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I actually really liked the previous bits with rain and the fsllen, what if weirdo apocalypse cult but with superpowers is neat. Rain, as a not-lovely person raised in an awful environment coming to terms with the lovely things he did and their consequences was good, and hammered very hard on one of the throughlines in Worm. Im just really tired of 'I punched some fallen (not too hard tho) and tried not to get shot' and 'here's a cool sounding power that's a pita to visualise anyway it's gone now'. The bit where the biker woman gets choked out would be cool and tension building if we didn't already know what mama did, but interludes aside there were three, maybe four interesting things that happened in 5 and none of the are going anywhere until this interminable loving fight is over with. It's setup intermingled with tedious, pointless action for a full arc. e: also the fallen seem really Christian and I'm still not sure where the endbringer worship/veneration fits in. Like I can think of a few ways but it's weird how it's just been biblical stuff and nothing else aside from the timefriends and valefor, unless I missed something. e2: also I don't like the lines about the fallen potentially becoming a major threat with agents everywhere but this post is long enough. The stakes around them felt very personal and I dug that, hints at more is entirely unnecessary. Gitro fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Apr 15, 2018 |
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Apr 15, 2018 15:49
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Falstaff posted: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. I very likely am incorrect on a lot of it- I despise the character and the fallen plotline to the point that I very frequently don't give either the benefit of the doubt they usually deserve. As for that specific point, giving himself up to keep people safe is a very genuinely decent move on his part, but I don't think refraining from murdering your family makes you a good person- that's the sort of thing most people simply do. And this is where I'll admit I'm probably being too pessimistic, but I don't interpret his behavior towards Erin and her family (or his own family, for that matter) as loyalty. He has a crush on Erin, and wants her to be happy, but once it's obvious that she doesn't reciprocate his feelings he asks once or twice for her to leave, then cuts bait and flees, leaving her (and potentially her family, depending on how pissed the leadership is) completely screwed. He likewise doesn't even try to protect his cousins, it seems like his entire plan boils down to 'I'll kill a bunch of rednecks, and if my family survives the massacre they'll be in a better place'. Hopefully the story will do something really clever and prove me wrong, but at this point I fully expect Rain to always do what's best for Rain, regardless of anything. And in terms of writing and mood, yeah, I thought that the Rain bits were easily some of the best writing the story's had, especially the bit where we're introduced to mama mathers. But no matter how well-executed those sections are, at least for me personally they'll always be watered down by the fact that it's not where I want to be as a reader- I would love to hear about Victoria's personal life, her therapy shenanigans and family baggage, more about the machine army, some political intrigue about the upcoming war with Token Judeo-Christian Extremist Faction #2, even more about other members of team therapy, but the story steadfastly refuses to deliver on any of its most interesting elements in favor of coming back to the fallen/hollow point stuff again and again. I'm probably inflating how much it effects the pacing because we're only reading 2 chapters a week, but in my head everything since maybe mid-arc 2 can be summarized as "Interesting events happen in isolation around a series of increasingly pointless and violent fights in hollow point and fallenville," and that's really disappointing to me.
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Apr 15, 2018 15:55
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(sorry for double post, responsible use of the edit button is hard)Gitro posted:e: also the fallen seem really Christian and I'm still not sure where the endbringer worship/veneration fits in. Like I can think of a few ways but it's weird how it's just been biblical stuff and nothing else aside from the timefriends and valefor, unless I missed something. Yeah, that's always weirded me out a bit- if you called them the Can't Get Ups or something and never confirmed that Elijah was Valefor, I'm honestly not convinced that I would've ever recognized that this was the same organization that the creepy endbringer worshipers from Worm belonged to. On one hand, this could be a case where the cult's insular nature leads to outsiders emphasizing the wrong elements of their schtick (so a christian cult that happens to focus on the endbringers ends up with a reputation as the endbringer cult that has some christianity in it), but I think I remember someone in Worm mentioning that they were one of the very biggest non-goverment, non-hero cape organizations in North America, and I doubt you could get that big without somewhat accurate information about your group getting out.
