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So apparently Cradle is a sociopath, lol. I'm a bit confused about what's going on with the powers. I initially was under the impression Rain now has all the emotion powers and Cradle has everything else, but apparently Cradle also has powerful emotion powers now? I'm curious how Victoria and company are going to get out of this situation, since Cradle is apparently very strong now and they're not really in a good position to directly fight. Rain's new (possibly temporary?) powers are pretty strong, since it seems like he also has an intuitive feel for how to use it to basically manipulate people. Knowing when to turn it off is a pretty big "upgrade," since it makes sense that stressing people out and then yanking away that stress could result in erratic behavior that causes problems for people. Also, what is up with the gear person's powers? Was it implied that they were part of some tinker contraption, or were they part of her body? A big part of me is wondering if one of Victoria's parents may bite it during this fight. Them being present for a fight where both sides are willing to kill seems to strongly suggest the possibility.
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Mar 16, 2019 19:36
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Ward: The deal with Rain's cluster's powers is that they each get tokens at the start of the dream which coorespond to the power which is strongest with them, and they can give them away to make themselves weaker in that power but the recipient stronger. Rain got pulled out of the dream early by Chastity so he didn't get to take any of the tokens with him, even his own, except for the ones which Love Lost threw at him right before she passed out or died or whatever the gently caress happened to her. Cradle took all the tokens left in the room with him when he left, on top of doing some weird fuckery with draining LL and Colt of their power which I guess March helped him with? Which is why he's a lot stronger.
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Mar 16, 2019 19:43
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The Shortest Path posted:Ward: The deal with Rain's cluster's powers is that they each get tokens at the start of the dream which coorespond to the power which is strongest with them, and they can give them away to make themselves weaker in that power but the recipient stronger. Rain got pulled out of the dream early by Chastity so he didn't get to take any of the tokens with him, even his own, except for the ones which Love Lost threw at him right before she passed out or died or whatever the gently caress happened to her. Cradle took all the tokens left in the room with him when he left, on top of doing some weird fuckery with draining LL and Colt of their power which I guess March helped him with? Which is why he's a lot stronger. Yeah, he definitely has LL and Colt's powers, because he copied the same method March is trying to do of immersing himself in their blood, etc (ew). I guess it's not clear how much of the emotion powers Love Lost still had before she gave all the rest of hers to Rain. I'm also not sure what happened to Snag's powers when he died; I'd normally assume they were divyed up among the remaining cluster members, but I don't remember Rain ever commenting on being stronger after Snag died. I know that a large part of Cradle's strategy has been to give his tinker tokens (that make people lose empathy in the same way as LL's make you angry) to the other members, though I'm not totally clear on what's the point of that was other than to make them more willing to cooperate with ethically questionable plans.
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Mar 16, 2019 20:02
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Ward: So I had a really goofy thought. You know how Tattletale's major utility in this story has been to stand there and numbly provide long stretches of exposition that WB couldn't figure out how to show instead of tell? Now with all the decapitation stuff, she is literally a talking head.
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Mar 16, 2019 21:08
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New MOL. Edit: I'm disappointed with the structure of MOL. I was hoping the post time-loop stuff would be a race to handle all the various different threads of people they care about and the dangers to them from inside the time-loop, but with real stakes in permadeath and opposition from Red Robe. Made more interesting by his identity. Instead RR is revealed anti-climatically and his identity isn't interesting, and the story is full of escalation into a bunch of random new threats like murderous angelic contracts and fleets of dragons. Tom Clancy is Dead fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Mar 18, 2019 |
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Mar 18, 2019 04:05
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MOL It is kind of annoying how cleanly segregated the pre and post timeloop parts of the story are but I don't really see a way around it. The only real pressing "race against time" stuff was probably the assassinations of the soul magicians which understandably get scrapped as soon as Zorian and Zach move to bring them into the loop so to speak. Most of the other conflict from the last 90 chapters was specifically aimed at escaping the loop - so stuff that obviously isn't applicable after they've escaped the loop. The only real urgent "hanging threads" I can think of are the big soul well (which is so tightly tied to the invasion that they couldn't solve one without solving the other) and...? I dunno what else. Just sort of trying to ensure Zorian's friends don't get murdered really? We've always known that their experience fighting off the invasion forces inside the loop was never going to be particularly meaningful (since the loop was cut off from other planes and, more pertinently, the other time travelers would throw a wrench into any plans made) so... I'm actually kind of happy that the new forces being introduced at the climax of the story have all been thoroughly foreshadowed in the story beforehand. We've always known that angels were super powerful assholes just sort of hanging around the sidelines of the story, so it was obvious they would appear directly at some point. The crazy guy with the wraith bombs had a whole arc that established him beforehand. And while the whole dragon thing is a bit out of left field it probably only feels that way to me because the arc that concerns the dragons is years old at this point. The Red Robe reveal and his ultimate goals are both kind of disappointing but... idk what else we could have expected really? When you have some mega powerful villain whos only characterization is that his identity is unknown, he had a lot of time on his hands, and he's probably a scummy betrayer. With just that much information ascribing any motivations to him other than the cliche "world domination" seems like it would be hard.
