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I'm slowly catching up in Ward. Right now I'm at the tail end of Arc 7 after the Ashely interlude. I thought the arc was done with "holy poo poo" moments but then we get to Kenzie... Why you gotta do this, wildbow?
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Nov 14, 2018 18:58
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In general I really can't understate how much more I like the Ward cast than the Worm one. They're just far more interesting. Taylor and possibly Tattletale were the only members of the Undersiders that were particularly interesting. I guess maybe also Regent, but that wasn't explored much. I particularly like Tristan/Byron and Ashley from Ward.Omi no Kami posted:Oh man, I can't wait to see how this goes. I'm really curious to see what Zorian or Z&Z's approach is going to be. On one hand, I could see him wanting to use clones/unity of purpose to go through the motions of a perfect month (e.g. sister's at school, sister introduces him to cat child, cat child gives him an inroad to telling all the shifters to get out of town) and stay under the radar, and I assume he'll at least start that way anyway, since he'll need a few hours to steal poo poo/earn money/ buy-steal-fabricate components for his golem simulacrums. But there's also a real argument to be made for making an immediate, overwhelming show of force to seize the initiative and keep Silverlake/unknown red robe guy from getting their thing on. It's hard to keep reminding myself that Zorian, Silverlake, and even Red Robe are all getting out at the same time. Like, my gut feeling is that Red Robe got there "ahead of time," but he actually didn't. In a way, Red Robe kinda hosed himself over; he was acting on the assumption that he was also preventing others from getting out, but he ended up just giving Z&Z a lot more time to get stronger. Omi no Kami posted:Hmm yeah, I suppose at the very least Silverlake knowing his identity, the general structure of his inner circle, and at least a rough notion of his capabilities is a complete non-starter. That's kind of disappointing though; while I don't want to read about him rehashing the month with future knowledge, it seems a lot more his style than open confrontation. I actually do kinda want to read about him rehashing the month. While it's largely been out of narrative necessary, I feel like the past many chapters have sort of glossed over all this poo poo Zorian is doing during the restarts. That actually kinda connects to one of the more unrealistic things, in my opinion; it'll just casually mention that Z&Z "stole the airship again" or whatever, but it's kind of weird that they wouldn't occasionally just make a mistake and get killed while repeatedly doing all this dangerous and risky stuff. I guess part of it can be written off by the fact that Zorian is abnormally adept at mentally creating and following plans due to his near-perfect memory, so Zorian lacks the normal-person risk of just forgetting things sometimes. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Nov 14, 2018 |
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Nov 14, 2018 22:09
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It's nighttime in Croatia now and there's still no new Mother of Learning! NOOOooooooooooo  I'm just mad because I'm in Germany and it'll probably get released while I'm asleep.
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Nov 14, 2018 22:21
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Ytlaya posted:That actually kinda connects to one of the more unrealistic things, in my opinion; it'll just casually mention that Z&Z "stole the airship again" or whatever, but it's kind of weird that they wouldn't occasionally just make a mistake and get killed while repeatedly doing all this dangerous and risky stuff. I guess part of it can be written off by the fact that Zorian is abnormally adept at mentally creating and following plans due to his near-perfect memory, so Zorian lacks the normal-person risk of just forgetting things sometimes. Hmm yeah, that's interesting to think about... structurally that would pose a bit of a challenge, because you don't want lots of stops and starts in your narrative, but it does make a lot of sense. This might be best accomplished by having more short interludes spread throughout the work where something horrible happens, and they simply skip back around to the start of that adventure, but even that might be a little jarring. I did kinda-sorta get the impression that most of their big action setpieces were refined over lots of kinda-crappy resets, but it wasn't really clear. Now that we're discussing it, it's actually kind of impressive how the story manages to simultaneously convey how repetitive and rote a lot of his day-day life is without boring the reader; even though I mentally classify his initial academy stay (from loop inception to leaving and going wolf-skinning for however many loops) as the slow start part of the story, I never found myself going "Man, I am sick of reading about Zorian being a jerk to everybody he knows"- it was always fun. Edit: new MoL! So that went a whole lot better than I expected! Although it did seem kinda shortsighted of them to put the one critical clone who needs complete concentration in bed, in the house where Kirielle jumps on them every morning. Omi no Kami fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Nov 15, 2018 |
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Nov 15, 2018 00:10
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Omi no Kami posted:
I enjoyed the earlier parts a lot where he learns about the various cast members and in some cases (namely Kirielle, Taiven, and later Daimen) realizes that his earlier perception of them was wrong in certain ways. The later stuff where the main plot started to accelerate has also been good, but the first half (or maybe 2/3) of the story was definitely enjoyable in its own way and also made Zorian's progression far easier to understand (once he gets simulacrums I felt like he suddenly was making a bunch of progress in ways that weren't as easy to follow). edit: As a random amusing comment, when I first read MoL I thought that Zorian's lame friend was significant in some way and that his comments like "are you looking forward to school" were all suspicious and mysterious. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Nov 15, 2018 |
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Nov 15, 2018 06:24
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(MoL) So now that we know for sure what happens to anyone who leaves the loop, Red Robe could be literally anybody among their allies, right?