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Apr 15, 2018 16:06
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Omi no Kami posted:(sorry for double post, responsible use of the edit button is hard) IIRC, they only became so large after their appearance in Worm, during the time skip. I really don't get this aggravation with the Fallen plotline. Sure, I wouldn't want them to be the main antagonist of Ward, but I don't see any indication that they're intended to be. They're just the antagonist of this first section of the story, and the current battle appears to be the climax of that particular conflict. It's like if the ABB had more focus early in Worm, and instead of the Leviathan fight equivalent being something strange that came out of nowhere, it was the thoroughly-set-up confrontation with the ABB. I wouldn't necessarily say Ward's pacing is as good as the early pacing in Worm was, but I think Wildbow just got really lucky with that. I'm compelled by the direction the story's currently taking, and I can't help but think that a lot of people are failing to mentally compensate for this being a serial story where we're reading each update as it comes out. This conflict with the Fallen is taking months in real time. If the story were already finished and we were reading it all at once, as we probably did with Worm, then it'd only take a few days. I can see how that would seem to stretch on and on for some people, but I really think Wildbow should write more with the end product in mind than the experience of people keeping up with the story.
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Apr 15, 2018 16:18
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21 Muns posted:I really don't get this aggravation with the Fallen plotline. At least for me personally, besides the aforementioned dislike of the character around whom the Fallen plot revolves I think it's mainly the target of my ire because it's a visible manifestation of what feels like really disorganized plotting and bad pacing. As you said we're reading this bits at a time, so that criticism might go away when read as a complete work, but at least right now I genuinely could not tell you what Ward is about. It's had lots of interesting bits and pieces, and even the sections I dislike have pretty decent writing, but we're hundreds of thousands of words in and I genuinely could not tell you what this story is about or who the main character is. There are fascinating glimpses of seemingly dozens of interesting ideas, and nearly all of them would be things I'd like to read more about, but very little of it gels into a coherent narrative that feels like it's moving in an intentional direction.
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Apr 15, 2018 16:28
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There's a bit in twig, I think it's arc 11 or 12, where sy and jamie run around and do some crimes and blow up a necrophile rapist's shop and the story doesn't move at all until the contractors at wildbow's place finish working and he can focus on writing properly. Iirc it leads into the outbreak of the red plague. This is a whole arc and counting of the former. Maybe my tolerance for action scenes is just lower than it used to be but it's Victoria and friends beating up nameless fallen for large chunks of text. They're probably not going to lose, but if they do at least it'll mean a break from more empty action sequences.
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Apr 15, 2018 16:41
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I don't think the action sequences are empty even if it's not my favorite thing to read. And this seems like it is going to have long term consequences. The reveal of a new branch of the Fallen based around Khonsu is huge not least because it implies a Tohu/Bohu gang (shakers and trumps, maybe?), and while I'm not surprised that the organizational structure of the Wardens might be compromised, that's also something with huge long-term consequences for the setting, since the Wardens seem to be the closest thing to a governmental structure right now. It's not surprising that got compromised, but it's not good, especially with things hovering on the brink of war. I'm not saying you've got to love this section of the story. If you can't stand Rain at all of course you're going to get tired with The Bit That's About Rain. But none of this is irrelevant to the big, major stuff, either. BTW, if Rain only did what was best for Rain he'd never have turned down the offer to hook up with Erin on the outskirts of the Fallen compound where he didn't even have to think very much about the nasty poo poo the Fallen do. He's also not casually prone to awful acts of violence - he knows exactly how horrible it is to use bear traps and saw blade drones on people and he only plans to use them in self defense, against people with superpowers better than his own who want to torture him to death. You say he wants to use them 'on the Fallen after he antagonizes them' but that's not really accurate, especially since the thing he's antagonizing the Fallen with is 'hey I don't think rape and torture is okay'. Hell, the whole thing with Erin is about how cults use social ties against you to obligate you to stay and submit or else people you care about get hurt. And about how there's no winning with that set-up, and no perfectly ethical answer, by design. You have to be able to accept that you're not responsible for the actions of your abusers to be able to leave, and even if you accept that it's hard because you don't want people you love to get hurt, and it's very hard to get everyone involved to leave at all once because of differing levels of loyalty. Erin doesn't leave because she loves her family, and that puts her in a really bad place she doesn't deserve to be in, but it also puts her in a place where she's pressured and forced into doing bad things to survive. If Rain stayed to avoid Erin getting hurt, that would just enable the cycle further. He's not selfish for leaving and the fact that you think he is means you're buying into the idea that an abuse survivor is responsible for antagonizing their abuser(s). This is further enforced with how you frame Rain's brutal self-defense as him willfully antagonizing people so that he can hurt them. It's, uh... it's kinda hosed up. I don't think that's what you actually believe, but you're allowing your understandable dislike for Rain to justify abusive power structures. EDIT: And Rain is my least favorite member of Team Therapy, with the exception of Chris, who I like but we don't really know a lot of what's going on with him while we know a bunch about Rain. PetraCore fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Apr 15, 2018 |
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Apr 15, 2018 17:39
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Omi no Kami posted:I don't think refraining from murdering your family makes you a good person- that's the sort of thing most people simply do. PetraCore's covered most of the other stuff, but regarding this point in particular, He doesn't just refrain from murdering his family, he actively tries to keep his uncle safe despite the fact that his uncle was just on the battlefield trying to kill people, and only a couple days ago he asked his uncle for help and was repaid by very nearly getting murdered by him. That changes the math on that situation a bit.
