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Wandering Inn certainly has some interesting fauna.
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Jul 31, 2018 16:20
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The Patreon chapter today is epic, look forward to the battle. I loved the Mrsha chapter, she's just too cute! And [Druid] is a great class for her I think, given her muteness and outcast status I suspect that she'll always have an affinity with animals and nature over people.
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Jul 31, 2018 16:33
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Why has no one gotten that girl a piece of slate so she can actually communicate?
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Jul 31, 2018 16:54
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mossyfisk posted:Why has no one gotten that girl a piece of slate so she can actually communicate? Isn't she a toddler and probably too young to read?
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Jul 31, 2018 16:57
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mossyfisk posted:Why has no one gotten that girl a piece of slate so she can actually communicate? I think it is the combunation of Mrsha being primary school or late kindergarten age and her not being interested.
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Jul 31, 2018 18:19
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Affi posted:Eh. I think he’s okay but the time loop has obviously screwed with his perspective. He’s angry and drinks too much and he goes straight for the aggressive option nine times out of ten. His mental instability is one of the biggest reasons I can see one of his simulacrums having turned bad. This is a big reason I like him, though. He comes off as a good guy who has naturally gotten kind of hosed up mentally from being stuck in a timeloop for decades. Makes it easier for me to empathize with him.
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Jul 31, 2018 20:56
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Ytlaya posted:This is a big reason I like him, though. He comes off as a good guy who has naturally gotten kind of hosed up mentally from being stuck in a timeloop for decades. Makes it easier for me to empathize with him. Weirdly enough, I think his being a big, dumb guy with a short attention span who likes drinking and fighting is a sign in his favor; he's been stuck in the loop for decades, but by all accounts he hasn't actually changed all that much from how he acted as a teenager. That's worrying in its own way, but I honestly think his good-natured apathy really payed off; Zorian might've actually fared far worse if he'd been the one stuck for decades. Meanwhile on the Ward front team therapy are starting to come off like space aliens to me; nobody is that dysfunctional that much of the time. Between all the jarring jumping around the story's been doing and the ceaseless parade of disasters and personal issues, I'm starting to find it really hard to care. The humanizing moments have easily been some of the best writing from any of his serials, and I wish they weren't being rationed out in small doses between stupid long-winded action/conspiracy sequences.
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Jul 31, 2018 21:52
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Omi no Kami posted:Meanwhile on the Ward front team therapy are starting to come off like space aliens to me; nobody is that dysfunctional that much of the time. Between all the jarring jumping around the story's been doing and the ceaseless parade of disasters and personal issues, I'm starting to find it really hard to care. The humanizing moments have easily been some of the best writing from any of his serials, and I wish they weren't being rationed out in small doses between stupid long-winded action/conspiracy sequences. I've never watched 24 but I have seen a supercut of a bunch of time that Jack Bauer has not had time to explain and I imagine it's the same thing.
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Jul 31, 2018 22:25
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Lone Goat posted:I've never watched 24 but I have seen a supercut of a bunch of time that Jack Bauer has not had time to explain and I imagine it's the same thing. Yeah, in-world it probably makes sense but from a writing perspective I think it's a serious flaw- a well-paced story should flow naturally from one event to the next. If a chapter or section break leaves you feeling like you skipped a page (which, honestly, the vast majority of Ward's stuff has for me), that's bad writing.
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Jul 31, 2018 22:58
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, in-world it probably makes sense but from a writing perspective I think it's a serious flaw- a well-paced story should flow naturally from one event to the next. If a chapter or section break leaves you feeling like you skipped a page (which, honestly, the vast majority of Ward's stuff has for me), that's bad writing. everyone loved the time skip in Worm so more mini time skips is even better, right?
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Jul 31, 2018 23:03
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To be fair it is pretty challenging- days and apparently weeks (I genuinely have no clue how much time has passed since the story started) can go by without much happening, but more than no effort at all could've been put into easing between the interesting points; as it is I've honestly stopped paying attention to where and when they are, because of how frequently the story is prone to making hard cuts without warning.