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Nov 15, 2018 07:12
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Xun posted:Hype for that MoL update It’s up!
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Nov 15, 2018 07:21
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I bet Benisek is gonna be Red Robe.
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Nov 15, 2018 07:42
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MoL is just fantastic and I appreciated this chapter's ending.
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Nov 15, 2018 08:42
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Argue posted:(MoL) So now that we know for sure what happens to anyone who leaves the loop, Red Robe could be literally anybody among their allies, right? Hmm yeah... although i'm forgetting the timing a bit, but didn't Zorian spend a lot of time before Red Robe escaped telepathically checking people on the sly? I think I recall he and the Araena systematically scanning and ruling out the vast majority of his classmates and teachers. At this point I'm a bit stumped over who it could be- on one hand it almost must be an adult, because whoever it was was a senior enough member of the cult to begin the loop already wearing the robes, but the way he spoke and acted when Zorian shot him made him sound like a teenager.
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Nov 15, 2018 14:47
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All current signs seem to point towards, Veyers or his lawyer. Even though they seem like a way too obvious red herring, there's no potential alternatives introduced in the story. Veyers got both soulkilled and wiped from Zach's mind, so he's pretty much guaranteed to have something to do with Red Robe. And now the lawyer's house is empty and has a new warding scheme in the real world. Either Veyers is Red Robe and his leftovers being soulkilled are some scheme to hide his tracks. Like setting up a temp looper necromancer to cast the soulkill spell on the reformatted Veyers in the restart after he bailed. Or the lawyer is and Veyers ended up soulkilled because their partnership broke down when the laywer decided to bail and leave Veyers behind.
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Nov 15, 2018 18:53
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Or the rogue Zach Simulacrum possessed Veyers' body #istillbelieve
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Nov 15, 2018 19:16
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Megazver posted:Or the rogue Zach Simulacrum possessed Veyers' body #istillbelieve This is still my very favorite theory on account of how clever it is... it really feels like there's no possible resolution to the mystery of red robe's identity that'll be genuinely satisfying. I'm leaning towards "It really is weirdo lawyer and jerk boy" just based on how long they've been harping on that, but it feels so obvious, and the soul trap whatever thing was weirdly incongruous, so I can't help but assume it's a misdirection. Even if it is, though, anyone else I can think of doesn't really work either. Making it one of the students would feel cheap after Zorian + Spiderbros looked through their brains and went "We can categorically conclude that nobody you go to school with is a cultist or a telepath," and I'm fairly sure each and every one of the teaching staff were accounted for during the attack or later during the inner circle stuff, working directly against the cult's interests. So that doesn't leave much... for a while I thought it might be whichever brother is the jerkass useless one, since that's a name we see a lot but don't know much about, but I'm fairly sure he would've been caught by SpiderTech(tm) when they were canvasing the rest of Zorian's school. So yeah, I dunno- at this point I genuinely can't think of a single character who could be red robe and be a satisfying reveal, so I'm just hoping the author is super-clever and has something fun in mind that I'll never see coming.
