and of itself, because it makes it so she can never trust Amy's touch ever again even if they did have a better relationship. That said over the course of Ward Victoria's gotten a lot better at thinking about Amy without flipping out, so progress is happening.
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Apr 14, 2018 20:55
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The Shortest Path posted:Ward: I'm pretty certain that Victoria's wound is going to get worse and worse as the fighting goes on, until the point where she doesn't have much of a choice other than getting Amy to patch her up. It's the perfect way to force the issue and it's been long enough that it kinda needs to happen This makes you sound like Carol and I've disagreed with her on almost every point, and also this stance. Like if you knew someone that got raped by someone in their family would you ever consider this to be sound advice to deal with their issues? Then realize that what Amy did is worse than that in many ways, and hopefully realize how taking this stance makes you look. I hope that people who really press for this sort of thing just like Amy as a character and want them to get along with really thinking about the situation, but almost every time I see comments like this stuff like "its been long enough" and that just really rubs me the wrong way. ward 6.1 The Fallen expanding too quickly is interesting, because it points to them working with someone. From our end the main two groups that we haven't seen aspects of are Teacher and the other Earth that war is pending with. If other Earth has been playing a delaying tactic with negotiations while feeding people to the Fallen it'd make a ton of sense and have a pretty natural feed into the next main conflict we've been getting hints about. I'm hoping Mama Mathers gets killed next chapter and it doesn't drag out for the whole arc. Her power has a big enough impact and has effected enough of the cast that the only way the story moves past the Fallen is for her to go. That said really enjoying the story so far.
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Apr 14, 2018 22:01
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ZypherIM posted:This makes you sound like Carol and I've disagreed with her on almost every point, and also this stance. Like if you knew someone that got raped by someone in their family would you ever consider this to be sound advice to deal with their issues? Then realize that what Amy did is worse than that in many ways, and hopefully realize how taking this stance makes you look. Yeah, my feeling is that you can simultaneously empathize with Amy's actions in the moment and think that she's now a decent person who regrets them, and also that Victoria is completely justified in never wanting to speak to her again for the rest of her life. Actions have consequences, and regardless of her current mindset and past intent, Amy made a mistake with "Victoria will never want to interact with you again" as the consequence.
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Apr 14, 2018 22:21
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It literally hadn't occurred to me that The Shortest Path meant it would be healthy and good for Victoria to meet Amy again as opposed to Victoria and Amy meeting again is obviously a plot point that's going to happen at some point.
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Apr 14, 2018 22:40
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ZypherIM posted:This makes you sound like Carol and I've disagreed with her on almost every point, and also this stance. Like if you knew someone that got raped by someone in their family would you ever consider this to be sound advice to deal with their issues? Then realize that what Amy did is worse than that in many ways, and hopefully realize how taking this stance makes you look. You misunderstand, I don't think it's a good idea for Victoria to interact with Amy AT ALL, I mean that it's a story beat that things have been building toward and it needs to happen narratively. It's definitely happening eventually and I think this would be a fairly organic way of it happening that also gives her the time to prepare for it. 21 Muns posted:It literally hadn't occurred to me that The Shortest Path meant it would be healthy and good for Victoria to meet Amy again as opposed to Victoria and Amy meeting again is obviously a plot point that's going to happen at some point. I meant the latter, not the former. Fajita Queen fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Apr 14, 2018 |
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Apr 14, 2018 22:42
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Alright that is fair enough. I think I'd like to see it pushed back still, because one of the really annoying things in worm (that fit perfectly) was that Taylor basically backslid on a lot of her personal growth after Scion started blowing the worlds up. Instead of having it be a forced interaction having it be something she confronts on her own would be more enjoyable personally.
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Apr 14, 2018 22:53
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ZypherIM posted:Alright that is fair enough. I think I'd like to see it pushed back still, because one of the really annoying things in worm (that fit perfectly) was that Taylor basically backslid on a lot of her personal growth after Scion started blowing the worlds up. Instead of having it be a forced interaction having it be something she confronts on her own would be more enjoyable personally.
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Apr 14, 2018 23:10
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I agree it should happen later and on Victoria's terms, the question is how realistic that is. Seems pretty clear that things are going to go further to poo poo sooner rather than later between the Fallen and the looming war (and I guess Teacher could show up at some point if he felt like it). At what point will Amy lose the luxury of time and opportunity to play hide and seek around Victoria due to emergencies or more pressing matters? Granted that would still likely not force them to interact, but crossing Vicky's path is quite likely. And even that, if forced, is less than ideal. At the end of the day, Victoria made the choice to be an active cape constantly operating in basically the exact same area as Amy was already based out of, interacting and cooperating with the same organization Amy is in. It's only fair that the effort is still made to respect her boundaries and limit their interactions to nothing when possible. But it really makes things more complicated for all involved, and when crises arise, that kind of complicated HR-coordination is likely among the first things to go out the window.