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Aug 1, 2018 00:17
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Omi no Kami posted:Weirdly enough, I think his being a big, dumb guy with a short attention span who likes drinking and fighting is a sign in his favor; he's been stuck in the loop for decades, but by all accounts he hasn't actually changed all that much from how he acted as a teenager. That's worrying in its own way, but I honestly think his good-natured apathy really payed off; Zorian might've actually fared far worse if he'd been the one stuck for decades. In my opinion, It's an interesting mix of Wildbow writing based on what he believes he can do well and what he seems to want to improve upon. I gather Wildbow wants to explore ideas around trauma but I don't think he's ever been particularly good at going deep with it (we all know what I think about Taylor) but there are many, many people who think otherwise. The action and conspiracy stuff is pretty similar with that latter being something Worm needed a lot less of. Lone Goat posted:everyone loved the time skip in Worm so more mini time skips is even better, right? There's nothing wrong with skipping time. I can think of a heap of books that do it. The thing is, those authors set up how 'time' will work in the story in the first few chapters. Meanwhile, Wildbow's style is to follow the characters essentially minute by minute to the point that it can get agonizing. He doesn't really seem to know when to place them in the text, the sort of stuff you should skip over, and the amount of exposition you need to make it flow.
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Aug 1, 2018 00:43
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:In my opinion, It's an interesting mix of Wildbow writing based on what he believes he can do well and what he seems to want to improve upon. I gather Wildbow wants to explore ideas around trauma but I don't think he's ever been particularly good at going deep with it (we all know what I think about Taylor) but there are many, many people who think otherwise. The action and conspiracy stuff is pretty similar with that latter being something Worm needed a lot less of. This is me nitpicking with no hard evidence, but I wonder if one of the big causes of Ward's prose being so consistently unpleasant to read and hard for me to parse is WB going overboard with the unreliable/subjective narrator thing. Vicky has tons of unresolved trauma, and the text has gone out of its way to point out that she's kind of weird, and prone to checking out for much longer periods than what her own internal narrative depicts, and in a lot of ways the elements of her narration that register to me as poor writing are the same bits that I disliked from Twig, where Sylvester was mid-fugue/crazytime near the end of the story, and it was intentionally difficult to pick apart what was actually happening. So I wonder if what I'm criticizing isn't at its root WB trying to depict how someone with a really tough psychiatric pathology views the world and gets through their day, and going a bit too far towards fidelity to the character/bit at the expense of readability and editing? The main reason this occurred to me was because most of my favorite parts of Ward have been either interludes (where Vicky isn't the narrator), or socially intimate moments with people Vicky trusts and is relaxed around, where she thinks and behaves like a mammal. Those sections feature almost none of the editorial issues I keep having with the rest of the story. Omi no Kami fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Aug 1, 2018 |
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Aug 1, 2018 02:17
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Yeah, interesting and I definitely think you’re onto something. I feel like web serial is an unfortunate format for playing with perspective like that, because it really needs to be tightly edited to be parsed easily. I’ve read all of Worm, Pact, and I think a third of Twig, and I tried to read Ward but fell off it somewhere in the second arc I think. I think my main problem is that I enjoy web serials as a quick and interesting read. Worm started like that and by the time it became all-encompassing I was already hooked. Ward’s long chapters from the get-go made it harder for me to buy in, I think.
