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Larry Parrish posted:so I've read a pretty good chunk of Ward, and it's kind of weird how much it's like Worm. Does wildbow purposefully write his criminal characters to be way more relatable than the other ones? Like Imp and Rachel were always better for me and in this one I like Ashley and Rain a lot more. Maybe it's just because besides Victoria they got the most background so far. But I kind of hate most of the characters in this. My take is Wildbow can sometimes be very good at nuances but generally the villains he writes as relatable are those "meant" to be relatable, in fact i think he also has a tendency to exaggerate the flaws in antagonists or write them as unidimensionally evil to contrast with the relatable ones. I'm looking at you, Skidmark and Kenzie's parents. Kefahuchi_son!!! fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 15:26
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, like, this is a totally subjective thing on my part, but I absolutely despise rape as drama- too many authors (*cough*Wildbow*cough*) use it as a cheap way to make things grim and awful. This might be YMMV, but I honestly can't think of a single place it was used where something less disturbing and tasteless couldn't have been used to the same effect. hard agree. I don't want to be dismissive of an entire format but I really feel like web serials just aren't a place where it's possible to have a Serious Discussion About Heavy Topics so why do the authors feel so tempted to raise those topics?
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Jun 20, 2019 17:55
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The Shortest Path posted:Nobody got raped in Ward. I'm a bit confused about the "wildbow serials have a lot of rape" take. Outside of the Victoria/Amy situation I'm drawing a blank.
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Jun 20, 2019 18:22
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blake in pact has a pretty rape adjacent situation as well
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Jun 20, 2019 18:50
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I think it's really Cool and Good how Bethel, the character who was raped by Arthur, then goes on to rape Juniper. It's definitely appropriate to use rape for the purpose of ~dramatic mirroring~. (WtC) (/s if it wasn't obvious)
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Jun 20, 2019 19:19
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Ytlaya posted:I'm a bit confused about the "wildbow serials have a lot of rape" take. Outside of the Victoria/Amy situation I'm drawing a blank. Off the top of my head: Worm Emma and her dad are dragged out of their car by the ABB, who are preparing to gang-rape her when Sophia intervenes- they also express intent to send her to a white slavery farm after this, and eventually sell her. (Geez, WB  )Alec Heartbreaker This is reaching, but Brian/Aisha suffered unspecified abuse and since Aisha's started when she became a teenager, it has really upsetting undertones. Edit: Oh yeah, almost forgot- Aisha's trigger event, completely unrelated to the above, was a bunch of guys surrounding her and whipping their dicks out. (For heck's sake, WB )Pact Blake and his friend with the dentures were both stuck in a sex cult that they didn't want to be in. One of Blake's neighbors suffered unspecified domestic/sexual abuse from a past partner, denture-friend recommends they have a big dumb threesome to fix her. Twig No rape as far as I can remember, good job Wildbow! Ward The Fallen's entire reason for being is to run a superhero breeding program staffed by brainwashed kidnap victims and vulnerable women who join up for food/protection and don't know what's what until they've been mama mathers'd. Most of the heartbroken are emotional/sexual abuse-themed child heroes (come on, WIldbow )Kind of a reach, but Goddess was very amiable and up-front about turning Victoria into a sex doll if Amy wanted it. Amy turning Victoria into a sex doll Omi no Kami fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 20:46
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Yet more evidence that Twig is the best Wildbow story
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Jun 20, 2019 20:54
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Honestly, I think pretty much all web serials would be 100% better if they never touched the topic of rape at all. That's my hot take. The format is really kind of poo poo for applying the kind of nuance people would like to see used for handling such a sensitive topic and a lot of serial authors just seem to use it as a sort of grim punctuation mark, a statement of look things can get worse or whatever - which just comes across as lovely and bad imo
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Jun 20, 2019 21:21
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what are the media where rape is good? not sure what web serials specifically have to do with this.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:24
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sunken fleet posted:Honestly, I think pretty much all web serials would be 100% better if they never touched the topic of rape at all. That's my hot take. i would extend this rule to forum threads
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Jun 20, 2019 21:26
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The more I think about the WtC rape scene the more I'm just completely done with the serial. It's so loving bad jfc.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:34
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Sampatrick posted:The more I think about the WtC rape scene the more I'm just completely done with the serial. It's so loving bad jfc. I'm pretty happy having stopped both Ward and WtC.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:56
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Lone Goat posted:what are the media where rape is good? not sure what web serials specifically have to do with this. Depends on your definition of good. Viewed in a positive light? Almost never. Used to titilate? More common than you think. Erotica is full of this stuff. The genres of dub-con and non-con, which are dubious consent and non-consent, are genres which sell distressingly well because people have gross tastes. These genres are banned on Amazon (and they weren't always), but if you go to the correct book seller sites, which I will not name, you could pick up said stories. In anime, you see shows like Goblin Slayer using rape to titillate. And this was a choice because in the light novels, you're talking about two sentences with minimal description versus episode one which was basically boob, rear end and panty shots, where the victims were basically posing. And the fandom that surrounds it is awful and toxic, talking about the rape scenes as a kind of "normie filter". That's not to mention the movies which deal with the subject matter. A lot of gross, weird poo poo comes out of Japan is what I'm saying and if you know where to look for Western writing, you can find it.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:57
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Lone Goat posted:what are the media where rape is good? not sure what web serials specifically have to do with this. It's never "good" but it can be handled responsibly. For example, American History X is a film about racism and racism is a bad thing but most people feel that the film demonstrates that you can make good art about a bad thing. Mostly I qualified my statement in my previous post because I didn't want to be the guy who says "you should never write a story with rape in it period." because that's a dumb stance to take. Art shouldn't be completely stifled and people shouldn't have to feel like they can't share their own lived experiences just because the subject matter is unpleasant or makes other people uncomfortable. But then when we talk about web serials in particular I feel about 99% percent confident in my hot take that rape should just be precluded from the medium entirely.
