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Ward 13.1 Fuuuuuuuuuuck this got dark and also LOL Vista tit commentary
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Apr 2, 2019 20:56
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Ytlaya posted:This just raises more questions. Is Vista alive then? And how would March have not noticed? Yes Vista is alive, and March didn't know because she was arrogant enough to always walk away from explosions like an anime / action movie character. It's a really well set up takedown of her as a character, between that and the huge underestimation of everyone she fought against biting her in the rear end when she thought she was at her ultimate victory. I'm of the opinion at this point that this Arc is the best in Ward, if not all of Parahumans tbh. So many great character arcs and the payoff of that interlude was hype as gently caress.
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Apr 2, 2019 21:07
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TWI Patreon: Kind of a disappointing start to the Doctor arc, considering how awesome the previous ones were. I suppose it was necessary to set up this arc, but I honestly think most of the flashbacks could have been easily omitted to benefit the pacing of the chapter. Luckily the next chapter or two should be interesting
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Apr 2, 2019 21:21
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Ytlaya posted:This just raises more questions. Is Vista alive then? And how would March have not noticed? she is alive because she fought march in exactly the way march suggested she would be uncounterable if she did. and then march lost the fight at the end because of the biggest weakpoints of thinkers, incomplete data.
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Apr 2, 2019 21:45
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:I agree. Which ones would you say fall into that expository/foreshadowing category? I like hearing the stuff people find they don't enjoy as much. The conversations between the acts were particularly egregious, but also basically everything marked with "source:" and a few of the other POV interludes that were set in the present. Yeah, I think the structure of Act 2 has been a lot better and kept me more engaged as I was blasting through it. I usually took a break starting during the sets of interludes, so the single interludes mean I'm lot more likely to keep consistently reading NAH from week to week. Omi no Kami posted:Hmm yeah, that's a really interesting point about the outsider angle that I hadn't considered. I think one of the big challenges for Act 1 is rooted in structure more than content- everyone's stuff is interesting, I never found myself saying "I don't want to read this"... but I did find myself saying "I don't want to read this right now," because in many cases it wasn't obvious how each section connected, and leopard's stuff had the tendency to pop up right in the middle of something neat happening somewhere else. Seconding this. I could tell they were going to intersect, but the separate casts meant that it took me a long time to care about any of the characters. Argue posted:Abandoned: These three are all somewhat close to being abandoned by me. I don't mind the dungeon grind aspect of The Daily Grind, but I think the author started to have a lot less fun when the updates became slow and irregular, and it shows in the story. WTC is always on the border of "is this compelling enough to get past the bad and the weird?" I'm currently at the copy of Juniper's life inside Aerb and I don't know if I'm ever going to get past it. It might be the straw that broke the camel's back. The Iron Teeth seemed more planned out earlier in the story, and there's only so much I can take of Blacknail's voice.
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Apr 2, 2019 22:28
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Tom Clancy is Dead posted:The conversations between the acts were particularly egregious, but also basically everything marked with "source:" and a few of the other POV interludes that were set in the present. Oh yeah, the Conversations were just a way for me to get two weeks of quick updates while I was manipulating my outline/s. They're not critical, and hopefully someone could skip them and still follow the story without issue, but they're puzzle pieces for the audience who like that side of things. For example (very minor Sabra/Incarnate related spoiler that I assume everyone has picked up on but you never know), the reason Sabra is loathe to remove her braids is that Incarnate is the one who did them for her.
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Apr 3, 2019 02:34
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A big flaming stink posted:TWI Patreon: To steal a phrase, while this may not be the beginning of the end, it definitely feels like the end of the beginning. For all I talk smack on her ability to write action scenes, pirateaba is really loving excellent at writing denouement. Hah, I see why you said this now. I freakin love road trip arcs! And I think there's like a 100% chance that Erin's level 40 skill is gonna be [Wandering Inn], or a class change to [Wandering Innkeeper], maybe resulting in multiple active portals in the inn. I know pirateaba said that they're leaving big wars behind for a while so I hope this means it swerves into my favorite trope, uplift fantasy, especially with Lyonette being very enthusiastic to import Earth technologies. Uplift stuff pairs much more favorably with slice of life in my eyes, rather than with weapons, which a lot of western uplift fiction seems to love obsessing over. Argue fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Apr 3, 2019 |
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Apr 3, 2019 08:02
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we obsess over it because our global culture is dominated by europe and europe's domination had pretty much everything to do with metallurgy, access to good iron and good coal. its what made armor plate and chainmail more viable, made terico squares and muskets more viable, etc
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Apr 3, 2019 18:17
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Posting to point towards the forum's own blake island series, which just finished its first year 2 book The Voice of Dog. It continues to have fun kid characters and this latest book starts bringing the political elements of Icephisherman's setting to the forefront. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3835049 The Voice of Dog starts here https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3835049&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=92#post484349445
atrus50 fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Apr 3, 2019 |
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Apr 3, 2019 22:04
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atrus50 posted:Posting to point towards the forum's own blake island series, which just finished its first year 2 book The Voice of Dog. It continues to have fun kid characters and this latest book starts bringing the political elements of Icephisherman's setting to the forefront. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3835049 The Voice of Dog starts here https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3835049&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=92#post484349445 I'll second this suggestion. Icephisherman is an entertaining author.