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Aug 1, 2018 03:00
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Omi no Kami posted:This is me nitpicking with no hard evidence, but I wonder if one of the big causes of Ward's prose being so consistently unpleasant to read and hard for me to parse is WB going overboard with the unreliable/subjective narrator thing. Vicky has tons of unresolved trauma, and the text has gone out of its way to point out that she's kind of weird, and prone to checking out for much longer periods than what her own internal narrative depicts, and in a lot of ways the elements of her narration that register to me as poor writing are the same bits that I disliked from Twig, where Sylvester was mid-fugue/crazytime near the end of the story, and it was intentionally difficult to pick apart what was actually happening. Sort of like how the worst bits of Worm are when he goes hard on that, too -- such as the end around the time of Taylor's brain surgery. The big climax is obscured behind, like, two layers of crazytime. quote:So I wonder if what I'm criticizing isn't at its root WB trying to depict how someone with a really tough psychiatric pathology views the world and gets through their day, and going a bit too far towards fidelity to the character/bit at the expense of readability and editing? The main reason this occurred to me was because most of my favorite parts of Ward have been either interludes (where Vicky isn't the narrator), or socially intimate moments with people Vicky trusts and is relaxed around, where she thinks and behaves like a mammal. Those sections feature almost none of the editorial issues I keep having with the rest of the story. Essentially. Like Hawkgirl says, however, that's something that comes out in an edit. Same with skipping time. But with Ward especially, it feels like Wildbow is uploading pretty close to completing a chapter which means that he's probably not doing any substantial editing. Speaking personally, I try to have everything written a month before upload so I can edit it the day before with relatively fresh eyes. Sometimes this leads to substantial rewrites. But, really, as the resident critic, I just don't think he has a strong grasp on how to write someone with issues as pathological as he wants to write about (or maybe feels he has to write about?) In my eyes, it'll be a while before 'no, you see, she has trauma' is anything but an excuse of a crutch for shaky writing. It's not too dissimilar to how his understanding of the school system as depicted in Worm is, well, certainly something. It's the same thing as how his dialogue is so flat and robotic, like a high school debating class. You have to nail the basics first. edit: It's not the only serial to do it, though. There was one I read and reviewed semi-recently which had a similar problem and it was extremely difficult to tell whether the protagonist was a proto-school shooter or someone we're supposed to think was cool. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Aug 1, 2018 |
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Aug 1, 2018 04:14
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Essentially. Like Hawkgirl says, however, that's something that comes out in an edit. Same with skipping time. But with Ward especially, it feels like Wildbow is uploading pretty close to completing a chapter which means that he's probably not doing any substantial editing. Speaking personally, I try to have everything written a month before upload so I can edit it the day before with relatively fresh eyes. Sometimes this leads to substantial rewrites. As a professional writer and editor, I appreciate the heck out of that. I respect the heck out of the amount of work it takes to publish a serial consistently but there are a few authors, WB in particular, whose unwillingness to build a proper workflow and either edit or hire a second set of eyes drives me bonkers. Worm and Ward are probably the worst offenders; Pact/Twig have some pronounced structural issues that would come out with revision, sure, but I'm fairly sure Worm could be cut nearly in half; I haven't revisited it in ages, but I remember doing a "How would I fix this" binge just for my own interest, and I think I ended up concluding that it needed to be cut down into three 250k books so that origin story was a thing, slaughterhouse nine was a thing, then scion going nuts and murdering everyone was a thing. quote:It's not too dissimilar to how his understanding of the school system as depicted in Worm is, well, certainly something. This is something that has bugged the heck out of me for ages, mainly because I can't genuinely decide if it's problematic or intentional. I remember that when I read the first half of worm I was really put off by how childish and simplistic the morality was; either someone was on Taylor's side and awesome, or they were a mean jerkface who deserved our scorn and derision. When we got into feudal warlord/baby murder territory and it became obvious that Taylor was a pretty nasty person who pathologically rationalized everything into black and white, I thought that the "Look at all these authority figures suck" stuff was a subtle, early clue about how off she was. Having read the rest of his stuff, however, I don't think there's ever been a single authority figure or organization that was competent enough to tie its own shoes, so I've just internalized "Boo, companies and governments are meanies" as a recurring trope in his work. So I want the bizarre nonsense from her school to be clever, but I'm maybe 70% convinced it's just a flaw. Milkfred E. Moore posted:It's the same thing as how his dialogue is so flat and robotic, like a high school debating class. You have to nail the basics first. This is one that really perplexes me, because he can write good dialogue; an awful lot of Twig was just people in a room chatting, and I don't remember having nearly as many issues with the way every single person talks as I do for Ward.