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Mar 18, 2019 11:41
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New Worth the Candle is out too. Good stuff as usual. A whole seven chapters, so in standard LitRPG web serial fashion it's about half a novel's worth of words. The comments on the thread over at r/rational also had a link to this amazing "cover art": 
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Mar 18, 2019 12:17
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MoL: I really don't think that a straight-up final battle was the right way to go for the finale- Z&Z grew so powerful during the loop that I think for any direct confrontation to pose a viable threat, it will end up being large and overwhelming enough that actually describing the fight would be tedious and necessarily abstract, which isn't fun. It's also really starting to strain my suspension of disbelief that they can't think of a way to involve the government without revealing their own identities, since multiple people at multiple times have said in-story 'Yeah, if you get the government involved the cult's plan to revive whats-his-face becomes borderline-impossible to pull off'. This is more down to personal preference, but I wish the big confrontation had come down to clandestine intelligence-gathering and small, desperate fights when one faction or the other got caught flat-footed. That was really fun to read about for most of the story, and it's a category of task that Z&Z's raw combat power and wide magical utility don't act as instant win buttons for.
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Mar 18, 2019 20:44
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So I just saw the "cover art" image for MoL on Royal Road and lol. Is that supposed to be Zach in the upper left?
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Mar 18, 2019 20:56
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Yeah I dunno. Not sure why he didn't go with this way better art: https://goo.gl/images/UEr5kL
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Mar 18, 2019 23:11
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Cicero posted:Yeah I dunno. Not sure why he didn't go with this way better art: https://goo.gl/images/UEr5kL
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Mar 19, 2019 00:04
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probably cause royal road has really strict image size limits for covers
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Mar 19, 2019 02:54
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TWI is back today for Patreon subscribers. It looks like we’re gonna be getting Ryoka stuff for a while, so I might have to check back in a month or two.
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Mar 19, 2019 16:19
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Silynt posted:TWI is back today for Patreon subscribers. It looks like we’re gonna be getting Ryoka stuff for a while, so I might have to check back in a month or two. It was actually good, though this arc is going to be silly or painful. At least they don't sparkle.
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Mar 19, 2019 16:59
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Meh, I don’t want to get too down on your creative choices, but I waited over two weeks for this? 15,000 words worth of uninteresting slice of life of the least liked character in the series is a lovely start to an arc even with the vampire bit at the end. If you want to reintroduce Ryoka why do it via the most boring aspects of her life? A third of the way through the chapter I understood where she was at in her life and I started looking for the POV change which was would allow for a gradual reintroduction of the antisocial runner in the story of the hyper social innkeeper. But nope it’s been 6 days and nothing of note has happened to Erin, Rags, Gnolls, or antinium. At the start of the chapter I did care what has happened to Ryoka. After 15,000 boring words I say let her die. Can we get back to the real story please?
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Mar 19, 2019 18:19
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Hey remember when one of the arcs started with like 5 miserable chapters of Flos?
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Mar 19, 2019 19:22
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Oh my god those Flos chapters were the loving worst. He's just so loving boring, and the few times he's not he just does, like, random poo poo and it works for some reason?