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Apr 15, 2018 17:52
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PetraCore posted:BTW, if Rain only did what was best for Rain he'd never have turned down the offer to hook up with Erin on the outskirts of the Fallen compound where he didn't even have to think very much about the nasty poo poo the Fallen do. He's also not casually prone to awful acts of violence - he knows exactly how horrible it is to use bear traps and saw blade drones on people and he only plans to use them in self defense, against people with superpowers better than his own who want to torture him to death. You say he wants to use them 'on the Fallen after he antagonizes them' but that's not really accurate, especially since the thing he's antagonizing the Fallen with is 'hey I don't think rape and torture is okay'. I don't think there's much value in my trying to defend my own take on this chunk, since it's fundamentally irrational and fueled by an incredible amount of dislike for a character who probably doesn't deserve it, but I do want to clarify that I don't think he should've bought into the system and stayed- but I do think that figuring out how to get people he cared about out of the compound should've been an obvious and major issue that merited consideration from the instant he decided to leave. Hindsight is 20/20 when you're reading a story that gives you insight and information the protagonist doesn't have, but at the end of the day it feels like every single person in Rain's life comes off worse for having known him, and in the vast majority of those cases there was something he could've done differently to avoid it. Also, I find it really tough to interpret his actions as self-defense of any kind. Leaving is self-defense. Going to the wardens is self defense. Mobilizing multiple, violent vigilante groups to bulldoze a settlement with a high civilian-to-evil cape ratio is screwed up. At the end of the day, I'm just sick of reading about apocalyptic white supremacists and the atrocities they get up to-I miss the days when Parahumans was about fun, uplifting stuff like the slaughterhouse 9 and bonesaw's personal mission to make every one of her appearances more creepy and uncomfortable than the last.
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Apr 15, 2018 18:23
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Omi no Kami posted:Also, I find it really tough to interpret his actions as self-defense of any kind. Leaving is self-defense. Going to the wardens is self defense. Mobilizing multiple, violent vigilante groups to bulldoze a settlement with a high civilian-to-evil cape ratio is screwed up. Hell, arguably Rain going to March very nearly cut off the fighting before more people could die by taking out Mama Mathers herself in a safe, controlled, and non-fatal manner, and the only reason it didn't was because of the Speedrunners. Which he had no idea were Fallen. EDIT: That said I'm eager to get done with the Fallen arc for the same reason you are, which is that this is interesting worldbuilding and good writing but also I find reading about racist supervillains much less interesting than I did when Worm was updating, and Empire Eighty Eight wasn't all that interesting to me back then, either.