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Jun 20, 2019 22:05
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sunken fleet posted:Honestly, I think pretty much all web serials would be 100% better if they never touched the topic of rape at all. That's my hot take. The format is really kind of poo poo for applying the kind of nuance people would like to see used for handling such a sensitive topic and a lot of serial authors just seem to use it as a sort of grim punctuation mark, a statement of look things can get worse or whatever - which just comes across as lovely and bad imo Ward is a story about recovering from trauma, in a direct textual level with Victoria and most of the other characters, a metaphorical level with the whole of society recovering from Entity/Shard fuckery and Gold Morning, and a metatextual level with the story's themes. Rape is not used as a grim punctuation mark. It was a thing that happened in the past to the protagonist, and a big part of the story has been her slow journey through recovery. Having a direct encounter with her abuser has been a narrative inevitability that has finally come up, and the couple of chapters of her dealing with that have been exploring a lot of aspects of trauma reoccurring and how situations even vaguely reminiscent of the original trauma can bring all of the pain and memories of the event right back to the surface. And a big part of her recovery process has been that, in the face of Amy having used her power on her again even in a minor way and confronting her basically at gunpoint, she is able to overcome a lot of that pain and "win" their confrontation, coming out a lot less worse off from it than she would have had it happened at the start of the story. The claim that it's just dark for the sake of it is really dumb and not at all coherent with what's been happening in the text.
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Jun 20, 2019 22:07
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my take is sexual assault is bad when it's there for jack off purposes and... well good is the wrong word but it's not bad when it's for a story purpose.
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Jun 20, 2019 22:19
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^^^ The main criticism of rape as plot device isn't that it's used for jack-off purposes, but that it's just used for the purposes of shocking the audience and exaggerating a crime/tragedy. edit: After posting my reply to Omi no Kami I forgot what I was originally coming to the thread to post about! I just read the most recent chapter of PracGuide, and I actually miss Grey Pilgrim. He was a good character. It was also kinda nice to see Catherine acknowledge that Saint was more of a complex character. I'm very curious how the Rogue Sorcerer will factor into things in the future. I don't think that he's pulling some sort of sophisticated long-con. It seems like he'll have to take some sort of significant leadership role for Heroes in future events (both for story/narrative reasons and just because he's the only major hero we're still that familiar with, outside of Hanno). It seems like he could play a major role as a "bridge" between the forces of Good and Catherine's side (whatever that would be called). Omi no Kami posted:Off the top of my head: Ah, I haven't read Pact and completely forgot about Emma's situation and Alec, though to be fair only one of those even occurs on-screen and neither have that big of a role in the story (especially for something Worm's length). It plays a much bigger role in Ward in comparison, though I don't think the way it deals with the Victoria/Amy situation is that bad. The examples from Worm can definitely be criticized in the "rape as plot device" sense (I'd place them alongside other things Worm is kind of bad with, like issues related to race and the kind of classist way the Merchants and drug users/sellers in general are portrayed), but between Twig and Ward I don't think it's fair to consider it a specific issue with the author anymore. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 22:25
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There are very, very few situations where sexual assault is an appropriate plot point.