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Nov 15, 2018 21:18
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Ytlaya posted:In general I really can't understate how much more I like the Ward cast than the Worm one. They're just far more interesting. Taylor and possibly Tattletale were the only members of the Undersiders that were particularly interesting. I guess maybe also Regent, but that wasn't explored much. I particularly like Tristan/Byron and Ashley from Ward. It's also interesting because I engaged with the Lambs more than the Undersiders even though there's still the thing where they're doing a lot of bad stuff, everything is hosed, and the levels of genuine remorse felt varies wildly from Lamb to Lamb but average around indifference. But a huge part of the difference to me is the circumstances involved and also the level of emotional engagement conveyed through the writing, bc iirc Twig is where Wildbow was really pushing himself on writing social interactions and having a POV character that needed a strong social net to be functional, and it shows. It's not that Sy's a better and more moral person than Taylor because he's really super duper not, but he engages more with people. RIP north america
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Nov 17, 2018 03:11
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PetraCore posted:I feel like Wildbow is better at character writing at this point (obviously, he's had a lot more experience and he was deliberating pushing himself on stuff to improve during Twig and probably Pact), but I think part of it is that in a lot of ways the Undersiders were pretty unrepentant? I have a lot of fondness for them but there also wasn't a lot of active improvement. Ward is about people deliberately trying to improve and get better, and I feel like there's even a counterpoint to that with Amy. I was primed to have a lot of sympathy for Amy from Worm, and I still do, but it's also made pretty clear she's not actually getting better, she's just in a holding pattern, and she keeps choosing the exact wrong way to deal with things and then people make excuses for her. Yeah, I didn't bring up Twig because the comparison there is a lot iffier (in terms of both being good characters in different ways). Sy, the Jamies, and Gordon in particular stand out as interesting characters. I feel like more could have been done with Lilian, though. Regarding Amy, I completely agree and the comments section of any chapters including her is always really disturbing to me; people frequently act like Victoria is even worse than Amy and is wrong for not reconciling with her, and I just can't comprehend where they're coming from with that. It's like bizarre abuser logic where the abuser blames the victim for not forgiving them. I can understand sympathizing with Amy's situation (though I blame her pretty heavily for making any attempts to interact with Victoria), but I absolutely can't understand faulting Victoria (who is entirely justified in just choosing to not have Amy be a part of her life; if anything I feel like Victoria deals with the Amy situation in about the best way she can, and I wouldn't be surprised if her "strategy" is based on her therapy with Yamada, where I'm sure the topic came up). Victoria definitely has some personality flaws*, but I don't think any of them are that damning, particularly given what she's been through (and that's a separate issue from Amy). * One of the kinda potentially disturbing things there was when she mentally brainstormed some pretty inhumane ways of restraining/imprisoning the Undersiders. I feel like, in general, she has some issues with fetishizing "law and order" and there's a risk she could support some pretty messed up stuff if she felt it was "necessary." Her interactions with Tattletale in the recent chapter is a good example of this, though her own history with Tattletale (plus Tattletale kinda being an rear end in a top hat and inappropriately needling her about her history) is likely to blame for a lot of it. It was interesting how Rain immediately picked up on Tattletale not being remotely the same sort of person as the real monsters he's familiar with.
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Nov 17, 2018 07:29
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New PracGuide: Can anybody with a better memory or more recent re-read tell me what Cat means when she tells Akua (my waifu do not steal),” folly”? My brain keeps going to a different place so I think I’m missing the implication.
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Nov 17, 2018 09:55
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If I remember correctly "Akua's Folly" is one of the nicknames given to either her rebellion, that culminated in second Liesse and her being turned into a neck accessory, or just another name for second Liesse. I don't remember which one exactly. So Catherine is basically letting the Diabolist off the leash and telling her to go start chewing scenery with all of the classically villainous ham she can muster.