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Apr 15, 2018 18:30
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PetraCore posted:Oh, uh. He didn't do that. That was his cluster, and a big motivation for them was to kill Rain. Like, I'm sympathetic to people wanting to fight the Fallen but you're right, razing a settlement with a lot of civilians is hosed up, even when said civilians are like, really racist. I'm not trying to convince you to like Rain or even be more objective on him, I just want to point out where he's not doing the things you think he's doing. I'm probably not being fair to him, but here's how I see it: Rain triggers, he inevitably gets into trouble with his cluster, he explicitly chooses to remain living with the fallen as a means of protection while branching out for other groups who can lend a hand if and when the fallen stop being an option. He hooks up with the misfit toys and March, learns through the former that his cluster is paying Tattletale for his location and planning on mobilizing a massive force of villain and rogue capes to stomp him out, and instead of immediately getting out of dodge, he pulls all the strings he can find to fight back. Now, instead of four angry clustermates chasing one guy, there are multiple armies of capes having a big, dumb fight in a populated area with tons of potential collateral damage. It's not a rational criticism to be sure, but when I already dislike the character, it's hard to not see multiple ways that his seeking help through formal channels or getting greased by his cluster early wouldn't have been a vastly preferable outcome for everyone involved (except for him).
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Apr 15, 2018 18:40
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Omi no Kami posted:I'm probably not being fair to him, but here's how I see it: Rain triggers, he inevitably gets into trouble with his cluster, he explicitly chooses to remain living with the fallen as a means of protection while branching out for other groups who can lend a hand if and when the fallen stop being an option. He hooks up with the misfit toys and March, learns through the former that his cluster is paying Tattletale for his location and planning on mobilizing a massive force of villain and rogue capes to stomp him out, and instead of immediately getting out of dodge, he pulls all the strings he can find to fight back. Now, instead of four angry clustermates chasing one guy, there are multiple armies of capes having a big, dumb fight in a populated area with tons of potential collateral damage. I've maintained from the start that I think the most ethical thing for Rain to have done would be to turn himself in to the Wardens, and while recent reveals imply that would not have worked out super great, from what Rain knew it would have been the selfless option. But he's not selfless even if he's not nearly as selfish as he used to be... it's complicated. I don't think it's fair to blame him for mobilizing the fight at the Fallen compound, because he's the catalyst there, not the true root cause, and he wasn't the one doing the mobilizing.
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Apr 15, 2018 18:51
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Honestly, I think that making the Fallen racist was a pretty big creative misstep. It's clearly not intended to be their defining characteristic, by a long shot (it's heavily overshadowed by... pretty much everything else they do). What does it provide to the story? A rift between Rain and Kenzie, which we've touched on exactly once, in a scene full of the rifts between Rain and other characters on the team, at the expense of most of this thread consistently identifying the Fallen as white supremacists as if that were their most salient trait. Does it make sense that the Fallen are white supremacists? I mean, yeah, sure, there really are people out there that lovely, but it would also make sense if they weren't white supremacists - according to Wildbow, the original inspiration for the Fallen was the Westboro Baptist Church, and for all of that group's hatefulness towards both LGBT people and literally everyone except themselves, they were actually on the right side of the Civil Rights movement decades ago, and are still proud of that fact to this day (which makes it pretty screwed up, incidentally, that a lot of people have rooted for the KKK when it denounced the WBC). We don't really need another reason to hate the Fallen; making them racist on top of their violent misogyny, fundamentalism, Lovecraftian cultishness, etc feels like a bridge too far, like a point where they were written not merely as a terrible group of people who need to be broken up, but as a sort of effigy of right-wing hatred that's evil in as many ways as possible, presumably to make their defeat more cathartic, but at the cost of making the leadup to that defeat harder to read. I think Ward would legitimately benefit from severely editing the Rain/Kenzie conversation that established the Fallen as white supremacists, possibly even cutting it entirely.
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Apr 15, 2018 19:01
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21 Muns posted:Honestly, I think that making the Fallen racist was a pretty big creative misstep. It's clearly not intended to be their defining characteristic, by a long shot (it's heavily overshadowed by... pretty much everything else they do). What does it provide to the story? A rift between Rain and Kenzie, which we've touched on exactly once, in a scene full of the rifts between Rain and other characters on the team, at the expense of most of this thread consistently identifying the Fallen as white supremacists as if that were their most salient trait. Does it make sense that the Fallen are white supremacists? I mean, yeah, sure, there really are people out there that lovely, but it would also make sense if they weren't white supremacists - according to Wildbow, the original inspiration for the Fallen was the Westboro Baptist Church, and for all of that group's hatefulness towards both LGBT people and literally everyone except themselves, they were actually on the right side of the Civil Rights movement decades ago, and are still proud of that fact to this day (which makes it pretty screwed up, incidentally, that a lot of people have rooted for the KKK when it denounced the WBC). We don't really need another reason to hate the Fallen; making them racist on top of their violent misogyny, fundamentalism, Lovecraftian cultishness, etc feels like a bridge too far, like a point where they were written not merely as a terrible group of people who need to be broken up, but as a sort of effigy of right-wing hatred that's evil in as many ways as possible, presumably to make their defeat more cathartic, but at the cost of making the leadup to that defeat harder to read. I think Ward would legitimately benefit from severely editing the Rain/Kenzie conversation that established the Fallen as white supremacists, possibly even cutting it entirely.
