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Katreus posted:Now You Feel Like Number None (Bleach) has already been recced - great fights and great romance in an area of Bleach not often explored. Otherwise, I'm a big fan of Battle Action Harem Highschool Side Character Quest (original), which despite its horrendous name, is a fantastic take on the battle academy and mecha genre from the perspective of a traumatized child soldier, Panopticon (Old World of Darkness) for old spies, conspiracies, and disruptive phone calls, and To Be A Master (Pokemon / Your Name) for probably the best system (and correspondingly, great fights) I've seen for Pokemon battles, interesting musings on Pokemon mythology, and great duo protagonists. I like the idea and every aspect of Number None except for the dialogue but I literally can't handle that the dialogue from Nemo's POV isn't written
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Jun 7, 2019 16:20
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So I just read the latest Ward chapter, and holy poo poo the comments. This is some genuinely distressing stuff. I feel like wildbow included stuff like the victim being a blonde girl + the heavy implication that the personality alteration of the criminal capes was not voluntary + her teammates all thinking her reaction was reasonable to make it even clearer to these people, but it apparently did not work.Plorkyeran posted:PracGuide: So that's names lost for Cat, Vivienne and Akua, magic lost for Masego, and presumably Archer is going to lose something when she gets resurrected. That leaves Hakram as possibly the only Named left in the Woe, which makes me assume that isn't lasting long for him either. I feel like the nature of Hakram's Name implies that him losing it would require some significant change to his relationship with Cat.
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Jun 7, 2019 18:46
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Practical guide: I mean, Hakram has lost both his hands at this point. I wouldn’t say he’s lost nothing at this stage.
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Jun 7, 2019 20:37
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This is mostly comedic hyperbole, but if Amy kicked a puppy in the next chapter I wouldn't be surprised if the community consensus immediately became "The puppy was asking for it, Amy didn't plan on kicking it and was sorry afterwards, why is everyone obsessed with painting her as the villain here? Has anyone considered how kicking a puppy must make her feel?"
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Jun 7, 2019 23:31
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Sampatrick posted:I like the idea and every aspect of Number None except for the dialogue but I literally can't handle that the dialogue from Nemo's POV isn't written Nemo legitimately has maybe ten lines of spoken dialogue in the entire story, she's not actually speaking verbally unless the text is in her signature font, no matter what impression you might get otherwise. She communicates chiefly through expression, gesture, and carefully oriented spiritual energy flares as needed. The reason for this is that her Hollow Hole goes right through where her voicebox should be, and she finds speaking really uncomfortable. I think it was a joke originally playing up the silent protagonist meme, but the writer ran with it and turned it into a distinct character quirk--meaning that any time she does actually speak out loud gets noticed, since she has her own unique text color whenever she's saying something, and tends to save it for big keystone moments.
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Jun 8, 2019 00:11
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Omi no Kami posted:This is mostly comedic hyperbole, but if Amy kicked a puppy in the next chapter I wouldn't be surprised if the community consensus immediately became "The puppy was asking for it, Amy didn't plan on kicking it and was sorry afterwards, why is everyone obsessed with painting her as the villain here? Has anyone considered how kicking a puppy must make her feel?" this is the fanbase that internally justified away taylor shooting a baby in the head. of course the amy stans will hate the puppy
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Jun 8, 2019 00:27
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Velius posted:Practical guide: It's not that he hasn't lost anything; it's that he hasn't lost his Name and the rest of the Woe either have or may very soon. In addition, the Wandering Bard seems to be specifically arranging for this to happen, and she's clearly up to something complicated.
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Jun 8, 2019 00:42
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violent sex idiot posted:this is the fanbase that internally justified away taylor shooting a baby in the head. of course the amy stans will hate the puppy I had one person argue with me “if you think that Amy is such a bad person you must feel that Taylor was a villain who did horrible unforgivable things” like it was some kind of trump card. I mean, yeah, that was kind of the entire point of the novel but you got me.