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Apr 3, 2019 22:16
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I'm thinking about trying out Forge of Destiny. Has anyone read both the royal road and forum versions? Should I read the edited version as it comes out or dive into the forum one in reader mode? I'm not interested in the CYOA discussion.
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Apr 4, 2019 05:18
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Tom Clancy is Dead posted:I'm thinking about trying out Forge of Destiny. Has anyone read both the royal road and forum versions? Should I read the edited version as it comes out or dive into the forum one in reader mode? I'm not interested in the CYOA discussion. I read it using reader mode and it was totally fine, that's the route I'd go, but I haven't looked at the edited version yet so I wouldn't know for sure.
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Apr 4, 2019 18:54
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Been reading TWI. Just wrapped up the first chapter and looking back, Erin has turned out to be a way more effective and prolific killer than Ryoka. Kind of weird given how angry and fighty Ryoka is. Especially since a lot of Ryoka's problems could be solved by even more violence.Tom Clancy is Dead posted:I'm thinking about trying out Forge of Destiny. Has anyone read both the royal road and forum versions? Should I read the edited version as it comes out or dive into the forum one in reader mode? I'm not interested in the CYOA discussion. RR is better in my opinion. Especially if you're not interested in the CYOA stuff. You can switch to the forum version once you reach the end on RR if you want, but there's a significant drop in writing quality when you do. One thing that I didn't realize until I started reading the forum version is that not infrequently decisions that are being made get left out in the writeup; so there will be oddly out of place passages or references to something that only happened in the discussion thread. For example, one of the running themes of the story is that all cultivators take tons of drugs to help them cultivate and the writeups make references to this, but never discuss which drugs the MC is taking at any given time so all the references seem to come out of left field. There's also a whole resource management minigame going on in the forum version which the author just doesn't translate effectively into the writeups. You'll sometimes see the MC very concerned about running out of money (red soul stones) even though you almost never read about them spending money. When that happens it is because the MC is broke (again) because all the money got spent in a CYOA vote. FWIW, the RR version is better about this than the forum writeups. Even with all that, it is still one of the best cultivation serials I've read.
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Apr 5, 2019 14:52
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Tom Clancy is Dead posted:I'm thinking about trying out Forge of Destiny. Has anyone read both the royal road and forum versions? Should I read the edited version as it comes out or dive into the forum one in reader mode? I'm not interested in the CYOA discussion. Use the Royal Road until you catch up with all its content. While it has some editing, the main reason is that it includes some new interlude chapters with interesting content. But it's fine to switch to reader mode on the forum when you finish all the RR content.
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Apr 5, 2019 17:56
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I'm realizing that one of the reasons I like Prac Guide so much is that while it's YAish power fantasy, it's not juvenile power fantasy. No one in the story gets more power without drawbacks, politics are a major force checking the exercise of power, and decisions have weight and consequence.
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Apr 6, 2019 00:59
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drat, Mother of Learning is really good. The setting is pretty well thought out even though it only gives you a piece or two at a time. I thought at first it was just the typical web novel making poo poo up as you go kind of thing, but the author had to have planned it out, at least in broad strokes. It's cool how they managed to combine the 1700s technology with magic being fairly widespread and highly developed without falling into traps other settings have, like 'oh nobody ever bothered inventing guns or trains or large sailing vessels because magic makes economics irrelevant'. I guess that says nothing for how or why it's a good story, but I spent a lot of time working on ideas for MUDs as a kid where setting is a thousand times more important than compelling narrative so I guess it impresses me
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Apr 6, 2019 07:03
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Ward: I know that nobody reads WB stories expecting deep insight into social issues or public policy, but "Let's dump a bunch of vulnerable and emotionally or socially compromised killers into the middle of the woods for years at a time and trust isolation and savagery to rehabilitate them" seems like an absurdly bad plan even for parahumans characters. On the other hand, Australia ended up being pretty cool so maybe it'll all work out.
