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SerSpook posted:Frankly, I love that Catherine's grand plan is to just backstab everyone as often as possible, including the Dead King. It worked in the war games at the legion officer academy! This is just ... a bit higher stakes and a bit greater factions.
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# ? Jul 2, 2018 09:35 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 05:36 |
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Wolpertinger posted:Even without that, I'm pretty sure that every use of Rise was weaker and less effective than the last - even beyond the weaker each use in a single day, when refreshed it wasn't quite as strong as it was before. Him being dead did probably contribute to it's longevity, though. I'm not sure about that...the first time she uses it each day it works really fast, up until to the last times she uses it. And she acts really regretful when she's forced to Take something else, which implies that it would basically just sit in that aspect slot indefinitely. I think there might be a misconception based off her wording when she first gets the aspect (which makes it sound like it'll just gradually wear off as she uses it, but I think she was just referring to it losing power for the second and third use for a given day).
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# ? Jul 2, 2018 17:24 |
tithin posted:Two new Prac Guide out, one interlude one main chapter. main chapter's shorter than I'd like but something struck me about it after the recent development In before it turns out that all of this was a long game plan by Triumphant (may she never return) to return, and Cat and Akua merging is her triumphant return.
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# ? Jul 2, 2018 18:05 |
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Ytlaya posted:I'm not sure about that...the first time she uses it each day it works really fast, up until to the last times she uses it. And she acts really regretful when she's forced to Take something else, which implies that it would basically just sit in that aspect slot indefinitely. I think there might be a misconception based off her wording when she first gets the aspect (which makes it sound like it'll just gradually wear off as she uses it, but I think she was just referring to it losing power for the second and third use for a given day). The Take aspect has two limitations: 1) A limited pool of power. 2) Can only be used three times per day with diminishing returns. Cat found that second limitation only when she ran into it face first, she even mentioned that when using the stolen aspect for the third time it drew more power than usual.
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# ? Jul 2, 2018 21:59 |
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PetraCore posted:That said, that also gives me hope that Ward will be able to handle getting widespread and rowdy without ending in interdimensional worm battles or the falling of the world into hell or however Pact ended. Like, we already know there's a ton of other settlements that split off from Earth Bet. Earth Gimel isn't actually the last bastion of Earth Bet or anything. pact's world-level implications were actually pretty limited the absolute tippy-top threat was a modest chunk of Canada potentially getting wiped by the Barber (and the actual total damage was considerably smaller) the constant escalation and excessive action was a problem, but it had the lowest macro-scale stakes of any of the stories by a ridiculous margin
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# ? Jul 2, 2018 22:13 |
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tithin posted:Theory: she's not necessarily anti-dead-king in the sense of being designed to wreck him, but she might be anti-dead-king in that the level of firepower Trismegistus achieved gave the Heavens the opportunity to empower a similarly mighty, ultimately considerably nastier tool of their own Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Jul 2, 2018 |
# ? Jul 2, 2018 22:16 |
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SITB posted:The Take aspect has two limitations: 1) A limited pool of power. 2) Can only be used three times per day with diminishing returns. No, Rise specifically can only be used three times per day with diminishing returns. At one point she comments that the aspects she takes retain the limitations they originally had, which in the case of Rise is "limited to three times a day." In total she uses Rise far more than 3 times (though never more than 3 times for a specific conflict/day), and each time it is fast for the first use. It is very easy to get this confused, but I just finished reading up until when she switches Rise for the big wind ball (followed by the fire wings) and am 95% sure this is how it works. (The part about a limited pool of power is definitely true, but that applies to pretty much all aspects.) edit: I guess it's possible that Take is also limited to 3 times a day, but she isn't actually using Take 3 times with Rise; she's just using Rise, which is something she had previously Taken, 3 times. edit2: I checked, and during the big battle with the Summer army she uses Rise twice (could have missed a third, but I only saw 2) and Take twice (once on the ball of wind, once on the fire wings). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Jul 2, 2018 |
# ? Jul 2, 2018 23:03 |
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Ward: I suppose she was worried about not having enough actionable evidence and/or tipping her hand early, but a gathering of every major hero team on earth gimel seems like a really great time and place for Victoria to go "Hey, just so you guys know, there is an organized effort to murder parahuman teams that is using the war as a cover".