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Aug 1, 2018 05:05
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Yeah I lost Ward pretty early in but when y'all were  ing at the Kenzie developments I went back and read the two chapters featuring her and her terrible parents, and it was kind of fascinating how Wildbow simultaneously had some subtle-rear end, highly believable details about Kenzie being a maladjusted kid and trying to figure her poo poo out, and at the same time, some misunderstandings of child development and how kids interact with each other. I work with kids a bunch so I would imagine that most people didn't really notice; for me it way pulled me out of the story because the rest of it was so, so believable. There were maybe 2-3 spots where I was like "nuh uh," but the only example I can remember is Kenzie tells the kid that's bullying her that she's really pretty and the bully gets kind of skeeved and tells Kenzie she's weird. But like...that is a bizarre reaction (from the bully). I mean I guess it's possible, if you add in circumstances that aren't mentioned in the text (maybe the bully is even more hosed up emotionally than Kenzie is, or maybe Kenzie is making an insane serial killer face), but the prose itself suggests that the bully is of the "typical rear end in a top hat child" emotional range and that the scene itself is intended to illustrate how hosed up Kenzie is for trying to be nice. But like, kid interactions DO wildly jump around like that, and Kenzie's response would not have been shocking to a fellow child. Anyhow, I have a great deal of respect for Wildbow, and (like many people I'd imagine) dude single-handedly convinced me that web serials were worth following and reading. But yeah it does seem like he's writing so much that he doesn't have any time to actually refine his craft. I wish I had half his dedication and punctuality though.
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Aug 1, 2018 06:20
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Omi no Kami posted:As a professional writer and editor, I appreciate the heck out of that. I respect the heck out of the amount of work it takes to publish a serial consistently but there are a few authors, WB in particular, whose unwillingness to build a proper workflow and either edit or hire a second set of eyes drives me bonkers. Worm and Ward are probably the worst offenders; Pact/Twig have some pronounced structural issues that would come out with revision, sure, but I'm fairly sure Worm could be cut nearly in half; I haven't revisited it in ages, but I remember doing a "How would I fix this" binge just for my own interest, and I think I ended up concluding that it needed to be cut down into three 250k books so that origin story was a thing, slaughterhouse nine was a thing, then scion going nuts and murdering everyone was a thing. I'd say half is fairly conservative. You could probably cut around half of most chapters, especially the later ones, and I reckon there are a few arcs you could yank entirely (the Travelers one, for example, you can turn into its own novella) and sequences you could reduce to a few lines of exposition. I've talked with some friends and played around with editing chapters and you can cut/alter pretty severely. The workflow can be pretty hard. Especially when you end up realizing that something sucks, like I just did with forthcoming Part 8, and yank out an entire subplot. Boom, six chapters to rewrite. It's much better now and less convoluted (even if I think it did a lot to humanize Leopard) and the exact reason I maintain a backlog of chapters. There's actually one chapter presently uploaded which I wrote the night before because I messed up and thought I'd written it when I hadn't and, IMO, it's rougher and more 'serial-esque' than anything else. If you ever want to turn those professional eyes my way, I'd really appreciate it. quote:This is something that has bugged the heck out of me for ages, mainly because I can't genuinely decide if it's problematic or intentional. I remember that when I read the first half of worm I was really put off by how childish and simplistic the morality was; either someone was on Taylor's side and awesome, or they were a mean jerkface who deserved our scorn and derision. When we got into feudal warlord/baby murder territory and it became obvious that Taylor was a pretty nasty person who pathologically rationalized everything into black and white, I thought that the "Look at all these authority figures suck" stuff was a subtle, early clue about how off she was. To me, that's the biggest mark against the specific Unreliable Taylor reading -- the fact that everyone is depicted as worse than her. It gets into that confusing territory where people start arguing that the text is inaccurate. I think at some point, WB was definitely getting into that territory with Taylor, but I really don't think he was at the start. And even then, when Taylor shoots the baby, it's in the hands of the one group who she's probably justified in her belief. If you can ever justify