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Mar 19, 2019 19:37
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Cicero posted:Oh my god those Flos chapters were the loving worst. He's just so loving boring, and the few times he's not he just does, like, random poo poo and it works for some reason? I don't think it was random, I think he was figuring out what he could get out of the earth siblings in regards of his King powers. Remember, his shtick is conquest / invasion and he was getting off his melancholy rear end to start doing that again. Flos knows a lot about the mechanics of the world, so it's less random and more him knowing what he has to do for all his class mechanics to work out. That or I could just be glossing over those chapters, that were indeed boring. I do remember him being one of the more savvy people in power. I also want him to loose, and gently caress that entire civilization, I hate slavery.
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Mar 19, 2019 19:49
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went back to the check what I thought about Flos at the time and Lone Goat posted:Man I hope this Flos storyline in Wandering Inn gets interesting soon, it's boring as hell right now. yep checks out. I don't have a hate boner for Ryoka like everyone else does, and I enjoyed the chapter. Lone Goat fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Mar 19, 2019 |
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Mar 19, 2019 19:52
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Flos was all about the power of the charisma of the king, but told very explicitly (and badly) instead of being shown.
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Mar 19, 2019 20:05
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ryoka is good, actually, and i liked flos well enough it was the extended wistram interlude that broke me personally although wistram was pretty cool objectively
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Mar 19, 2019 21:11
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Occasionally I consider reading Wandering Inn but this thread always makes me hold back and find something else. Every few weeks something seems to be very bad in TWI, and it's not too often the same thing over and over.
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Mar 19, 2019 21:25
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I like Ryoka a lot despite her issues, but both Flos and the Wistram interludes were extremely boring and bad imo. The thing that got me to drop the story was the lead up to the Rags vs. Emperor fight though, because if I wanted to read about terrible things happening to people for no good reason I'd just read the back half of Worm again. I'll get back to it eventually when I'm in a better headspace for reading depressing poo poo.
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Mar 19, 2019 21:28
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Jade Mage posted:Occasionally I consider reading Wandering Inn but this thread always makes me hold back and find something else. Every few weeks something seems to be very bad in TWI, and it's not too often the same thing over and over. it's very good, by breaking point i definitely didn't mean i stopped reading. it's just an extended flashback that took a bit too long to resolve or which should have been interwoven with non-flashback chapters. the most recent book felt kind of overambitious to me with too many character povs but other than that i really can't recommend TWI enough
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Mar 19, 2019 22:16
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Jade Mage posted:Occasionally I consider reading Wandering Inn but this thread always makes me hold back and find something else. Every few weeks something seems to be very bad in TWI, and it's not too often the same thing over and over. Whether you'd enjoy it is heavily dependent upon what other web serials (or similar media) you are able to enjoy/tolerate. If you've read and enjoyed a bunch of other web novels/web serials, there's a good chance you'll also enjoy Wandering Inn (since it's pretty good as far as those go, even if I won't rank it among the best web serials). edit: I have a personal hypothesis about the wild success of Wandering Inn (that I'm pretty sure is far beyond literally every other Western web serial, including wildbow's stuff). I think that Wandering Inn basically manages to be very similar to a lot of the bigger, more popular Asian WNs in terms of the setting and game-y elements (like the Slime one, etc), but exists in a web ecosystem where more English-speakers are exposed to it and is written from a perspective that likely makes it a bit more palatable to your average person in the US/West. Most other Western web serials stick to more "conventional" fantasy fiction writing (and are better for it, IMO), but it prevents them from having quite the same addictive quality that leads a bunch of people to contribute to a Patreon, etc. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Mar 19, 2019 |
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Mar 19, 2019 22:42
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The Shortest Path posted:I like Ryoka a lot despite her issues, but both Flos and the Wistram interludes were extremely boring and bad imo. Honestly I actually kind of like Ryoka more than most, but she can be used really loving badly by pirateaba sometimes. Ryoka is at her worst when she's being a loving wunderkind that just happens to have a graduate understanding of chemistry, practical knowledge to explain siegeworks, and her loner tendencies just means that shes the one that cuts through all the bullshit and takes decisive action exactly when needed. She's great when she's a fuckup that can't stop relentlessly alienating everyone around her and continuously smashes her head against a brick wall thinking this time, this time her head'll break through! I really enjoyed her desperately trying to engage in basic social niceties and being paralyzed at the thought of going to say hi to the girl she's been living next to and professionally interacting with for months. That's an extremely relatable mood  . I'm not sure how I feel about her once again using her ingenuity to save the day but at this point I guess all characters are going to be able to pull something out of their asses so whatevs.Hopefully she continues in her quest to realize that the real treasure was, in fact, the friends we made along the way. Ytlaya posted:Whether you'd enjoy it is heavily dependent upon what other web serials (or similar media) you are able to enjoy/tolerate. If you've read and enjoyed a bunch of other web novels/web serials, there's a good chance you'll also enjoy Wandering Inn (since it's pretty good as far as those go, even if I won't rank it among the best web serials). Wait, seriously, TWI is bigger than wildbow???? I'm loving shocked by that. Granted I love this story but drat. What draws it to me, personally, is that at least as far the fantasy genre goes its shockingly optimistic, and not in a naive way. I also love how much text is spent on Erin figuring out the logistics of vaguely reproducing stuff from earth, and not even the good stuff just things that she kind of liked while she was going to school (and it finally turns out that it was honestly kind of lovely). Also, and this is kind of big for me, I have difficulty thinking of any fantasy work that has such a strong theme of violence always being horrible. Fantasy/litrpg has such a bad tendency of granting acceptable targets for violence.