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Apr 7, 2019 02:44
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Omi no Kami posted:Ward: I know that nobody reads WB stories expecting deep insight into social issues or public policy, but "Let's dump a bunch of vulnerable and emotionally or socially compromised killers into the middle of the woods for years at a time and trust isolation and savagery to rehabilitate them" seems like an absurdly bad plan even for parahumans characters. I think you're misreading it. I don't think they're being put together. They were all being sent to different locations. I believe they're all completely by themselves (which is honestly kinda hosed up and pretty inhumane as far as punishment goes). It's basically the next closest thing to an execution. They have no place they can keep the parahumans in question, so this is the only way they could get them away from society without outright killing them. I don't think it's rehabilitation either, since I don't think they're ever returned to our society? I may have missed something with regard to that though. Though if that's the case I feel like it actually would have been better to send them all to the same place. Certainly better than literally being stranded in the wilderness alone forever. Completely unrelated, but for some reason I'm getting a bizarre sense of deja vu typing this post.
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Apr 7, 2019 06:38
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the most recent chapter mentioned sending colt to the exile earth for her sentence of three and a half years
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Apr 7, 2019 06:47
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violent sex idiot posted:the most recent chapter mentioned sending colt to the exile earth for her sentence of three and a half years Yeah, that's the part that really bugs me. Like, execute someone without due process? Sure, that's kinda lovely but they did it in Worm and I can understand how they'd get there even if I disagree. Exile someone forever? That starts to get edgier, since banishing someone to the boonies because you can't stomach killing them but don't want them around edges awfully close to cruel and unusual punishment. But unless I totally misread it, they are very explicitly sending people to an empty planet with nothing but other villains for a set length of time, then bringing them back. I can't possibly see any value in that; best-case scenario, they get eaten by a bear or something and die under your duty of care. Worst case scenario they survive their sentence, and now they're pissed as hell, still have the powers that made them too dangerous to imprison, and are now free.
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Apr 7, 2019 07:20
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Omi no Kami posted:On the other hand, Australia ended up being pretty cool so maybe it'll all work out. This is demonstrably untrue
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Apr 7, 2019 07:22
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Gitro posted:This is demonstrably untrue Exhibit A 
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Apr 7, 2019 08:58
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a debased nation, that would elect such a man to lead them
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Apr 7, 2019 12:07
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I'm amazed nobody has brought up peter garrett's dance moves... if ever there was an S-class threat to the world. 
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Apr 7, 2019 12:53
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, that's the part that really bugs me. Like, execute someone without due process? Sure, that's kinda lovely but they did it in Worm and I can understand how they'd get there even if I disagree. Exile someone forever? That starts to get edgier, since banishing someone to the boonies because you can't stomach killing them but don't want them around edges awfully close to cruel and unusual punishment. But unless I totally misread it, they are very explicitly sending people to an empty planet with nothing but other villains for a set length of time, then bringing them back. I can't possibly see any value in that; best-case scenario, they get eaten by a bear or something and die under your duty of care. Worst case scenario they survive their sentence, and now they're pissed as hell, still have the powers that made them too dangerous to imprison, and are now free. Oh, well, in that case it could be that the exile is only temporary contingent on some sort of Thinker analysis or something that indicates they're safe to return. I mean, it's definitely not a good idea, but it's also hard to think of much better. Does the new chapter mention if they're actually living with other criminals? I just remember the one I read mentioning that they were all being sent to different places, but maybe those places have other parahumans sent there as well. If they don't have other parahumans, it's definitely cruel and unusual punishment. If they do...well, that's not really worse than the Birdcage. It's actually good to know that they will let them return for cases like the addict guy At least it's a legitimate problem they're doing this in response to. I mean, it's hard to really think of an alternative for many of these cases, since you can't just control them through normal measures.
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Apr 7, 2019 18:10
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I'm reading through Release that Witch now. If you like Wandering Inn and can stomach bad translations, you'll probably like it. It has a vaguely similar premise: a Chinese mechanical engineer gets dropped into the body of a lecherous prince in a medieval fantasy world, and ruthlessly exploits his advanced science/tech knowledge while also spreading modern-ish values. It has a lot of different viewpoint characters, but unlike TWI they almost always feel relevant to the main plot. Also it's insanely long, I'm 600 chapters in, granted the chapters are way shorter than TWI, but still.