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Jun 8, 2019 00:50
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People thinking Taylor was right is still more understandable to me, because at least Taylor didn't really do anything equivalent to what Amy did to Victoria (or generally treat another person directly in an extremely toxic way). The Amy/Victoria situation also has the even worse angle of people thinking that Victoria is somehow being unfair to Amy. The analogy a lot of people used in the comments was "a surgeon making a mistake," but the more accurate analogy is "a surgeon committing a crime." Like, wildbow explicitly included the it was done to a blonde girl angle to eliminate any doubts that this wasn't just a "slip of the knife" situation. It was someone hurting someone else because of an impulse, rather than a mistake occurring during an honest attempt at helping. He also included the "by the way she's also been loving with the minds of a bunch of criminals" angle to even further cement the fact that Amy is not upholding her side of the "become a better person" deal. I'm pretty sure what wildbow went out of his way to make the situation as unambiguous as possible specifically because he knew about the fan response, but it still wasn't enough! I think that a lot of this situation just comes down to peoples' initial perception of Victoria and Amy being of Victoria as some sort of she-Chad and Amy being a shy introvert like them, so they're preconditioned to sympathize with the latter. But even then! I'm imagining wildbow reading these comments, shaking his head, and just deleting all of Worm/Ward off the internet.
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Jun 8, 2019 02:01
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I’m kind of hoping that Any does something horrific in the next little bit, just so Victoria can turn to the camera and say “I loving told you so.”
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Jun 8, 2019 02:59
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Ytlaya posted:The analogy a lot of people used in the comments was "a surgeon making a mistake," but the more accurate analogy is "a surgeon committing a crime." Yeah, like, didn't WB explicitly compare the squid-enning to something like a surgeon dragging a random person into a derelict house and doing mad science on them? So yeah, I dunno- like, I can see how people get behind Taylor, since the whole story paints her in a positive and very deliberately deceptive light through her rationalizations and POV. Likewise with Just Call Me Aster Blaster, I think "Shooting the baby in the face saved it from a nontrivial chance of eternal torment" is a reasonable argument- personally I would've advised not shooting the baby in the face, and in retrospect that whole sequence comes off as so excessively over-the-top grimdark that I giggle every time I think about it, but I can totally see how people can be okay with Taylor's actions there. But with Amy it's, like, okay: the initial setup was actually decent- Amy freaked out and ordered Victoria not to touch her, Victoria hugged her, and Amy freaked out and reflexively shot her sister with her incest-o-matic, that's a fun foundation for a friendship to fall apart: Victoria is horrified by the incest and the brain rape, Amy feels as if it wasn't her fault because she articulated that she didn't want to be hugged, there's room to argue both sides and enough ambiguity that I think it's reasonable for both characters to feel that they're right and their sister is wrong. Where I lose the thread is when Amy keeps doing crimes, and everyone just kinda shrugs. So yeah, I dunno- this is one of those things where I feel silly being surprised by it, because I suspect it's all driven by the readership having an impression of the character that is so heavily entrenched that even the author himself going "Oh my gosh you guys, she's a brain rapin' squid machine" doesn't really move the needle, but every time we get a new round of YBUTA it really blows my mind and kinda weirds me out.
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Jun 8, 2019 06:23
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i havent read more than a chapter or two of ward but from the first book it always seemed like bone saw of all people was more relatable than panacea. Bone saw never wanted to do any of the stuff she had to, and it's not like escaping from jack is easy when hes one of the characters with bullshit superman like powers that can do anything. Whereas panacea just kind of stops caring what other people think and does whatever she wants, which is insanely horrifying when you can do literally anything to someone with a touch. honestly her power is terrifying. at least bone saw has to infect you with a magic super virus or do surgery on you first.
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Jun 8, 2019 09:11
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Larry Parrish posted:Bone saw never wanted to do any of the stuff she had to, and it's not like escaping from jack is easy when hes one of the characters with bullshit superman like powers that can do anything. Uh, you may want to re-read the earlier Slaughterhouse 9 stuff. Bonesaw was very, very into what she was doing. Do not give her a pass because she's young, she got out of that mind set because of Contessa's hints but she is a monster through and through. Jack did not force anyone into doing what they did. Oh and I like Bonesaw's character much more then Amy to be clear, both are monsters though.