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# ? Jul 3, 2018 23:42 |
GreyjoyBastard posted:pact's world-level implications were actually pretty limited Pact's kind of my favorite of WB's stuff. But I think it's the one where he was most obviously making it up as he went (to the work's detriment) and where he'd just kind of awkwardly write out things he didn't know how to deal with (the apocalyptic demon thing that Blake can summon at one point).
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# ? Jul 4, 2018 00:47 |
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Omi no Kami posted:Ward: I suppose she was worried about not having enough actionable evidence and/or tipping her hand early, but a gathering of every major hero team on earth gimel seems like a really great time and place for Victoria to go "Hey, just so you guys know, there is an organized effort to murder parahuman teams that is using the war as a cover". Any one of these heroes could be in on the conspiracy, so it makes sense that Victoria passed the intel onto Dragon, who will presumably alert people she knows she can trust. They don't make a big deal of it - Defiant acknowledges their receiving it, thanks her and rapidly moves on - because the conspiracy is already known to monitor and try to disrupt large groups of heroes, which means even with the location change they're almost certainly listening in. Edit: In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this meeting wasn't at least in part a performance aimed at convincing the conspiracy that they don't know what's really going on. "Anyway guys we just called you here to mention how focused on Cheit we are, oh by the way there's this guy called Teacher and you shouldn't accept superpowers from him, but really we're very focused on Cheit right now." VVV: Sadly with Teacher and/or Contessa (especially both, working together) surviving Worm, it was basically inevitable. I'd pay pretty good money to see an alternate Ward where she just offs him and then herself at the end of Worm, neither of them are particularly interesting to me and I'm sad that they're taking focus away from a theoretically much more interesting antagonist group, an alt-Earth-spanning theocratic death cult. Also, putting up a big flashing sign in Teneral saying 'These guys are going to be big threats in the sequel' was imo a bad move, because it makes the story feel predictable and lessens the impact when they show up. I'd have preferred it if (for example) Teacher dies at the end of Worm, we assume he's been dealt with, then later we find out that all of the villains he was setting up and hooking on his power were left permanent junkies and figured out some horrific way of bringing him back in order to get their fix. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Jul 4, 2018 |
# ? Jul 4, 2018 06:57 |
Ward being back on some kind of conspiracy train is just... blah.
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# ? Jul 4, 2018 08:06 |
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after the vague history tidbit I'm wondering if all three of Wildbow's worlds had the British Empire never fall in somewhat different ways
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# ? Jul 4, 2018 21:14 |
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GreyjoyBastard posted:after the vague history tidbit I'm wondering if all three of Wildbow's worlds had the British Empire never fall in somewhat different ways EDIT: So what I'm saying is the British Empire fell and the Academy was a bunch of white supremacists sweeping in with a glorious alternate history full of lies.
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# ? Jul 5, 2018 04:05 |
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Also, sorry for being stupid, but about Ward... I don't think Teacher is The Main Baddy here. My impression is he's working with the world-dominating cult? That's not overshadowing the stuff in Earth Chiet so much as it is Teacher either potentially finding some place he's comfortable and important in exchange for his help or trying to manipulate things further while looking like the first thing. The thing is Teacher's always struck me as a fairly petty person at his core, despite the massive threat he can pose when he turns his efforts to it. He's essentially a cult leader, that's literally what his power does because he can grant people power in exchange for power over them. It's not that he's not ambitious, but it's that... I don't know how to say what I'm trying to articulate. I don't think Teacher would ever be the prime threat because there's a certain level of complexity and size of what he's grasping at that ends up with him having to spend every waking hour micromanaging people he's dominated, despite their enhancements, and I don't think that's his end goal. That said, I'm actually hoping Teacher gets taken out relatively early because the fallout from that (and what his cult does without the central figure) is more interesting to me than Teacher himself, especially if his inner circle remains a threat. Teacher bores me.