Cicero fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Apr 7, 2019 |
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Apr 7, 2019 19:26
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Cicero posted:I'm reading through Release that Witch now. If you like Wandering Inn and can stomach bad translations, you'll probably like it. It has a vaguely similar premise: a Chinese mechanical engineer gets dropped into the body of a lecherous prince in a medieval fantasy world, and ruthlessly exploits his advanced science/tech knowledge while also spreading modern-ish values. It has a lot of different viewpoint characters, but unlike TWI they almost always feel relevant to the main plot. Also it's insanely long, I'm 600 chapters in, granted the chapters are way shorter than TWI, but still. isn't that work really r/atheism?
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Apr 7, 2019 19:34
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Ytlaya posted:Oh, well, in that case it could be that the exile is only temporary contingent on some sort of Thinker analysis or something that indicates they're safe to return. I mean, it's definitely not a good idea, but it's also hard to think of much better. I think they're dumping everyone on the same planet spaced out in intervals, which is in itself kind of worrying- like, didn't they dump the pedophile child hypnotizer on that planet? And now they're talking about dumping the teenage girl that love lost worked with on the same planet? The whole thing just seems kinda blech. Like, I don't pretend to have any good ideas when it comes to criminal justice or rehabilitation, but this feels like a really, really terrible way to solve the problem.
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Apr 7, 2019 19:49
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IShallRiseAgain posted:isn't that work really r/atheism?
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Apr 8, 2019 11:07
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IShallRiseAgain posted:isn't that work really r/atheism? It's really more r/ChinaCommunism I read quite a bit, and it got to the part where in a western novel the character would have set up something more sustainable than an absolute dictator ruling over a powerful central bureaucracy. Instead he just creates a secret police, civil service exam, legalizes torture as a form of evidence gathering for crimes, and figures out how to print realistic photo-ID cards with 18th century technology in order to perpetuate his surveillance state. It was at the point where torturing someone for domestic crimes was cool and good that I stopped reading. Maybe at some point later in the story he gives up absolute power but I lost interest.
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Apr 8, 2019 19:42
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SerCypher posted:It's really more r/ChinaCommunism The author is definitely Chinese culturally, and it often shows, but I think this interpretation tells more about you than it does the story.
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Apr 8, 2019 22:04
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I wouldn't call RTW /r/atheism because while it's true that there are in-universe reasons why "The Church" of the story is a not great organization (although they are ultimately pursuing a greater good so it's not like they're just flat evil or anything) its also pretty much nothing like any real world religious organization? Like I would really struggle to draw any parallels between "The Church" of RTW and any real life religion, other than the names. Spoilers The Church in RTW was literally founded 400ish years before the story begins for the sole purpose of fighting off an invasion from a hostile species and they don't have any theology to speak of other than "strengthen humanity so that they can withstand the threat" Also I don't really remember the torture that other guy is talking about? iirc doesn't he have some friend with a bullshit magic power that lets them see through all lies that he uses to interrogate people? And he doesn't create a "secret" police he just creates... police. You know, to do the police work that literally any society needs to have done. Like, a part of their work is trying to root out the assassins trying to kill him but mostly they're just police. One of the interludes from the police officer POV is literally just rooting out some random murderer. The biggest problem I could put my finger on wrt RTW is that the main guy is very much "the main character" that like 90% of plot progression revolves around despite it being a kingdom building type of story. To draw a comparison in "A Heroes War" (which is a similar story talked about upthread I think) the main character is also an engineer in a fantasy world but that guy doesn't remember a lot of stuff and a lot of the story revolves around him trail-and-erroring to rediscover more advanced technology than the what's in the setting and to do this he spreads his knowledge around and ropes a bunch of other people from the setting in to help him by founding a university or by leaking a little bit of knowledge to a merchant so that they can extrapolate from that and advance the tech for him and other stuff like that. Otoh RTW guy centralizes all the knowledge in himself and gets a powerup so he can remember all of his old textbooks perfectly until it gets to the point that it really seems like the whole civilization he's building is revolving entirely around him personally and without him, the magical lynchpin holding the world together, it would all fall apart. which is a pro or a con depending on how you look at it I guess
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Apr 9, 2019 02:36
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Errr maybe you guys just skimmed through it? quote:The prince nodded. The Sand Nation's interrogation methods were indeed unique, but he was not interested in the specifics or the humanity of Iron Axe's process, as long as it got the job done. He cleared his throat, sat down on the long wooden bench near the cell, and asked the Priest through the bars, "What's your name?" Also how he sets up the public security bureau is separate and above the police and takes action based on anonymous accusations from the citizens. The protagonist does admit this system will only work because one of his staff has magical truth telling powers though. A lot of his measures and movements feel right out of Mao's playbook, including having secret trials for enemies of the state, then bringing them before a crowd to publicly humiliate them and mock them before their execution. You're right that some of this is me reading into it, but I'm a big fan of the last 100 years of chinese history, and I think the author is too based on all the references to battles in the Chinese Civil war or against the Japanese. The little education plays he puts on are super similar to the ones described in Red Star over china, and a lot of his industrial/agricultural polices feel like "What if Mao had magical powers and was always right and everyone listened to him." That doesn't mean it can't be enjoyed and I read like 600 chapters of it, but it did start to feel like "What if a North Korean Dictator wrote a series from their perspective."