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Jun 8, 2019 17:07
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Alectai posted:Nemo legitimately has maybe ten lines of spoken dialogue in the entire story, she's not actually speaking verbally unless the text is in her signature font, no matter what impression you might get otherwise. Man idk how I didn't get that in the text
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Jun 8, 2019 17:29
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In Bonesaw's defense, she was given her ludicrously traumatic experience as a child, so her "snapping" and basically fully giving into the impulses of her shard (which I think is more common with younger triggers) is more understandable. The thing about Amy is mostly that she has zero sense of empathy. She's kinda the definition of the person who is "sorry you're upset" instead of actually having any comprehension of the actual impact of their actions.
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Jun 8, 2019 17:35
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https://lightningbrigade.home.blog/2019/06/08/volume-1-act-1-chapter-7/ https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/25027/the-lightning-brigade/chapter/370054/chapter-7 Bluh, staying 7 chapters ahead of release has been a whole thing. So this is the first big important fight in the story, and the chapter that really clues you into what to expect from things to come. Anyone reading, I hope you enjoy
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Jun 8, 2019 18:11
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How old is Bonesaw supposed to be when we meet her? Don't little kids have like zero sense of empathy/morality anyway? Combined with the fact that she was forcibly kidnapped and brought along by a bunch of hosed up monsters before she ended up all psychopathic I feel like she gets way more of a pass than Amy does.
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Jun 8, 2019 19:25
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I'm seconding number none but its a problematic rec because its fan fic of a property that had one of the hardest falls from grace in the entire medium but it is pretty well written.
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Jun 8, 2019 19:47
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Looking at the Bonesaw / Panacea comparison is really interesting because they're fundamentally very similar but also the complete opposite of each other, both from a narrative/thematic perspective and a morality one. If you look at them from a purely utilitarian perspective that weighs only the net results of their actions overall (don't do this, it's dumb), Bonesaw is a horrible murderer that has caused untold suffering and Amy is a saint who has personally saved the lives of thousands even if you ignore her stopping the red plague and however much you wanna credit her for stopping Scion. But the actual reality of the situation is substantially more complicated, and when you look at them as people and judge their intentions, Riley is a much more sympathetic and redeemable person than Amy. She was kidnapped, tortured, abused, brainwashed, and forced to adopt the Bonesaw persona as a survival mechanism, and is now (presumably, we're still not sure what the gently caress is actually going on in the present) working toward bettering herself (for a given definition of bettering, granted) and doing things to help people, even if she will never be able to undo the enormous amount of damage she has caused to individuals and humanity as a whole. Amy has no personal responsibility, she is pathetic and self-loathing and desperate for approval and will seemingly go to any lengths to try to "redeem" herself even if she makes things catastrophically worse in the process. She makes excuses for her actions and cannot accept that she can't fix her mistakes. She has a lot of similarities to Taylor which is likely why so much of the fandom heavily sympathizes with her, but she's even worse in so many ways too.
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Jun 8, 2019 20:39
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TWI Patreon: That was really cool with an insanely disappointing end, so mission accomplished pirateaba! Also she's gonna give herself a loving RSI at this rate.
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Jun 8, 2019 21:51
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That ward chapter was all kinds of hosed up. And yet, I’m still seeing people defend Any after what she pulled in this one attempting to watch Vicky undress and even after being told to knock that poo poo off still taking peeks and offering healing. Are you loving nuts girl? .
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Jun 9, 2019 01:39
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It's so crazy to me that nobody in-universe seems to find Shin's behavior baffling and cartoonish. At this point, whenever a character goes 'the wardens are busy off-screen doing other important things' I just picture Valkyrie binging netflix or bouncing on a trampoline.