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Mar 19, 2019 23:20
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I really enjoy TWI overall despite it's many flaws. It has really good slice of life chapters, has an interesting world, some of the characters are compelling, is good at evoking emotion, and I often don't know what is going to happen before it does (up to you if this is a good thing or a bad one). Ryoka and Flos are the unpopular POVs, and while you probably lose a lot from skipping Ryoka sections, you don't lose anything by skipping Flos. You can also skip Wistram and lose relatively little, if you aren't feeling that. ---- I don't think TWI is bigger than Wildbow - pirateba makes more Patreon money, but I suspect that's because she does the whole Patreon incentives thing.
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Mar 19, 2019 23:39
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Yeah when TWI is good, it's good. I really like a lot of the slice of life stuff, and some of the side character interludes are downright incredible. It's kinda crazy to me that she makes more money than Wildbow does though, but I guess patreon incentives are a thing.A big flaming stink posted:Honestly I actually kind of like Ryoka more than most, but she can be used really loving badly by pirateaba sometimes. I feel the exact same way about her in all of these ways!
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Mar 19, 2019 23:46
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Jade Mage posted:Occasionally I consider reading Wandering Inn but this thread always makes me hold back and find something else. Every few weeks something seems to be very bad in TWI, and it's not too often the same thing over and over. I peaced out after goblins became a recurring and boring part of the story and I don't feel the need to go back. Solidarity, stay strong. It's also better than WIldbow, because wildbow is actively seeking to be bleaker than Nietzsche without being that interesting. Anias fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Mar 20, 2019 |
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Mar 20, 2019 00:40
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It's me, I'm the awful person who really liked the Wistram interludes, to the point that I wanted a spinoff serial.
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Mar 20, 2019 00:55
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Argue posted:It's me, I'm the awful person who really liked the Wistram interludes, to the point that I wanted a spinoff serial.
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Mar 20, 2019 01:52
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I have some unformed thoughts about how Ryoka and Erin are different forms of the Mary Sue self insert which is interesting since I don't think I've ever seen both kinds before but the only way I can sum it up right now is that "I can be yuor angle or your devil" meme but for Mary Sues. Pretend I posted it here but Imgur on mobile is trash
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Mar 20, 2019 03:08
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Argue posted:It's me, I'm the awful person who really liked the Wistram interludes, to the point that I wanted a spinoff serial. I liked Wistram and I really like the goblin bits! I'm essentially Hitler, when it comes to TWI!
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Mar 20, 2019 04:00
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No, that’s obviously Laken.
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Mar 20, 2019 04:01
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I could read twi as a slice of life innkeeping fantasy interspersed with dungeondelving. The rest is pretty bad overall.