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# ? Jul 5, 2018 04:15 |
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PetraCore posted:Also, sorry for being stupid, but about Ward... There was that whole bit with Kingdom Come where he said that the war with Cheit was a distraction by someone else; that someone else is probably Teacher. Personally, I think that people are "bored by Teacher" less because he's an innately poorly-conceived character and more because he was used really annoyingly in Worm, in a way that built him up a lot without actually giving us much of substance on him. I suspect, or at least hope, that the audience consensus on Teacher will turn around as the story's focus shifts to him and we actually get a chance to see what he's all about.
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# ? Jul 5, 2018 04:42 |
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21 Muns posted:Personally, I think that people are "bored by Teacher" less because he's an innately poorly-conceived character and more because he was used really annoyingly in Worm, in a way that built him up a lot without actually giving us much of substance on him. I suspect, or at least hope, that the audience consensus on Teacher will turn around as the story's focus shifts to him and we actually get a chance to see what he's all about. I don't know if this applies to anyone else, but personally my biggest beef with both Teacher and the conspiracy stuff is that I just don't care. The slice-of-life, therapy, and world-building stuff is fascinating, and every single one of my favorite sections has been learning about characters, or people having dinner, or Vicky antagonizing her therapist and ranting about how she's secretly a pile of dog corpses that just happen to look like a really hot girl. For all I care, WB could write a million words about parahuman adoption, battery acid curry, and Vicky wearing stupid superhero costumes to entertain hospitalized kids without ever adding another action scene and I'd have a blast reading it. I know this probably isn't how most of his fans engage with the work, but for me every action/high-stakes/unexplained new threat beat is my cue to sigh, and get ready to endure 2-3 boring arcs in hopes of getting some awesome character-building between the action.
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# ? Jul 5, 2018 04:51 |
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Omi no Kami posted:I don't know if this applies to anyone else, but personally my biggest beef with both Teacher and the conspiracy stuff is that I just don't care. The slice-of-life, therapy, and world-building stuff is fascinating, and every single one of my favorite sections has been learning about characters, or people having dinner, or Vicky antagonizing her therapist and ranting about how she's secretly a pile of dog corpses that just happen to look like a really hot girl. For all I care, WB could write a million words about parahuman adoption, battery acid curry, and Vicky wearing stupid superhero costumes to entertain hospitalized kids without ever adding another action scene and I'd have a blast reading it. I know this probably isn't how most of his fans engage with the work, but for me every action/high-stakes/unexplained new threat beat is my cue to sigh, and get ready to endure 2-3 boring arcs in hopes of getting some awesome character-building between the action. We've had 7 (closer to 8 if you count Eclipse, really) arcs with absolutely wall-to-wall character development, including during all the action scenes. This book has so far not been interested in what is happening on Earth G so much as it's interested in how the characters deal with it and how they gain or lose ground dealing with their trauma in the context of events. I agree with you in that I'm also not really interested in the character in question. But you know, I wasn't interested in Jamie Lannister either, until we started getting into his head, after which I couldn't get enough of him. WB does this kind of thing all the time (this is one of the ways I use to get people to read Worm, actually). Whether he does or doesn't do that with the Teacher character, I'm confident that the focus here will be how what he does affects our protagonist and her team, mentally, and not just, "Look at the bad thing that this supervillain did, it's bad for 'people' as a nonspecific group we have no connection to." I'll use 7.y as a recent example of the emphasis (spoilered just in case). The very last paragraph of that chapter was "The most recent was from four days prior. A family, it looked like. Julien and Irene Martin." It's at the end for a reason, I think: it's setting up that the real focus of all this conspiracy and intrigue is going to be on the consequences it'll have for Kenzie (most likely her mental state). Probably the other team members too, but she's the one we most care about right at that moment because we're all still extremely hosed up from 7.x, so she's the one that's put in the crosshairs.
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# ? Jul 5, 2018 07:41 |
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Yeah, for me I think at this point it's just conspiracy fatigue. There are so many unexplained mysteries at this point, and the story steadfastly refuses to give us any information about most of them, so I just shrug whenever something new is set up. I should be giving WB the benefit of the doubt, but so much of Ward has be so poorly paced that at this point I've stopped trusting that any new setup will have a satisfactory payoff within the next year. I honestly can't even describe a good 75% of the story up to this point; I very clearly remember the main character beats, but all of the superhero stuff is just a series of giant blurs breaking up the moments I wanted to read about.