infanticide, it's probably when the kid is in the hands of Bonesaw and Jack. I've mentioned before that Watts' protagonist of Lenie Clarke is pretty similar to Taylor in the sense of being a young woman who pathologizes the world into abusers and abused and does horrible things thinking she is justified because of it. But whereas Watts gives us moments where the reader can see how messed up Lenie is even when Lenie can't, Wildbow never really does that. Whenever Taylor does something bad, there's always the unspoken implication that the other guy or result would've been worse. And while there are scenes with say Miss Militia, Clockblocker and Director Tagg (maybe? After when she goes nuts with the bugs) who point out that she's pretty terrible, it's like she's being criticised by hypocrites. There's a definite anti-authority streak to WB's work, the problem is it implies that Taylor's authority is better (unless you believe in a very specific, very charitable reading). But generally, I think Worm resists a close reading and an attempt to pin down any politics or thematics from it -- it's kind of scattershot. But that scattershot has always been Worm's strength and explains the host of fanfic around it. There are bits and pieces where one can argue intentional better than others, of course, such as her relationship with Armsmaster towards the start. But honestly, at the start of Worm, Armsmaster is a bit of a doofus for her to clown on and he's never really presented as a legitimate opponent with good points. He's a braggart obstacle more than the narcissitic perfectionist he becomes (and is remembered as). At the start, it's pretty YA, the cool kids outsmarting the halberd-wielding principal and dunking on him relentlessly. You get the impression that the story could be leading to this point where Taylor finds out that Armsmaster's whole career is a big fake or something. But I've never bought into the super grimdark dystopian reading of Worm, either. I mean, Trickster's response to coming from another world isn't that the place is totally hosed up, it's that the valleys might be lower but the peaks were much higher. That line was maybe even used on Worm's homepage for a bit? IDK. In conclusion, Worm is a land of contrasts. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Aug 1, 2018 |
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Aug 1, 2018 06:38
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PracGuide: Main chapter: Ahhh yes, it's finally time for shenanigans! Also, past Catherine made her opinion on future Catherine already known in the previous book. Side chapter: Remember all those beautiful plans to split Callow? To make use of the separatist currents to break Callow's power until the Black Queen's cause would be forgotten? All of them just went up in smoke with Cordelia's tacit approval. So much for 'they will greet us as liberators'. SITB fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Aug 1, 2018 |
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Aug 1, 2018 07:21
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This might be the worst plan I've ever seen and I love it.
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Aug 1, 2018 17:12
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I don't know what you're talking about, this is clearly the best plan ever. Nothing can go wrong. I guarantee it.
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Aug 1, 2018 18:00
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The way Prac Guide's metaphysics work this plan is guaranteed to succeed. Like the world is going to tie itself in knots making sure this turns out right
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Aug 2, 2018 00:04
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Autonomous Monster posted:The way Prac Guide's metaphysics work this plan is guaranteed to succeed. Guards! Guards! posted:Nobby put his head on one side. “It looks promising,” he said critically. “We might be nearly there. I reckon the chances of a man with soot on his face, his tongue sticking out, standing on one leg and singing The Hedgehog Song ever hitting a dragons voonerables would be . . . whatd you say, Carrot?”
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Aug 2, 2018 00:38
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The Legend of Mrsha, the Great and Terrible was wonderful and I loved every moment of it.  Also if any of y'all still keep up with The Gods are Bastards, today's chapter was one hell of a trip.
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Aug 2, 2018 07:28
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Autonomous Monster posted:The way Prac Guide's metaphysics work this plan is guaranteed to succeed. Exactly.
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Aug 2, 2018 08:02
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The Shortest Path posted:The Legend of Mrsha, the Great and Terrible was wonderful and I loved every moment of it. I like that she’s fleshed out a bit and it’s very interesting seeing what she ended up as!