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Apr 15, 2018 19:09
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Others have had more articulate versions of this take already, but I genuinely think that going with a superhero team that goes on adventures and has fights might've been a slight misstep- a lot of the very best parts of Ward have been worldbuilding/post-apocalypse slice of life stuff that has little to nothing to do with capes or fighting, and I would genuinely be interested in seeing WB challenge himself to write an engaging, compelling story without combat or world-changing stakes of any kind.
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Apr 15, 2018 20:05
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Omi no Kami posted:Others have had more articulate versions of this take already, but I genuinely think that going with a superhero team that goes on adventures and has fights might've been a slight misstep- a lot of the very best parts of Ward have been worldbuilding/post-apocalypse slice of life stuff that has little to nothing to do with capes or fighting, and I would genuinely be interested in seeing WB challenge himself to write an engaging, compelling story without combat or world-changing stakes of any kind. Even discounting the fact that Kenzie can't participate in this fight at all because of Mama Mathers, I feel like the purpose of this horrific drawn-out fight is partially to establish just how loving ill-suited the team is to combat-oriented superheroics. They're like... they're really bad at it. It's not even a case where creative use of superpowers makes them better at it, like Taylor, they're being creative and they're still at huge disadvantages because of inherent things like age, personality, and power drawbacks. I'm not naive enough to think this is the last big fight in Ward but I'm hopeful that the team stays away from combat unless it's necessary. EDIT: The world-changing stakes thing, I kind of disagree. The problem is the setup on this Earth is so new and fresh that small things can snowball out to have major effect. I dunno what I want to happen with that... but I guess my counterpoint is more things are world-changing in this setting than in Worm, Pact, and Twig because the world is so much smaller. I hope I'm not bugging anyone or coming off as badgering them. PetraCore fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Apr 15, 2018 |
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Apr 15, 2018 21:27
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I don't have a problem with the Fallen also being racist in addition to being a terrible cult. People who don't understand how cults work and how just hosed up they are and can make people would be even more confused about why characters have been acting the way they are. Like Petracore just had to point out a few things, and I know myself and others have in the past in the thread as well (some of the comments on the chapters/reddit are way worse than anything here). Making them also crazy racists gives an angle that a much larger majority of people can understand easily. Even if they don't get all the reasons why Rain acts the way he does, a lot of people at least know of this sort of hate group that clings to their beliefs in the face of everything. I think at least here that the aspect of cult is much more defining than racist when we talk about the Fallen. On Rain's actions, you need to remember he has been raised in a cult his whole life so his view of the Wardens isn't going to be positive. Even if he doesn't believe whatever the Fallen say about them, he at least knows that they've never done anything to break the Fallen up or help people like Erin or Lachan so why would they be able/willing to help him? Then you add in Mama Mathers and leaving the Fallen in any capacity is really, really hard. Also saying he should go on the run and live the rest of his life hunted seems.. kind of lovely. Personally I've enjoyed the story so far, and as long as the whole arc isn't "finally dealing with mama mathers" I'll be perfectly happy with the pace of things. @petracore: You tend to say a lot of things I want to say but better, along with also not wanting to be badgering to others in the thread. The low-key intelligence gig was never sold in story as their long term plan, that is something that many, many people just assumed after getting chapters away from when it happened. I would also argue that they're not really bad at combat, evidenced by them being major contributors to beating Valefor and Seir (the only big named Fallen we have outside Mama Mathers). They also performed well in the hollow point fight (side thought, advanced guard's messup caused by fallen sleeper?). Honestly a small scale fight or one where they can leverage Capricorn to split the area while the team retains perfect knowledge from Kenzie's cameras is a fight that they'd be heavily favored in. I think if the team didn't have lethality issues they'd be strong to the point of being uninteresting. As it is you have the characters trying to find that balance of how far they can push their powers and teammates, but that the situation is escalating as well and changing where that balance point lies. We see them miss that balance for Ashley (she'd probably have been fine at just hollow point, or they'd have been able to pull her out as the situation developed) and then Victoria not want to push it for Sveta. Having them no longer do fights kind of throws away all the tension the story has built about this issue, which would be a strange thing to do. I'm trying to come up with what you'd have the team do if you stepped away from combat. The only thing I'm sort of coming up with is disaster relief/search and rescue sort of thing, which would be a solid way for them to contribute for the foreshadowed war without fighting. Even taking that into account, most of the team probably isn't willing/able to just sit it out and not really do anything.