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Nov 17, 2018 11:11
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PetraCore posted:I feel like Wildbow is better at character writing at this point (obviously, he's had a lot more experience and he was deliberating pushing himself on stuff to improve during Twig and probably Pact), but I think part of it is that in a lot of ways the Undersiders were pretty unrepentant? I have a lot of fondness for them but there also wasn't a lot of active improvement. Ward is about people deliberately trying to improve and get better, and I feel like there's even a counterpoint to that with Amy. I was primed to have a lot of sympathy for Amy from Worm, and I still do, but it's also made pretty clear she's not actually getting better, she's just in a holding pattern, and she keeps choosing the exact wrong way to deal with things and then people make excuses for her. I feel like it'll be interesting to see how Amy is doing from a different perspective eventually. Though we've certainly seen that she's not really improved wrt Victoria and their relationship, we also have very little to go on regarding her general state of mind and situation. It's actually a little interesting to me that in several ways, the Amy in Ward reminds me more of the Amy of Worm 1 - 15 than the one we see at the end of Worm, and I'm starting to wonder how much of that is due to Ward being from Victoria's perspective. Between the language used being colored by Victoria's ideas and thoughts on Amy, and the fact that barring the Dot interlude we only ever SEE Amy when she's near Victoria, it's hard to judge how she's actually doing when Victoria isn't in the picture. Especially since once Amy's no longer primarily focused on Victoria, working with Chris at the end of the prison arc, she suddenly not only behaves but even looks (posture-wise) and talks very differently, much more reminiscent of late Worm Amy's demeanor. We do know from the Dot interlude she's not doing amazingly though.
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Nov 17, 2018 13:52
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I really have a lot of trouble with Amy's character- from the way she acts in Ward I get the impression that she views the fleshsquid thing as something Victoria should've gotten over already, and her reaction when they yelled at each other during the mind control arc made it seem as if she was unaware of what a big deal that whole thing was to Victoria. But nobody is that oblivious... I keep wondering if there isn't some kind of reasonable in-world explanation, like Carol maybe underselling how traumatic it was when speaking to Amy, because otherwise I can't see how you get from troubled but well-intentioned jerk has a breakdown to serial stalker/abusive jerk. If her behavior really has no explanation beyond "She's still obsessed with her sister," that takes the whole thing from gross and dumb to downright monstrous.
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Nov 17, 2018 16:19
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Ytlaya posted:Regarding Amy, I completely agree and the comments section of any chapters including her is always really disturbing to me; people frequently act like Victoria is even worse than Amy and is wrong for not reconciling with her, and I just can't comprehend where they're coming from with that. It's like bizarre abuser logic where the abuser blames the victim for not forgiving them. It's because her establishing character moment was beating up a Nazi. 
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Nov 17, 2018 18:21
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amy forgives victoria for using her power to force her to love her so why doesnt victoria forgive amy? is probably her thought process. becuase shes dumb as poo poo.
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Nov 17, 2018 18:52
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Ytlaya posted:Yeah, I didn't bring up Twig because the comparison there is a lot iffier (in terms of both being good characters in different ways). Sy, the Jamies, and Gordon in particular stand out as interesting characters. I feel like more could have been done with Lilian, though. Like, I've been in situations where I've hosed up and all I want to do is apologize and and explain myself and help the other person feel better, and I refrain from doing that right away because at that point it'd be about making me feel better and wouldn't actually help the other person. I feel like the basic drive is similar even if the scale is totally different, so I can sympathize with Amy's emotions. Unfortunately, she's using those emotions to justify some pretty nasty actions. It also blows my mind because in every step of the way I feel like Victoria has been pretty drat generous with Amy given the strength of emotions we know she feels. She's been very clear about her boundaries and they're extremely reasonable boundaries, and when Amy steps over those boundaries Victoria does her best to not fly off the handle even as she's dissociating and panicking. It was bad enough when Amy put herself in an enclosed space with Victoria, but when she actually tried to touch her with her bare skin, I was legitimately shocked that Victoria managed to refrain from killing her, given the strength of Victoria's powers and the fact that Amy can't heal or alter herself. So it's weird to me that some people come away feeling like Victoria is the 'bad one' in those interactions.