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Aug 2, 2018 10:47
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You know, thinking about the last few chapters of Practical Guide, and the whole Arch-Heretic of the East declaration that's meant to render the truce established following the Battle of the Camps invalid... doesn't that basically make invading Proceran forces oath-breakers to a Fae Queen? That has to have terrible implications, and just like declaring the Callowan House of Light to be heretics doesn't seem to have removed their miracles and poo poo, I doubt this declaration actually renders the Truce invalid as far as whatever metaphysics apply to Fae. Maybe if Catherine were simply Evil, but she's Winter instead. Even if it isn't direct action (like Heroes strength failing if they were part of that Truce), I feel like this makes the narrative really horrifying for the Crusade.
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Aug 2, 2018 12:00
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The Shortest Path posted:Also if any of y'all still keep up with The Gods are Bastards, today's chapter was one hell of a trip. Absolutely my favorite web serial, and I have been enjoying the crap out of this last “book” in particular.
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Aug 2, 2018 13:26
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I enjoy it well enough and the most recent book has been solid, but I definitely think the story started to drop in quality when the science fantasy genre kicked in. Personally, I'm starting to get pretty tired of the whole 'There's a big secret about the gods, but we can't tell you because then you'd automatically die' situation. At some point after the millionth word written you lose the hype and it just becomes a chore to gets hints about this 'big reveal that will change everything' for the 100th time.
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Aug 2, 2018 14:09
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Finished rereading MoL and man, they are screwed if whatever exploit red robe used to get out of the loop resets it when he leaves. My understanding is that the plan is to a) get all five thingies in one loop, b) use the exploit they'll presumably figure out (but have never put much effort into examining) to get Zorian out of the loop, then c) Zach exits via the sovereign gate. The thing is, so many steps that they've already tested and refined rely on Zorian's mind/soul magic and utility spells that I'd be genuinely surprised if Zach was capable of assembling all five on his own. Also, it's a bit blink-and-you'll-miss-it, but based on their scary primordial discussion with Silverlake, I'm assuming that red robe used the fact that the imaginary dimensional pockets contained real primordials to somehow slip out. It's possible that red robe was explicitly fine-tuning the invasion to help expedite that ritual inside the loop, and that Z&Z will have to explicitly help lichdad (or find a way to ensure that the invasion succeeds without his help if they gank him for his crown) in order to leave.
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Aug 3, 2018 07:35
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Prac Guide's update was very good. “I feel faint,” the orc added dutifully. “Like a dove. A dove that is sick.” edit: Can you not spoiler tag quotes? That's lame.
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Aug 3, 2018 09:34
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Hakram has such a delicate constitution. this is all stage dressing for archer murdering the gently caress out of malicia and akua binding her soul
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Aug 3, 2018 10:06
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more like akua stealing her body and leaving very rapidly
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Aug 3, 2018 10:48
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violent sex idiot posted:more like akua stealing her body and leaving very rapidly You guys acting like my waifu Akua is somehow untrustworthy is making me upset.
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Aug 3, 2018 10:55
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navyjack posted:You guys acting like my waifu Akua is somehow untrustworthy is making me upset. She's perfectly trustworthy as long as you trust her to push her own agenda
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Aug 3, 2018 14:25
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Insurrectionist posted:She's perfectly trustworthy as long as you trust her to push her own agenda I'm sure she's capable of plots that don't somehow involve the death of thousands and legions of demons but so far she hasn't managed it yet.