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Apr 15, 2018 22:08
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Omi no Kami posted:I would genuinely be interested in seeing WB challenge himself to write an engaging, compelling story without combat or world-changing stakes of any kind. At this point I'm not sure whether he can or he's just knowingly feeding his hardcore fans what they want to read. I feel Ward was his opportunity to say, hey guys, going to try something a bit different here, but it's a familiar world and you know me, so, let's see how it goes, okay? Spend some of that political capital his fanbase has built up for him.
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Apr 16, 2018 02:26
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PetraCore posted:I don't think the action sequences are empty even if it's not my favorite thing to read. And this seems like it is going to have long term consequences. The reveal of a new branch of the Fallen based around Khonsu is huge not least because it implies a Tohu/Bohu gang (shakers and trumps, maybe?), and while I'm not surprised that the organizational structure of the Wardens might be compromised, that's also something with huge long-term consequences for the setting, since the Wardens seem to be the closest thing to a governmental structure right now. It's not surprising that got compromised, but it's not good, especially with things hovering on the brink of war. I'm calling them empty because I feel like, aside from March's introduction and some aspects of Rain's cluster, you can fairly cleanly divide the bits that are action from the bits that are setup. Like Ashley killing BoB at the end/start of a chapter, and then she leaves and that's as resolved as it can be for the moment and lets go beat up more fallen. One or two interesting things happen per chapter, confined to a handful of paragraphs at the start or end, and I'm really over it. It's maybe an unfair impression, but the bits that stick out certainly aren't the parts where Victoria et al. are hitting things. Also i don't really like the fallen being some sort of widespread secret cult. The stakes surrounding them were always pretty personal and it just feels unnecessary to try to raise them. They're lovely and should be disbanded, even forcibly, but the hollow point gangs were going to hurt people that didn't deserve it, plus Rain and Erin and all that. There, I care about the conflict, I care about the Fallen and it feels like the extra stuff is typical wildbow escalation. There's lots of big things going on already - hell, hollow point isn't even resolved at this stage - the fallen can afford to be a (relatively) small one. I think this is a sequence I'd really enjoy if we knew much less about the fallen group and Victoria was discovering stuff about mama and whoever alongside the reader. Milky Moor posted:At this point I'm not sure whether he can or he's just knowingly feeding his hardcore fans what they want to read. I was really stoked at the start of Ward when it seemed like it'd be a small scale, kind of introspective thing about post-apocalyptic society and the distance between what I thought it would be and the current arc is certainly contributing to some disappointment.
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Apr 16, 2018 02:57
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I like the fights because there are surprisingly few decently written stories of this nature (with superpowers and what have you) that have fighting in them. Most tend to be transparent power fantasies of one form or another. There's also something I find particularly compelling about wildbow's specific rendition of superpowers; I think it's mostly the way they often fundamentally shift someone's perception of the world to make use of the power "natural." That's actually probably the only thing I dislike about having Victoria as a protagonist when compared with Taylor; her power doesn't really involve the same sort of dramatic change to the way she perceives and interacts with the world.
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Apr 16, 2018 03:18
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Gitro posted:I was really stoked at the start of Ward when it seemed like it'd be a small scale, kind of introspective thing about post-apocalyptic society and the distance between what I thought it would be and the current arc is certainly contributing to some disappointment. I don't like talking about my work but, really, if you're looking for that you're likely to find it in Not All Heroes. I say this only because minutes ago I just got a lengthy review calling it an 'introspective action thriller' among other things and positive remarks on WebFictionGuide.