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Nov 17, 2018 19:18
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Omi no Kami posted:I really have a lot of trouble with Amy's character- from the way she acts in Ward I get the impression that she views the fleshsquid thing as something Victoria should've gotten over already, and her reaction when they yelled at each other during the mind control arc made it seem as if she was unaware of what a big deal that whole thing was to Victoria. But nobody is that oblivious... I keep wondering if there isn't some kind of reasonable in-world explanation, like Carol maybe underselling how traumatic it was when speaking to Amy, because otherwise I can't see how you get from troubled but well-intentioned jerk has a breakdown to serial stalker/abusive jerk. If her behavior really has no explanation beyond "She's still obsessed with her sister," that takes the whole thing from gross and dumb to downright monstrous. I don't think Amy's evil! But goddamn is she picking the exact worst way to deal with everything. Even assuming good intentions with her latest stunt which is kind of a stretch, giving herself that level of responsibility and power is certain to end badly. She's going to have a second breakdown at this rate and it's going to be bad. EDIT: Also important to note that Victoria chose to keep the memories of those two years, which is entirely within her right, but from an emotional viewpoint Amy probably kind of feels like everything would be 'okay' if only Victoria had allowed her to erase that impact and 'reset' those two years. As unhealthy as it is I can see Amy going 'well why are you blaming ME for something you chose to remember experiencing, if it was so bad why didn't you let me FIX it for you'. PetraCore fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Nov 17, 2018 |
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Nov 17, 2018 19:25
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PetraCore posted:I don't think Amy's evil! But goddamn is she picking the exact worst way to deal with everything. Even assuming good intentions with her latest stunt which is kind of a stretch, giving herself that level of responsibility and power is certain to end badly. She's going to have a second breakdown at this rate and it's going to be bad. The way the goddess thing shook out, in particular, really bugs the crap out of me. To be fair, Amy may not have known that control issues were a big manifestation of Victoria's pathology, but how could she have possibly thought that more mind control, followed by whatever trying to grope her in the dark was (I assume rewriting her brain again, to undo the mind control), would've made things better? That's why I keep hoping for an interlude from her perspective; her behavior when viewed from the outside is so consistently awful and problematic that it feels custom-built for dramatic purposes, and I'd really like to see what this entire post-squid relationship looks like in her brain.
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Nov 17, 2018 20:47
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goddess had told her that she wasnt going to mind control breakthrough i think, or at least amy strongly objects to it
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Nov 17, 2018 20:48
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Omi no Kami posted:The way the goddess thing shook out, in particular, really bugs the crap out of me. To be fair, Amy may not have known that control issues were a big manifestation of Victoria's pathology, but how could she have possibly thought that more mind control, followed by whatever trying to grope her in the dark was (I assume rewriting her brain again, to undo the mind control), would've made things better? I never really got that take on the situation because we don't really have any context for how things ended up happening. We still don't know what the deal between Goddess and Amy really was for one thing. For another, I believeit was stated that Goddess found out about and became interested in Breakthrough from their TV-appearance, in which case I'm not sure what Amy could have done about the whole thing. Goddess was even the one who made contact with them wasn't she? I can't remember any signs that Amy thought bringing Goddess and Breakthrough together was a good idea in any way. All her gently caress-ups related to that situation are all about her own interaction with Victoria imo, it's not like she could control the crazy mind-control lady. Add to that we know in hindsight she was 'undercover' the whole time and trying to figure out her thoughts on things feels futile to me.
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Nov 17, 2018 20:56
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Insurrectionist posted:Trying to figure out her thoughts on things feels futile to me. Yeah, this sums up a lot of the story as a whole for me. There are tons of really interesting setups, but the vast majority of the time it feels like we genuinely do not have the tools or information to understand what's going on. That might work better in an edited novel, but WB already struggles with structure and pacing, and when you have a character whose entire background, motivations, and role in the story are highlighted as a mystery, then steadfastly not explained for months it can get really frustrating as a reader.