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Apr 15, 2018 00:22
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Well, I don't think Victoria would blame Amy for healing her if she was injured bad enough and if she consented to the treatment. I'm just not sure if she would consent to the treatment. Hypothetically, Amy healing her and nothing going wrong could help alleviate some of Victoria's understandable distrust, but Amy pretty much handled fixing Victoria's body post-Worm as well as possible down to putting Victoria in a state where she could make the decisions herself without being overpowered by emotion, and that didn't exactly make Victoria trust her. Or rather, Victoria's distrust is so deep and the comedown from two years of forced obsession is so bad that she's way too scared of Amy to even make much of a dent there. I think it's kind of similar to the heavy implications that Victoria's overuse of her aura around Amy when they were both young teens contributed to Amy's incestuous crush on Victoria. Like, it definitely doesn't mean Victoria deserved what happened or even that Victoria brought it on herself... nobody knew that was a possibility. She wielded her power like a sledgehammer because she was an impulsive teenager while Amy had to keep herself under iron control with unwavering rules and neither of those things were sustainable, especially with Amy's lack of a support system. But just because things were accidental doesn't mean you can avoid taking responsibility for it, like Victoria doesn't get a free pass for the way she would pummel and break people just because she lacked self-control and knew Amy could fix it.
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Apr 15, 2018 00:48
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I don't really feel like Victoria's and Amy's situations are that similar regarding their taking responsibility for their actions to be honest. At the end of the day, Victoria didn't learn from her abuses of power at all but rather gained perspective on them in retrospect, but she also never really did anything with long-term consequences that we know of. She doesn't have much responsibility to bear outside of her own mind, nobody is holding her to any standards nor reminding her of her faults besides perhaps Yamada in therapy sessions. Amy only had the one breakdown and didn't really need to learn from it at all since she knew it was terrible all along, but she also feels the weight of her responsibility every day, not just in her head but tangibly in her work, her movement, her need to be aware of Victoria and avoid her. Which, combined with the hints of isolation - in terms of having someone to really relate to and connect with that is, rather than physically - seems like an ominous mirror of her situation at the start of Worm, where her responsibilities were healing and her stress and isolation caused her to gently caress up in the first place. Though, she does at least have the advantage of experience and perspective this time around.
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Apr 15, 2018 02:27
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Insurrectionist posted:I don't really feel like Victoria's and Amy's situations are that similar regarding their taking responsibility for their actions to be honest. At the end of the day, Victoria didn't learn from her abuses of power at all but rather gained perspective on them in retrospect, but she also never really did anything with long-term consequences that we know of. She doesn't have much responsibility to bear outside of her own mind, nobody is holding her to any standards nor reminding her of her faults besides perhaps Yamada in therapy sessions. Amy only had the one breakdown and didn't really need to learn from it at all since she knew it was terrible all along, but she also feels the weight of her responsibility every day, not just in her head but tangibly in her work, her movement, her need to be aware of Victoria and avoid her. Which, combined with the hints of isolation - in terms of having someone to really relate to and connect with that is, rather than physically - seems like an ominous mirror of her situation at the start of Worm, where her responsibilities were healing and her stress and isolation caused her to gently caress up in the first place. Though, she does at least have the advantage of experience and perspective this time around.
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Apr 15, 2018 02:39
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I'm really loving sick of this fallen conflict still dragging on and I'd like the story to move on to literally anything of interest.
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Apr 15, 2018 07:37
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Maybe this is being unfair, but the longer Ward goes on the more I've started to suspect that the original sketch for Ward was with Rain as the protagonist and his lovely nazi apocalypse cult the primary thing, because the entire fallen thing feels simultaneously really detailed and thoroughly thought-out, and completely incidental to any story involving Victoria and the misfit toys. I also feel that at this point team therapy should think really hard about whether or not they take him back on the team. I'm not saying that Rain is necessarily a bad person, and I think a lot of his sections are trying to communicate that he's a pretty average bloke making the best of an incredibly crappy situation and making a lot of the same choices one of us would if we grew up in the same context. That having been said he also lies constantly, has no loyalty to anyone besides himself, is casually prone to some pretty awful acts of violence ('Hey, how about we have Kenzie make some bear trap and saw blade drones to kill some of the fallen once I antagonize them'), and isn't a particularly nice person. I am genuinely baffled that anybody in the story is still willing to give him the time of day at this point, much less go out on a limb to help him.
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Apr 15, 2018 14:06
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Omi no Kami posted:has no loyalty to anyone besides himself, This bit is clearly incorrect. He's incredibly loyal to Erin and her little brother, and he's even somewhat loyal to his vaguely-defined family members - see him trying to keep his uncle from getting too badly hurt/killed despite the fact his uncle just delivered an epic beat-down to him (and was about to kill him if not for the intervention of his aunt.) He was also willing to give himself up to the rest of his cluster if they'd just help keep civilians safe. His violence comes from a place of desperation, and he shows a lot more reluctance to violence than Victoria did in her glory days. Rain was in a tough situation and was trying to make the best of it.
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Apr 15, 2018 15:15
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