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Apr 16, 2018 03:51
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Gitro posted:Also i don't really like the fallen being some sort of widespread secret cult. The stakes surrounding them were always pretty personal and it just feels unnecessary to try to raise them. They're lovely and should be disbanded, even forcibly, but the hollow point gangs were going to hurt people that didn't deserve it, plus Rain and Erin and all that. There, I care about the conflict, I care about the Fallen and it feels like the extra stuff is typical wildbow escalation. There's lots of big things going on already - hell, hollow point isn't even resolved at this stage - the fallen can afford to be a (relatively) small one.
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Apr 16, 2018 04:03
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PetraCore posted:Normally I'd agree but given they started out as a small cult preaching the apocalypse and then the apocalypse happened and they were prepared to get their hooks into stuff as soon as they could, them having massively expanded makes a lot of sense. They're also not really a secret cult... although the Speedrunners thing threw me for a twist. But really, the Mathers branch is going to be the one playing secret mindgames, given the founding worship of the Simurgh. I meant more secret members infiltrating powerful organisations than the cult itself being a secret. Actually I guess the story says 'allies', but same dif imo. Its not implausible they expanded or anything, but they could just as easily not have. I guess it's a chance for team therapy to do some counterops surveillance poo poo but the story isn't lacking for conflict and avenues to go down without it. Milky Moor posted:I don't like talking about my work but, really, if you're looking for that you're likely to find it in Not All Heroes. I say this only because minutes ago I just got a lengthy review calling it an 'introspective action thriller' among other things and positive remarks on WebFictionGuide. I will probably check it out at some point, I can always use more stuff I can read from my phone.
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Apr 16, 2018 04:26
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Gitro posted:I meant more secret members infiltrating powerful organisations than the cult itself being a secret. Actually I guess the story says 'allies', but same dif imo.
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Apr 16, 2018 05:37
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Honestly I’m kind of in the camp of ward sucks. So let’s discuss some other webcomic! Like say practical guide! That stairway thing was p cool with Procer basically taking a page out of Praes old playbook and doing something comically huge (blowing up a mountainrange) in order to bypass the red vale Catherine and Masego don’t look too good though! Cat is still mostly fae and masego is basically just a scrying relay. Probably his dream.
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Apr 16, 2018 07:53
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Speaking of other serials, there's one that I think might be pretty solid in a few instalments time. It's only just begun (three chapters, I think) and I only know about it because the author left a comment on my site. Hills of Tara, I think it's called. I haven't given it a solid read yet but the stuff I skimmed seems cool.
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Apr 16, 2018 08:12
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Finally finished up Twig. It was great, and the ending was a lot more upbeat than I expected! Caught up on Ward as well, and while I get the desire to see Wildbow write something with less breakneck escalation, I don't think Ward was ever in a position to be that project. The world was already on the brink at the end of Worm. There was no way it was going to stabilize without a lot of time and transitional chaos.
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Apr 17, 2018 06:02
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Today's Wandering Inn update was incredibly stressful and it looks like the story is entering one of its crazy phases.
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Apr 17, 2018 11:34
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It was the cliffhanger from the chapter before this that I posted about last week, saying "Look forward" to it.... I desperately wanted to say something about the end of this chapter on Saturday, but I didn't want to be that guy posting about the Patreon chapters every single upload day. But now that it is live to the world: that ending really pissed me off. I guess ultimately it comes down to me not liking character death (not a fan of "grimdark" fantasy settings), but this death felt particularly arbitrary. To develop a character over several books, just to kill him because of a child's temper tantrum annoyed the poo poo out of me. But the world moves on, and I assume there is a plan. All that said, regarding today's Patreon chapter: HOLY loving poo poo THAT ENDING! This author has a real hard-on for cliffhangers right now, today makes 3 brutal ones in a row.