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# ? Jul 5, 2018 09:04 |
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21 Muns posted:There was that whole bit with Kingdom Come where he said that the war with Cheit was a distraction by someone else; that someone else is probably Teacher. I'm not entirely sure I buy Teacher as the head honcho. I mean, maybe, but it feels too pat, partly because Dragon and Armsmaster are already aware of his bullshit). Might conceivably be March Cluster capes seem to be a primary target, especially with Goddess (the most successful consolidated cluster cape known) suggested by Kingdom Come as the Big Enchilada. March has already had some screentime interacting positively-ish with the protagonists, too. Che Delilas posted:This book has so far not been interested in what is happening on Earth G so much as it's interested in how the characters deal with it and how they gain or lose ground dealing with their trauma in the context of events. I agree with everything in this post.
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# ? Jul 5, 2018 13:19 |
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Couple more Worth the Candle chapters went up.
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# ? Jul 5, 2018 18:27 |
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So I'm at Book 3 Chapter 54 of Practical Guide now, and I get a strong impression that there's some unreliable perspective stuff going on, where Catherine seems mostly good from her perspective (she makes comments about the bad things she does, but then we see her having all these positive relationships with her comrades and laying sweet owns on her opponents, etc), but viewed more objectively has had an unquestionably negative net result. Almost everything bad she has dealt with has been a direct result of her sparing the Lone Swordsman, so all the "good" she's done is really just cleaning up after her own mistake until this point. She also comes off as a huge control freak, what with the unwillingness to trust in people who she isn't directly connected to (highlighted by her mocking the very concept of Democracy, since "obviously" someone - with an unspoken "like her" implied - needs to be in charge). I feel like Hune's general doubt and unwillingness to get involved with her whole "vision" is pretty apt, and there's probably a reason the Literal God said that she'd be a woe unto creation (or whatever the phrasing was). I feel like either there will be a bad ending, or Catherine will have to fundamentally change who she is, which will probably be difficult given the whole "Named being snapshots of who they were when they transitioned" thing. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jul 5, 2018 |
# ? Jul 5, 2018 22:08 |
Cat is, in fact, Evil. It's fun to read the story and see her perspective, and frankly the Good side isn't necessarily better, but she's done some pretty terrible poo poo. The original sin, for her, is definitely how she handled the Lone Swordsman though. That was condemning lots of people to death in order to speed up her timetable. And it was rank stupidity too, seeing as it set up the whole Pattern of Three thing. She gradually gets better, most notably in Book 4 she really starts to evaluate poo poo she's done. That doesn't mean she isn't Evil, really, but she tries to limit the damage she does.
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# ? Jul 5, 2018 22:53 |
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SerSpook posted:Cat is, in fact, Evil. It's fun to read the story and see her perspective, and frankly the Good side isn't necessarily better, but she's done some pretty terrible poo poo. The original sin, for her, is definitely how she handled the Lone Swordsman though. That was condemning lots of people to death in order to speed up her timetable. And it was rank stupidity too, seeing as it set up the whole Pattern of Three thing. To be fair, it was a novice mistake - she didn't really 'get' the Narrative at that point.
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# ? Jul 6, 2018 01:42 |
Well that was a pretty awesome and atmospheric chapter in Practical Guide. So it seems like this is northern Procer/Kingdom of the Dead area considering what we see, a dude in comments found a quote that Masego's Incubus father was first summoned by a witch-queen in northern Procer, in what is now the Lycaonese area. Seems likely the woman winning the duel is said witch-queen. I wonder if the witch-queen was invading/raiding against what would become the Kingdom of the Dead, and the Dead King didn't do what he did in madness or something but out of a need to drive the Lycaonese out. Which hilariously is the region Cordelia Hasenbach hails from, her own ancestors might have very well led to the creation of the Dead King.