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Jun 9, 2019 02:05
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PracGuide: Fuckin' Larat.  Being outside of a Court (and hanging around with Catherine!) apparently made him just genre savvy enough to know he was extraordinarily super dead if he played the expected part, so he came up with a better idea.obviously, there's only one possibility for the worthiest ruler of the Twilight: Anaxares of Bellerophon, Actual Protagonist Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Jun 10, 2019 |
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Jun 10, 2019 07:01
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I'm wondering what Chris's goal is in this whole thing. It's kind of interesting how last we saw him/Amy it seemed like they had just pulled this big upset and were going off to rule a planet, and now it turns out the planet was basically just letting them stay and apparently they just hung around while Amy hosed things up and Chris did ??? and now they're kicking them out (but Chris doesn't seem to mind, and if anything seems to be purposefully exacerbating the situation). edit: Speaking of Amy, she is one of those parahumans who falls under the category of "could easily be dispatched by normal human weapons." She may be a living WMD who could start plagues and create various other bioweapons, but she can't heal herself. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Jun 10, 2019 |
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Jun 10, 2019 08:24
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GreyjoyBastard posted:PracGuide: PracGuide: Cat has no one to blame but Tariq. He started the trend of eating a loss to win back with Amadeus' body, followed by Cat surrendering to sunder Tariq's pattern of three and then the Dead King ate a loss to deceive the Intercessor. Is it any wonder Larat is pulling the same poo poo? Also Anaxares wouldn't accept being crowned by Vile Foreign Oligarchs and Non-Vile Foreign Oligarchs.
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Jun 10, 2019 12:40
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Ytlaya posted:I'm wondering what Chris's goal is in this whole thing. It's kind of interesting how last we saw him/Amy it seemed like they had just pulled this big upset and were going off to rule a planet, and now it turns out the planet was basically just letting them stay and apparently they just hung around while Amy hosed things up and Chris did ??? and now they're kicking them out (but Chris doesn't seem to mind, and if anything seems to be purposefully exacerbating the situation). Yeah I'm eagerly awaiting the interlude that explains what the gently caress happened in the interim because I'm just as lost as everyone else.
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Jun 10, 2019 22:22
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Also I'd like to reiterate that The Gods Are Bastards has been really good lately.
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Jun 10, 2019 22:23
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The Shortest Path posted:Also I'd like to reiterate that The Gods Are Bastards has been really good lately. I quit right around the time the kids were questing for a key and another group of people I didn’t know poo poo about or care about were doing something I didn’t understand. Did it pick up from there or would I still not like it?
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Jun 10, 2019 22:47
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navyjack posted:I quit right around the time the kids were questing for a key and another group of people I didn’t know poo poo about or care about were doing something I didn’t understand. Did it pick up from there or would I still not like it? Early in book 14? I think that b-plot was for one or two chapters and the entire rest of the arc was Triss+Gabe+Toby+Schwartz bonding over their mutual exasperation with getting jerked around by gods. I enjoyed it pretty well, especially with how it pays off wrt Syrinx and her bullshit, but there were points where it got a bit exposition heavy. I really liked how it stayed on one story and didn't bounce back and forth between a bunch of them like most of the arcs do. There were a lot of bonus chapters between 14 and 15 because the author took a bit of a hiatus due to burnout, and those are of varying quality and relevance. I enjoyed most of them but they're definitely mostly skippable if you start getting bored of them. Book 15 has been solid, I'm kinda meh on Ingvar's story nowadays and don't yet see the point of Natchua's, but the University students finally all being back together for the main arc of the story has been great and I really like where their thing is going. One of the early chapters in book 15 was my favorite in the entire story but that's me being heavily emotionally invested in the students as characters so ymmv. We're definitely getting to the point where all of the major plot threads are starting to be tied together, and if I had to guess I'd say the next book will lead up to the climax of the whole thing. Fajita Queen fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Jun 10, 2019 |
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Jun 10, 2019 23:03
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I quit after the key arc when the author decided that 10 million story characters isn’t enough and made Gabe’s parents into storyline characters.
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Jun 10, 2019 23:21
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Silynt posted:I quit after the key arc when the author decided that 10 million story characters isn’t enough and made Gabe’s parents into storyline characters. Yeah, that’s the part I was thinking about, I guess
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Jun 11, 2019 03:46
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TWI Patreon: After 100 pages of action, the denouement! And it's really good, as usual. Pirateaba you god drat better not change PoVs before Geneva meets Niers 
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Jun 11, 2019 20:13
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New MoL out.
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Jun 12, 2019 05:18
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Mulozon Empuri posted:New MoL out. In which a conspiracy of sinister mages force a novice magical schoolgirl to perform a complex blood magic ritual, which leads to the final battle to prevent the (potential?) apocalypse starting early.
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Jun 12, 2019 13:05
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MoL: I like how Zorian's internal monologue since he escaped has been all like 'I gotta be super-sneaky and careful not to let anyone figure out that I'm more than meets the eye', and then literally every single thing he does is the most suspicious thing he could do. Like, there's probably no helping it most of the time, but it's hilarious and fun how bad he is at being incompetent.