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Nov 17, 2018 21:18
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Omi no Kami posted:The way the goddess thing shook out, in particular, really bugs the crap out of me. To be fair, Amy may not have known that control issues were a big manifestation of Victoria's pathology, but how could she have possibly thought that more mind control, followed by whatever trying to grope her in the dark was (I assume rewriting her brain again, to undo the mind control), would've made things better?
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Nov 17, 2018 22:13
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PetraCore posted:Yeah, I've been assuming the touch in the dark was planned to render Victoria immune to Goddess' control. Which is genuinely useful! Less useful is doing it in surprise without Victoria's consent when Victoria knows more than anyone how a single touch from Amy can spiral into hell. Plus, it just doesn't seem like a great idea- to be fair, we don't know what Amy's plan was, but given how hyper-aggro and straightforward Victoria is, wouldn't freeing her have instantly lit her up like a christmas tree on goddess's threat radar? (Although V vs. G doesn't end in our heroes' favor nine times out of ten, so it'd be funny if the reason she and Amy didn't light up was simply because even with all of their resources turned towards screwing her over, they weren't able to pose a detectable threat.)
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Nov 17, 2018 22:51
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PetraCore posted:Yeah, I've been assuming the touch in the dark was planned to render Victoria immune to Goddess' control. Which is genuinely useful! Less useful is doing it in surprise without Victoria's consent when Victoria knows more than anyone how a single touch from Amy can spiral into hell. I don't really believe that was it for two reasons. First, I feel like it would have come up by now if that was the real reason. It wouldn't HAVE to but it feels weird to leave that hanging unanswered this long after the situation's done with. Second, if she could and wanted to cure it that comes with a host of other questions. Why didn't she cure any of the other members of Breakthrough, either before or after trying to touch Victoria? And it would seem very arbitrary if she couldn't spread such a cure the same way she spread the cure for Bonesaw's mist, by just putting it in one person and letting them spread it naturally - in which case she wouldn't even have to touch Victoria to cure her.
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Nov 17, 2018 23:00
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I can definitely believe that she wasn't trying to de-goddess her, except if that wasn't her intent, what the heck was she trying to do? That whole sequence comes off as super-freaking-weird- assuming Victoria wasn't just being much more unreliable of a narrator than usual and Amy really was attempting to touch her in the dark, freaking why? The only remotely logical thing I can think of is that it was Amy trying to prove that she wasn't a threat by touching her sister and not turning her into a gay fleshsquid, but that's a very weird time and place to do it (and also a terrible idea).
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Nov 17, 2018 23:33
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It's an interesting question, and one that I personally feel is best answered by looking at it as a consistent thread through their relationship so far. First time Amy freaks out and does everything wrong, it's because she's trying to create and maintain distance, and Victoria doesn't let her. Once Victoria is there anyway, she fucks everything up. This is kinda flipped in the finale when she's the one approaching Victoria to fix her. After the Vick-blob is created, she seemed to be doing great for ages, right? But notice that, besides looking at it as an act of penance, the most obvious effect of her going to the Birdcage is that it removes her from the people and places she's scared to do harm to. After Worm finishes and Ward starts, she continues to stay away from Victoria - granted at Vicky's request this time, but nevertheless distance is maintained. Now consider the two times they meed in Ward - the garden party and the touchy incident. Both times she ended up in near Victoria through the machinations of others - Carol the first time, Goddess the other. And both times she ends up loving up and breaching Victoria's boundaries. Granted she didn't get nearly as far the first time, but she did go running after Victoria despite that being an obvious Bad Idea. The trend seems to be that Amy knows she should leave Victoria alone and complies with it in a general sense, but for whatever reason her decisionmaking goes to poo poo if plan A of 'stay away' fails. This also adds an interesting dimension to her decision to leave for another earth entirely now. The one weakness to this idea though is she's pretty close to Victoria in the Dot interlude and, while frustrated/angry at the situation, she certainly doesn't act on anything or seem to be suffering mentally or anything.