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Jun 20, 2019 22:27
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The Shortest Path posted:Ward is a story about recovering from trauma, in a direct textual level with Victoria and most of the other characters, a metaphorical level with the whole of society recovering from Entity/Shard fuckery and Gold Morning, and a metatextual level with the story's themes. You really think so? Because I always felt like all the weird horrible body horror poo poo that the whole squid sequence entailed was pretty loving bad, as in, terrible and traumatic for the character. Probably one of the worst things a human could experience. But then, millions of words later the curtain is pulled back and things are revealed to have even worse *cue spooky music*. If that isn't a grim punctuation mark I dunno what is. Like the situation was already so completely hosed up and well beyond the limits of human comprehension, so what is this little bit of reveal intended to say to us if not: "Remember all that bad poo poo from before? Just hold my beer and watch this..."? Do you honestly think rape adds anything to the trauma of the whole squid thing? That Victoria meeting Amy wouldn't trigger 'painful memories coming to the surface' if not for that? Because I don't. If Victoria getting Amy'ed was a +100 to trauma, does adding rape on top of it add another +100 and now Victoria is double traumatized? Because I think the bar probably got filled on the first pass and Victoria was already at the metaphorical "trauma cap" and, further, there is no meaningful difference in how she might act, react, and behave when meeting Amy at +100 trauma vs +200 trauma. And I understand very clearly what wildbow is driving at. The themes of trauma and recovery throughout Ward aren't subtle at all so I would be an idiot if I couldn't see it. I'm just saying that he's failing miserably at drawing me, the reader, to his side when he takes this opportunity to pile more unnecessary baggage on top of Victoria's character for no reason I can discern except to smack the audience across the face with "Rape is bad and Amy is bad" ...or something. It's like, yeah, we all know those things. But adding rape in does nothing at all to change Victora's situation or her character, since she was already traumatized beyond the limits of human comprehension by superpower magic, so its addition can only be for the audience. And as the audience, I feel pretty comfortable saying that I would be just fine if wildbow took it back and kept it to himself.
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Jun 20, 2019 22:37
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you've done a wretched job explaining why web serials are a bad medium, compared to [whatever else]
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Jun 20, 2019 23:01
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Ytlaya posted:^^^ The main criticism of rape as plot device isn't that it's used for jack-off purposes, but that it's just used for the purposes of shocking the audience and exaggerating a crime/tragedy.
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Jun 21, 2019 00:20
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sunken fleet posted:You really think so? Because I always felt like all the weird horrible body horror poo poo that the whole squid sequence entailed was pretty loving bad, as in, terrible and traumatic for the character. Probably one of the worst things a human could experience. But then, millions of words later the curtain is pulled back and things are revealed to have even worse *cue spooky music*. If that isn't a grim punctuation mark I dunno what is. Like the situation was already so completely hosed up and well beyond the limits of human comprehension, so what is this little bit of reveal intended to say to us if not: "Remember all that bad poo poo from before? Just hold my beer and watch this..."? It was never "added on", people were just extremely bending over backwards to give Amy the benefit of the doubt and assumed the words in Carol's interlude meant something other than what in retrospect they clearly mean. It's not even really spelled out that much more in Ward, it just gave people a reason to go double check what did exactly happen because loads of the readers were being gigantic shits about it. Nothing has changed, we are just seeing the ramifications of the event through the perspective of the person it happened to rather than Amy's explanation which played up how much of a victim she was and why everything was just a mistake. It also helps clarify exactly how she thinks of Victoria, which matters a lot for interpreting her actions especially given how hosed up Victoria is in these chapters.
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Jun 21, 2019 01:56
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Cicero posted:I don't really see how that applies to what people were talking about with WtC. Of course it's somewhat "shocking" because it's a terrible crime, and in this case it's by a member of the protagonist's party, not an out and out villain, though we already knew that Bethel is really hosed up. And it wasn't really used to exaggerate a crime or tragedy either. In-universe there's a certain logic to it because Bethel isn't human, or even a humanoid species, and between that and her hosed up loner past has no sense of bundaries. While I didn't expect this exact thing to happen, it did seem like Bethel is so ridiculously powerful within her domain that the characters all walk on eggshells around her and make sure not to upset her, the whole dynamic there is super unhealthy, which probably plays into why Joon wasn't that forceful about saying no; it's gonna be harder when the person you're saying no to could easily kill you in like twenty different ways in a few seconds. I mean right now he might be safe-ish because of the combo of abilities he's trying to hang onto, but that's certainly been defining their relationship for a while now. Anyway it seemed kind of inevitable Bethel was going to really cross a line somewhere. I haven't read WtC in a while, is Bethel the psychotic haunted house with a history of sexual trauma who has spent literal centuries inventing horrific new ways to kill people and considers casual dismemberment to be a good opening tactic to peaceful negotiations, or the soulless girl who eats demons and is completely amoral but can sort of be trusted because she's obsessed with the MC and killing all his friends would make him stop talking to her?