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# ? Jul 6, 2018 06:22 |
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SerSpook posted:Well that was a pretty awesome and atmospheric chapter in Practical Guide. So it seems like this is northern Procer/Kingdom of the Dead area considering what we see, a dude in comments found a quote that Masego's Incubus father was first summoned by a witch-queen in northern Procer, in what is now the Lycaonese area. Seems likely the woman winning the duel is said witch-queen. It's another bit of neat symmetry along with Pilgrim's continued backing of the war against Callow being so that Procer can face the Dead King without worrying about Praes instead causing Cat to go to the Dead King for help
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# ? Jul 6, 2018 08:19 |
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The quote at the beginning of this chapter is suggestive.... could Catherine and the Dead King have more in common than we expected? If the undead can escape Fate, then maybe the two of them have a real shot at kicking over the game board between Above and Below. It could line up with the terms of the invitation she got.
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# ? Jul 6, 2018 17:38 |
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So I just read this PracGuide chapter where Catherine has a conversation with some church Sister (Book 3 Chapter 59), and Catherine strongly comes off worse than the Sister in that conversation. Like, there are arguments you could make against the Sister that would be reasonable, but Catherine sure wasn't making them. Her argument basically seemed to amount to "I want power because I want to control my own fate!", but she has a very superficial and limited understanding of the different ways a person can influence the world around them. Like, even if fate results in the flying fortress being destroyed by heroes (or whatever), you can still choose how you influence the people in your life, along with countless other things (which is basically what the Sister says). And even in the real world, there are countless things people don't have control over; the lack of control over certain outcomes is just a lot more transparent and easy to understand in the PracGuide universe. edit: It's interesting reading the comments, because I find that a lot of people have the same sort of blinders on that readers had for Worm, where they constantly think Catherine is correct about things and a total badass. Though I would argue that PracGuide is even more transparent than Worm when it comes to realizing how incredibly flawed the protagonist is (Worm almost totally immersed you in Taylor's point of view, while PracGuide has various characters, including Catherine herself, commenting on how she isn't exactly a force for good). Like, a bunch of these comments are acting like Catherine just totally owned the Sister. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Jul 6, 2018 |
# ? Jul 6, 2018 21:33 |
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Ha, I remember that chapter. Yeah, the edgy posturing doesn’t reflect well on her. And that talk of how you influence those around you is interesting.. they definitely develop those themes more later on.
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# ? Jul 7, 2018 00:27 |
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Catherine big thing was always refusing to be cowed and pushing back, for example: her early backtalk to Black and the demon at book 1, her swearing vengeance against the Winter King at book 3. She also ultimately doesn't believe in what the sister said about good making life better for your immediate company being meaningful. The good that she can achieve while being a server in Laure pales in comparison to the horrors that Akua or Black unleash (and in that specifically she isn't wrong). She believes that at the end of her path Callow would be measurably better of than if she simply focused on her friends and neighbors, and thus limiting herself to only do what is right will leave Callow worse off than otherwise. The sister wasn't wrong in her criticism of Cat, and the whole 'end justfies the means' rings pretty hollow with the Diabolist effectively killing Liesse. But it's not like Cat is blind to the consequences of her actions, she merely thinks it will be worth it in the end; and keeping your head down* and doing good won't check the likes of Malicia and is thus ultimately fails in its purpose of making the world better. * That's how Cat relates to doing good without being Named in a country that was ruled by one Named or another for over a millennia. EDIT: I don't think that Cat is necessarily correct, but I do understand where she is coming from. SITB fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Jul 7, 2018 |
# ? Jul 7, 2018 07:48 |
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Wandering Inn Patreon chapter (4.49): Oof.
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# ? Jul 7, 2018 12:32 |
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SITB posted:Catherine big thing was always refusing to be cowed and pushing back, for example: her early backtalk to Black and the demon at book 1, her swearing vengeance against the Winter King at book 3. Cat actually has a lot in common with the heroes she mocks in this respect, though. She attacks the heroes for fighting for the greater good but having nothing to show for it (and no clear plans/path to a better future, other than raging at the machine of the Empire), but the exact same thing is true for her. At best she's just mitigating damage (that's she's often responsible for in the first place) in the vague hopes of being in a position to improve things later. But even the improvement she has in mind requires the stability of the Empire, which requires poo poo like starving hundreds of thousands of Procerans to death to allow a Crusade to be defeated. So there isn't really some clearly positive Ends that all her various actions are leading to (at least at the point I'm at, dunno if there's a major change in this regard in the future chapters). So even if Cat's actions were better for Callow in the long run (which is highly questionable), I don't think anyone could argue that they're good for people as a whole. And if they're not a net good when considering people as a whole, how is what she's doing really different from someone just focusing on the happiness of those they know personally?