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Jun 12, 2019 13:08
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Ytlaya posted:People thinking Taylor was right is still more understandable to me, because at least Taylor didn't really do anything equivalent to what Amy did to Victoria (or generally treat another person directly in an extremely toxic way). The Amy/Victoria situation also has the even worse angle of people thinking that Victoria is somehow being unfair to Amy. I think this post is pretty protagonist-centred? Taylor did treat people in extremely toxic ways, and Victoria did treat Amy in very toxic ways too... But in Worm Wildbow bent over recklessly to make Taylor blameless, and now he is bending over to make Victoria blameless. Now, I don't know a thing about what's happening in Ward, but this kind of "here is what Amy did" is exactly the kind of thing that makes Wildbow look really, really bad about wanting to insert a "surefire" way to make sure people don't look too closely about the morality of his favorite characters, but instead blame the ones he himself personally dislike. The reason a lot of people defend Amy has to do, I think, with the fact that she spent most of worm as an abused victim of Victoria and her family, and then decided to go to prison when she realised how messed up she was, and then was told "No, you aren't allowed to be in prison because you are too useful". I am sure she is an utter bitch in Ward. I am also sure that comes from Wildbow writing protagonist-centred morality moreso than him wanting to write "abused people become abusers" with any kind of tact.
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Jun 12, 2019 14:22
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Arkeus posted:But in Worm Wildbow bent over recklessly to make Taylor blameless, and now he is bending over to make Victoria blameless.  This is like... Not even slightly accurate, at all. Taylor does quite a lot of immensely hosed up poo poo that is very wrong and the only people who don't get that are herself. You're getting too lost in the first person narrative, where quite obviously she has excuses and reasons and justifications for all the bad things she does, because that's how terrible people think that they're doing good.
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Jun 12, 2019 15:17
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The Shortest Path posted:
Whenever people say things like this, I honestly think they don't really remember how the 'hosed up poo poo' Taylor does is presented nor the context of each scenario she finds herself in. Sort of like how I'm sure people don't remember the Lung fight where she gouges out her eyes as it actually is, or how weak Sundancer's argument against cutting out his eyes is. Like, probably the most morally ambiguous thing Taylor does is stinging the poo poo out of Triumph and almost killing him. The rest of it - the eye-gouging, infanticide, and so on - is all constructed in such a way as to remove any idea of blame or moral failing from Taylor's shoulders. It's really no different to hypotheticals that basically suppose "Would you torture a man to stop a nuclear bomb from killing 200,000 people? By the way, he's unambiguously the right man, has the right knowledge, and will cooperate when tortured." Okay, you can make the argument that torture is wrong and you shouldn't do it, but the scenario itself is constructed that "Yes, I would" is the only acceptable response and the argument for 'no' only functions when you are treating it like make-believe. That's basically every line that Taylor transgresses. I mean, the dang tagline is 'doing the wrong things for the right reasons.' Otherwise, you have to end up arguing that, like, no, Taylor should have let Aster get tortured for all eternity by Grey Boy or something. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Jun 12, 2019 |
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Jun 12, 2019 16:43
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Outside of just being kind of self-centered, how is Victoria abusive to Amy in Worm? It's possible I'm forgetting something, but nothing comes to mind (and certainly nothing remotely approaching what Amy did to Victoria). As for Taylor, I'm not saying she wasn't harmful/toxic, but not in a way that is really equivalent in an interpersonal way to the way Amy harmed Victoria with the mind-altering (plus body stuff, but the mental stuff is probably even worse in this regard). Taylor commits various crimes, though she does at least realize she's not doing the right thing at one point and joins the heroes (even if she does backslide during Golden Morning, though that was an extreme circumstance).
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Jun 12, 2019 16:50
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Didn't Glory Girl's aura, like, make Panacea develop feelings for her because of repeated, long-term exposure as per WoG? I wouldn't necessarily call that abusive, but, I remember that going around way back when as this idea that GG kind of dug her own grave. 3.6 Glorygen. Not great, not terrible. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Jun 12, 2019 |
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Jun 12, 2019 16:54
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