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Apr 17, 2018 12:30
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Silynt posted:It was the cliffhanger from the chapter before this that I posted about last week, saying "Look forward" to it.... I desperately wanted to say something about the end of this chapter on Saturday, but I didn't want to be that guy posting about the Patreon chapters every single upload day. But now that it is live to the world: that ending really pissed me off. I guess ultimately it comes down to me not liking character death (not a fan of "grimdark" fantasy settings), but this death felt particularly arbitrary. To develop a character over several books, just to kill him because of a child's temper tantrum annoyed the poo poo out of me. But the world moves on, and I assume there is a plan. I think this is also another lesson for Ryoka [4.28 Spoilers]in that she should NOT have instinctively taunted the skeletons as a reflex. She's been getting better and I liked the scene where she and Erin talked about her past anger management - but that was such a bad move from her. It was heavily hinted that Pisces sensed something off about the pair of skeletons, so I'm curious what's going to happen next. Hopefully, these latest events lead to Toren getting back to the main branch story somehow, I'm missing her/him. 
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Apr 17, 2018 14:46
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Silynt posted:It was the cliffhanger from the chapter before this that I posted about last week, saying "Look forward" to it.... I desperately wanted to say something about the end of this chapter on Saturday, but I didn't want to be that guy posting about the Patreon chapters every single upload day. But now that it is live to the world: that ending really pissed me off. I guess ultimately it comes down to me not liking character death (not a fan of "grimdark" fantasy settings), but this death felt particularly arbitrary. To develop a character over several books, just to kill him because of a child's temper tantrum annoyed the poo poo out of me. But the world moves on, and I assume there is a plan. Wandering Inn: What a pointless ending to a cool chapter. Either kill Ryo or don’t, we’re invested in her and the secrets she is carrying. A random gnoll paying for Az being less than great and powerful in the eyes of a toddler is a dull outcome that just sucks the tension out of the threat. We already have toren for dumb undead murderhobo and he’s at least comedic unlike the toddler. The undead are scarier when they are channeling Az to laugh and cuddle mrsha than when they kill Bru. I really wish they just walked away charming everyone into an open ended come again soon style magical invitation. In fact imagine how much scarier it would be if instead of murdering Bru, they convinced Erin to give them a doorknob, and had wrangled an open invitation to go on the visit to the walled city. What a wasted opportunity.
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Apr 17, 2018 14:47
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TWI: The George R.R. Martin style "Hahah you like this character that I'm developing? Well gently caress YOU they're pointlessly dead now!" bit was pretty soul-crushing and Ryoka continuing to have ridiculous plot armor is still irritating but I loved most of the rest of that chapter. It did a good job of slowly ratcheting up tension even if the payoff sucked.
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Apr 17, 2018 16:05
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Yeah I liked the chapter a lot then random ending sucked a lot of the tension out.
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Apr 17, 2018 17:04
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Nevermind, it was dumb.
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Apr 17, 2018 23:43
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So if I loving hate Erin as a character/Mary Sue should I even bother picking wandering inn back up? I still feel kind of bad because I liked a lot of the non Erin centered stuff but she is the main character :/
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Apr 18, 2018 01:59
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Ward 6.2: It's dragging on a bit, but I'm enjoying the conflict with the Fallen more than the series' earlier fights. This is the first time it's felt like there are any real stakes and the characters—who aren't Victoria—are now established enough that I'm starting to care if stuff happens to them.
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Apr 18, 2018 06:52
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TWI: I'm surprised at how much people cared about Brunkr dying; I think even killing the wagon driver Mr. Termin would have displeased me more than killing Brunkr. Also I'm not wholly convinced it'll stick anyway as the only deaths that have stuck in the past were the Horns, and even then one of them came back. If anything I was worried the author had an aversion to killing off named characters, which I guess is another problem altogether.Xun posted:So if I loving hate Erin as a character/Mary Sue should I even bother picking wandering inn back up? I still feel kind of bad because I liked a lot of the non Erin centered stuff but she is the main character :/ I doubt she's going anywhere any time soon, but fwiw, out of the last 33 chapters in the current volume Erin's been the central character in like... 3? And that's counting the ones where she's the focus of half the chapter. Not that she's absent for the other 30, mind you, but most of her appearances have been though the POV of Ryoka or other characters.
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Apr 18, 2018 07:57
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I like Erin even if she’s a bit Mary suish. I wish it’d focus more on her and her crazy inn.
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Apr 18, 2018 10:09
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I have a whole huge list of complaints about how Mary sueish she is but I don’t think it’s be productive to post it 
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Apr 18, 2018 10:42
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I can’t really argue with that but I also don’t care? She still runs a weird magical inn and she’s kinda clueless.
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Apr 18, 2018 10:54
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