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# ? Jul 7, 2018 22:06 |
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So I’ve almost read through zombie knight and it’s okay really. (Okay is good in the world of webserials) Really weird sometimes and a bit slow but if you’re a fan of worldbuilding and super complicated fights with weird powers interacting and a hefty dose of sarcastic wisecracking millennia old ghost then read it.
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# ? Jul 8, 2018 12:08 |
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Ytlaya posted:Cat actually has a lot in common with the heroes she mocks in this respect, though. She attacks the heroes for fighting for the greater good but having nothing to show for it (and no clear plans/path to a better future, other than raging at the machine of the Empire), but the exact same thing is true for her. At best she's just mitigating damage (that's she's often responsible for in the first place) in the vague hopes of being in a position to improve things later. But even the improvement she has in mind requires the stability of the Empire, which requires poo poo like starving hundreds of thousands of Procerans to death to allow a Crusade to be defeated. So there isn't really some clearly positive Ends that all her various actions are leading to (at least at the point I'm at, dunno if there's a major change in this regard in the future chapters). Cat isn't nearly selfless enough to desire the happiness of everyone. She may prefer people in general being happy because she possesses basic empathy, but she will put the people that she identifies with before the faceless masses. I also didn't explain myself clearly, it's not that focusing on your immediate company's happiness is wrong, it's just that its not sufficient to check the likes of Malcia. Cat whole arguement with the sister started with Cat describing what she perceives evil is. It's not refusing to offer a helping hand to those in need, it is borne out of people looking at the laws (unwritten and otherwise) and asking why they should apply to you; and every so often you get a person pushing the limits of what they can get away with and you get the likes of the Diabolist. Cat views evil as being inherently transgressive and as thus a passive approach would never defeat it because you will always have people questioning their lot in life. Theoretically heroes are there to stop this, but they tend to be a reactive force that only comes in after the villain had already attacked, and as such only serve to staunch the wound (add to that the perspective that as a Callowan under long term Praesi occupation heroes coming in and triggering a war with Praes is worse than doing nothing at this point). As far as having no plans for a better Callow, I would point out that Cat was effectively the leader of Callow at the start of book three. That she cocked it up is one thing, but it wasn't like she was powerless to rule Callow. (Also, where did Cat require the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Procerans to turn back the crusade? Even in book four she was willing to let the crusade succeed at its intended purpose, and when refused repeatedly tried to make the invading army to withdraw in exchange for the food)
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# ? Jul 8, 2018 19:02 |
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I think one of the previous Crusades was stymied by Praesi nuking of cropland or something, but I might be getting my wires crossed.
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# ? Jul 8, 2018 19:07 |
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So Practical Guide sounds pretty interesting, but just from browsing the summary page on it's website it's hard to get handle on what I should expect from it. What's the 30 second elevator pitch for it? What kind of story should I come into this expecting? Is it Worm style constantly escalating superpower fights, or something different?
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# ? Jul 8, 2018 19:25 |
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worm but swords and sorcery fantasy novel instead of superhero
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# ? Jul 8, 2018 20:00 |
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with better scaling, more politics, and more typos
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# ? Jul 8, 2018 20:13 |
it is also more lighthearted in general and fun, nothing like reading about the adventures of dread emperor traitorus
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# ? Jul 8, 2018 20:23 |
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The snippets at the beginning of each chapter are some of the best parts imo.
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# ? Jul 8, 2018 20:48 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 05:36 |
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And so Dread Emperor Irritant addressed the heroes thus: Lo and behold, I fear not your burning Light, for I am already on fire.
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# ? Jul 8, 2018 21:44 |