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Aug 3, 2018 14:34
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I'm gonna be honest, I'm still enjoying Ward but now I'm solidly sure that Twig is my favorite Wildbow project. Ward had a really strong start and I like it but there's too many big-level things going on at once for me to love it. Like, I get that in-universe that's kind of the consequence of setting your team up as a dealing with information and organization thing, you're going to get sucked into bigger issues going on, but while everyone focusing on one major issue and ignoring the others would be a disaster, a single team narrowing their focus and getting really entrenched with information gathering on One Big Thing is actually, like, the most efficient way to operate. I get that the higher-level organizers got taken out when the portals opened on Warden headquarters, and I get that it's important for different teams and heroes to be sharing information and not stepping on each other's toes constantly, but it feels like Wildbow is trying to make Team Therapy handle that aspect with too many different Big Things (the portal bombings, Goddess, and the religious war are the three big things I think, but I can think of a few others that might be tied into them and might not), and that just saps the tension out of everything. Because Team Therapy is our POV, Wildbow probably feels like we the readers won't know enough about everything going on or will get upset if something that ends up being a big plot thread in the finale is brushed over until the finale. But I'd prefer leaving certain things to infrequent interludes and more surface-level allusions in the main thread if it meant really digging into something in an interesting and well-flowing manner. That's something that I think was handled better in Twig, actually. Obviously in Twig there's a bunch of stuff going on, but at first we're introduced to the factions that will be major later in individual, well-contained arcs, and then things flow naturally based on what Sy himself is focused on. A lot of the driving force in Twig ultimately comes down to Sy chasing the thread of 'where do the children go', especially once he's no longer being aimed and used as a tool by the Academy. This seemingly simple question connects directly to a ton of the biggest secrets and driving forces in the setting, so as he pulls on this thread, we get to see that big picture form. His methodology is erratic and other factions brawling in the background bring major changes to the setting, but his personal goals are always fairly clear and focused. Meanwhile, in Ward, it starts from a point of Victoria doing 'we should do information stuff', and then following that with Rain's deal for a big arc, and then generalizing again except there's a ton of higher level conspiracy going on, so now they're juggling three different things that might actually only be two different things, and even if they're all one thing in the end it feels a lot less focused because the characters are a lot less focused. It's just weird. EDIT: That said, the newest stuff Kenzie's parents are pulling is trouble, but you'd think it'd be easy to cut down on their usefulness as poster children for a 'parahumans are bad' movement just by being completely and brutally honest about the level of abuse they inflicted on Kenzie before she triggered and then continued from once she tracked them down. Even people who would think it justified to try to kill your 11 year old parahuman daughter if she were scary enough are probably going to not support slamming an unpowered eight year old's head into her dinner hard enough to permanently scar her, much less doing that and then making her clean up the mess and give herself medical care while threatening her implicitly with more violence if things aren't immaculate in a few hours. Like... the Martins are not just not perfectly innocent victims, they're people who have done things horrible enough to make 99% of people choke and back away from them if all details were known, before Kenzie ever got powers. The poo poo that Kenzie was doing to them was hosed up, bad, and not okay, but also didn't even approach what they'd done to her for 8 years. The main issue is spinning that in such a way that it doesn't obliterate Kenzie's emotional situation by triggering her over and over, but the PR solution is... right there. I figure that's what Victoria is planning, but like, it doesn't leave it super suspenseful for me. PetraCore fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Aug 4, 2018 |
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Aug 4, 2018 06:12
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I kind of think Pact's my favorite. Sure, it's janky as hell, but the world grabbed me in a way that Worm didn't.
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Aug 4, 2018 06:46
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Yeah, I had the opposite problem. The worldbuilding of Pact didn't grab me so I stopped reading like 2/3rd of the way through when I felt it was getting too 'everything is poo poo and nothing is good' for me to maintain investment. I'll probably go back and do a full reread at some point with fresh eyes. I did like that in Twig, even when everything was terrible, things could get really really funny.
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Aug 4, 2018 07:11
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PetraCore posted:Yeah, I had the opposite problem. The worldbuilding of Pact didn't grab me so I stopped reading like 2/3rd of the way through when I felt it was getting too 'everything is poo poo and nothing is good' for me to maintain investment. I'll probably go back and do a full reread at some point with fresh eyes. I did like that in Twig, even when everything was terrible, things could get really really funny. That's true. I feel it worked in Pact because the whole rules of the universe are totally messed up and there's demons and magic and so on. But about 2/3 of the way through, maybe even closer to the halfway point, Pact gets pretty bad. But, I mean, conceptually? I dig the concepts behind it and wish it'd been better executed.
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Aug 4, 2018 07:25
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