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Apr 9, 2019 07:20
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Please tell me his first name is Hippo.
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Apr 9, 2019 07:33
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600 chapters is exactly the point where I stopped reading that, for the same reasons. This isn't comparable to TWI at all as suggested above, considering the main character decided to make trials into a public spectacle and yeah the secret police and and also he started handing out guns willy nilly. There was even this one part where he grandiosely claimed that noncombat witches could definitely defeat combat witches and I was excited to see the noncombat witches creatively use their powers (which they'd been experimenting with) to defeat the fighters... except his solution was just to give them a loving gun.
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Apr 9, 2019 08:29
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Argue posted:600 chapters is exactly the point where I stopped reading that, for the same reasons. This isn't comparable to TWI at all as suggested above, considering the main character decided to make trials into a public spectacle and yeah the secret police and and also he started handing out guns willy nilly. There was even this one part where he grandiosely claimed that noncombat witches could definitely defeat combat witches and I was excited to see the noncombat witches creatively use their powers (which they'd been experimenting with) to defeat the fighters... except his solution was just to give them a loving gun. As for the other things, basically every country has some kind of internal security/spying force aside from just regular police, and I don't really see the problem in handing out guns to his people? You seem to have a real problem with guns, but in terms of establishing a military to fight other countries/demons why would you not? The similarity to TWI for me is the premise of a modern person dropped into a fantasy world using modern ideas, there's a decent amount of slice of life (not as much as TWI though), and lots of viewpoint characters. The protagonist's acceptance of torture does bother me (though it sounds like it's more psychological pressure than physically hurting people based on the descriptions), but I also appreciate that he's not as useless/aimless as the TWI protagonists. SerCypher posted:Errr maybe you guys just skimmed through it? quote:What if Mao had magical powers and was always right and everyone listened to him. Cicero fucked around with this message at 12:18 on Apr 9, 2019 |
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Apr 9, 2019 12:15
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Cicero posted:I viewed the public trials/spectacles as similar to the French Revolution, he's trying to rapidly change people's values to accept witches/reject nobility when they've had the nobility and been told witches are evil their whole lives, and the people in question were lovely enough to deserve it. Brutal, but probably effective.
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Apr 9, 2019 12:50
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IShallRiseAgain posted:Robespierre's reign of terror was the blueprint for a bunch of dictators, and led to the murder of a ton of innocents (some of whom coincidentally happened to be Robespierre's political enemies). These reign of terrors also have a tendency to target minorities that don't fit in perfectly into the new government created by the glorious revolution.
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Apr 9, 2019 12:58
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I dunno how but I actually did just forget his sand nation torturer guy. In hindsight yeah that is pretty hosed up. But even after being corrected on the police / secret police thing I stand by my previous statement since it all hinges on bullshit magic either way.Argue posted:600 chapters is exactly the point where I stopped reading that, for the same reasons. This isn't comparable to TWI at all as suggested above, considering the main character decided to make trials into a public spectacle and yeah the secret police and and also he started handing out guns willy nilly. There was even this one part where he grandiosely claimed that noncombat witches could definitely defeat combat witches and I was excited to see the noncombat witches creatively use their powers (which they'd been experimenting with) to defeat the fighters... except his solution was just to give them a loving gun.
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Apr 9, 2019 13:18
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having never read that book it sounds a lot like colonialism
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Apr 9, 2019 14:59
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