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Nov 17, 2018 23:48
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I mean, even if Amy touched Victoria and didn't do anything, I really doubt Victoria would believe she didn't do anything. But I don't think Amy was acting rationally in that scene in the first place.Insurrectionist posted:The trend seems to be that Amy knows she should leave Victoria alone and complies with it in a general sense, but for whatever reason her decisionmaking goes to poo poo if plan A of 'stay away' fails. This also adds an interesting dimension to her decision to leave for another earth entirely now.
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Nov 18, 2018 00:02
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Omi no Kami posted:Plus, it just doesn't seem like a great idea- to be fair, we don't know what Amy's plan was, but given how hyper-aggro and straightforward Victoria is, wouldn't freeing her have instantly lit her up like a christmas tree on goddess's threat radar? (Although V vs. G doesn't end in our heroes' favor nine times out of ten, so it'd be funny if the reason she and Amy didn't light up was simply because even with all of their resources turned towards screwing her over, they weren't able to pose a detectable threat.) Yeah, this is a big argument against the touch being intended to free her from Goddess's control. Also, if that was her intent, wouldn't Goddess have gotten a threat reading from Amy? Though I guess it may have taken into account the fact that her attempt would fail.
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Nov 18, 2018 05:58
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Ytlaya posted:Yeah, this is a big argument against the touch being intended to free her from Goddess's control. Also, if that was her intent, wouldn't Goddess have gotten a threat reading from Amy? Though I guess it may have taken into account the fact that her attempt would fail. I think part of the issue is that it was never really made clear exactly how her threat radar worked- I think the official explanation for why Amy and Chris didn't ping it was something to the effect of "Amy wasn't doing anything herself, she was just maneuvering a guy she knew for a fact was about to horribly murder Goddess into a position to do it," but wasn't Goddess able to very precisely predict Teacher's offensive actions when he did the exact same thing? I dunno, maybe this is just my own subjective bias, but so much of that resolution tied into super-duper poorly-explained motivations and powers that I don't feel like there's much point in overanalyzing it.
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Nov 18, 2018 08:45
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3 new WTC for Patreon folks just hit
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Nov 18, 2018 14:12
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Man, Worth the Candle is good. It's smart and brutal and interesting and expansive and makes me feel things.
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Nov 19, 2018 10:58
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I really enjoy reading it. Some of the romance/interpersonal stuff feels really drawn out for goodness' sake Juniper, just sleep with the DMPC already so you can be surprised when she turns out to be a puppet, but that's consistent with what a troubled weirdo Juniper is, so it's more a personal dislike than a structural criticism. I'm genuinely curious to see where it'll go, though- the author recently said that it's more than halfway done, but it seems like there are a ton of dangling threads. Presumably they'll eventually end up skipping over some of the major quests in favor of resolving the campaign. Speaking of which, I do kind of miss the game as guiding structure- early on they were constantly going "Here are the quests/story threads the DM has for us, how can we tie them off in an optimal fashion before he gets bored and does something to kickstart our involvement," but it feels like a lot of the last, I dunno, 30-40 chapters (basically everything from Bottle Deer Pregnancy Legend onwards) has been a lot more of the party spinning its wheels while it tries to min/max itself. That's fun to read, for sure, but it seems like if you knew that you were living in a tabletop game with a jerkass DM whose principal motivation appears to be seeing you run through his campaign and tell a satisfying story, the very last thing you'd want to do is try to munchkin the party.
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Nov 19, 2018 19:03
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Omi no Kami posted:I really enjoy reading it. Some of the romance/interpersonal stuff feels really drawn out for goodness' sake Juniper, just sleep with the DMPC already so you can be surprised when she turns out to be a puppet, but that's consistent with what a troubled weirdo Juniper is, so it's more a personal dislike than a structural criticism. I’m just going to be mad if we don’t get to see Actual Cannibal Shia Lebouf. Did anybody else hear that noise? Imma go check it out.
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Nov 19, 2018 22:36
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| # ? Jun 4, 2024 00:25 |
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They’re going to summon him and Bethel will turn the tables on him and become a real loving haunted house. It’s going to be hilarious.
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Nov 19, 2018 23:10
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