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Mar 20, 2019 09:09
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Prac Guide: The tone of this chapter was very weird to me, in the contrast between Juniper and Vivienne's circumstances. I mean there's a lot of other things to wonder about regarding Vivienne now and the conversation that was skipped over, but that's pure speculation stuff at this point. The entire confrontation/lecture with Juniper is framed very much as Cat starting to act as a leader of a nation and army more than a band of friends, and holding her general accountable and making sure they all learn from the failures of the campaign so far. Which makes a decent amount of sense both as a framing of Juniper's situation, and Cat's progress in her role as the queen of Callow. This is really weird when the same general sentiment and attitude seems to be applied to Vivienne for multiple reasons. The most obvious one is that Juniper is the leader of an army through and through - it's not just the position she holds, but also what she's trained for and what she aspires to be. Vivienne is the absolute opposite of a regent in basically every way - the story has beaten us over the head with this. She's somewhat of a lone wolf (pre-Woe at the very least), she has no interest or love for civics or leadership despite her training as a noble-born lady, she lacks self-confidence both in general and specifically regarding her ability to contribute, in particular when given unfamiliar work, she had to basically be emotionally blackmailed to even take up the position. And she didn't have the respect and weight in the job that Cat had either, with basically anyone besides kind of Hakram - not in the army, not at court, not with the Callowan nobility, etc. Criticizing her for poor work seems eminently pointless because A: she has no drive or reason to learn because she never wants to do the job again, B: she had to be manipulated and forced into the role in the first place, and C: Cat knew perfectly well she was a bad fit for the job - just the only one available given Hakram was unsuited to doing it alone - when she made the decision to make her regent in the first place. Simply put, 100% of the blame for anything she did wrong falls squarely on Cat's head for abandoning Callow to traipse around in the Everdark for months without finding a PROPER Regent to take her place. And even as constructive criticism it's pointless since as mentioned theoretically Vivienne should never have to be regent again (if she can help it anyway).
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Mar 20, 2019 18:09
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PracGuide: I'm a bit confused by Cat's characterization in recent post-Everdark chapters. Up until recently there has been this focus on "Cat is back to her pre-Winter self in many respects, and is all fun/witty/whatever like she used to be in the past," but now it's taking a "Cat is forced to become manipulative and abandon her emotional connections and is following a similar path to Black" angle. I also agree with Insurrectionist about it being kind of dumb to blame Vivienne much for making mistakes in a role she never desired in the first place. All of this being said, the series has been pretty good in the past about acknowledging Catherine's character flaws, so it's entirely possible that we're not supposed to agree with her actions.
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Mar 20, 2019 19:41
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She’s being hard on Vivienne because she wants Vivienne to become Queen when this is all over. And even if Vivienne didn’t originally want the Role of Regent, she clearly was growing into it, as seen by the repeatedly mentioned changes to her physical appearance. Months ago, whenever it was that we last saw her, Vivienne herself was commenting on her hair growing and how that hadn’t happened since she became Thief. She’s transitioning to a new Role.
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Mar 20, 2019 20:03
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Silynt posted:She’s being hard on Vivienne because she wants Vivienne to become Queen when this is all over. And even if Vivienne didn’t originally want the Role of Regent, she clearly was growing into it, as seen by the repeatedly mentioned changes to her physical appearance. Months ago, whenever it was that we last saw her, Vivienne herself was commenting on her hair growing and how that hadn’t happened since she became Thief. She’s transitioning to a new Role. Eh, it could just be that she's growing hair like a normal person because she lost her Name. My interpretation of all that was just "she's lost her Name because she no longer fills the associated Role." But that doesn't in any way imply that she's acquiring a new Role and/or Name, and if anything her continuing insecurity doesn't exactly give the impression that she's neatly slotting into this new Role.
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Mar 20, 2019 20:46
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Silynt posted:She’s being hard on Vivienne because she wants Vivienne to become Queen when this is all over. And even if Vivienne didn’t originally want the Role of Regent, she clearly was growing into it, as seen by the repeatedly mentioned changes to her physical appearance. Months ago, whenever it was that we last saw her, Vivienne herself was commenting on her hair growing and how that hadn’t happened since she became Thief. She’s transitioning to a new Role. The idea did strike me reading other comments but I agree that while possible, there's not too much indication that Vivienne is transitioning into a new role nor - given she had Hakram's help on the civic side of things and still hosed up bad - that she's doing particularly well as a ruler. Which would make it not just callous of Cat to basically thrust the job on her regardless of her wishes, but also pretty drat risky. I mean it's possible we missed something about that in the conversation that was skipped over, but if that's Cat's intentions it must have been one since before that convo.
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Mar 20, 2019 20:54
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