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Jun 21, 2019 03:00
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Avulsion posted:I haven't read WtC in a while, is Bethel the psychotic haunted house with a history of sexual trauma who has spent literal centuries inventing horrific new ways to kill people and considers casual dismemberment to be a good opening tactic to peaceful negotiations, or the soulless girl who eats demons and is completely amoral but can sort of be trusted because she's obsessed with the MC and killing all his friends would make him stop talking to her? Bethel is the haunted house.
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Jun 21, 2019 03:38
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So, how about that recent PracGuide chapter where major things happened that weren't rape!Cicero posted:I don't really see how that applies to what people were talking about with WtC. Of course it's somewhat "shocking" because it's a terrible crime, and in this case it's by a member of the protagonist's party, not an out and out villain, though we already knew that Bethel is really hosed up. And it wasn't really used to exaggerate a crime or tragedy either. In-universe there's a certain logic to it because Bethel isn't human, or even a humanoid species, and between that and her hosed up loner past has no sense of bundaries. While I didn't expect this exact thing to happen, it did seem like Bethel is so ridiculously powerful within her domain that the characters all walk on eggshells around her and make sure not to upset her, the whole dynamic there is super unhealthy, which probably plays into why Joon wasn't that forceful about saying no; it's gonna be harder when the person you're saying no to could easily kill you in like twenty different ways in a few seconds. I mean right now he might be safe-ish because of the combo of abilities he's trying to hang onto, but that's certainly been defining their relationship for a while now. Anyway it seemed kind of inevitable Bethel was going to really cross a line somewhere. Oh, I wasn't even talking about WtC (I don't read it; I read some a while back and bounced off of it, I think partly because I don't really understand D&D much). I was just responding to that post in a general sense.
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Jun 21, 2019 04:38
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Ytlaya posted:So, how about that recent PracGuide chapter where major things happened that weren't rape! ngl, everyone talking about WTC with these developments? I'm never gonna look at this series now. But re Prac Guide, I'm really keen to see the fallout from the last chapter, there's going to be a lot going on here. Maybe if Cat spins it well enough she can spin it as everyone having been betrayed by the Tyrant, but I doubt it
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Jun 21, 2019 04:50
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What a chapter! They blinked first! gently caress! Yes
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Jun 21, 2019 05:18
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PracGuide Well that was unexpected. Interesting that after everything that has happened, including the drow and Sve Noc, Above was still offering the sword.
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Jun 21, 2019 07:26
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tithin posted:What a chapter! That was really neat- I had been expecting his death to stick, and become part of a pattern. It makes sense to me that if Cat's been winning darn near every time, but she constantly pays too high a cost, it would make sense for Above to start subtly shoehorning her into a narrative of "Always wins, victory is never worth it and always blows up in her face." Kinda serial-adjacent, but I've been reading the Sufficiently Advanced Magic books recently (they're dumb-but-fun, basically xianxia for westerners). In the second book there's a straight-up MoL reference, while the protagonist man is shopping for supplies Zorian drops in with a small army of Golem baggage handlers and buys a bunch of suspicious crafting supplies while muttering like a crazy person. It wasn't anything noteworthy, but I've mentally mapped MoL as "The awesome but incredibly obscure weird internet story that nobody but me reads," so it blows my mind that it's actually widely-read enough to get a cameo in a published novel.
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Jun 21, 2019 07:28
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I've seen the author (or someone claiming to be the author) of that series posting in r/progressionfantasy before so he seems to be aware of online novels... He wrote a pretty lovely recommendation for Forge of Destiny there too.
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Jun 21, 2019 07:48
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GlassElephant posted:PracGuide its not above that makes the rules , its both. narrative offers the sword because the story fits.
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Jun 21, 2019 09:47
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violent sex idiot posted:its not above that makes the rules , its both. narrative offers the sword because the story fits. The first extra chapter detailing the war with DK's army also had people taking up the swords of their dead predecessors to fight against the Enemy while feeling lessened by their predecessors loss.
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Jun 21, 2019 10:41
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Gonna just step in past the rape dillies and note that with chapter 11 live on my 'The Lightning Brigade', I have completed the first act of the first volume. Now which of these doors out of here leads somewhere other than sexual assault county?
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Jun 22, 2019 20:04
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TWI Patreon: A Magnolia chapter. The world building is honestly neat but I have to admit I have never felt this  about a chapter. It's like, whatever. Get back to Ryoka for god's sake!
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Jun 22, 2019 20:30
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I wanted more of the United Nations stuff tbh. Erin and Ryoka are cool but what they do doesn't feel as important usually. Also I want to know what the Wistram guy is up to now that he invented broadcast television and [Message] chat Hell I'd take another Insane Clown Guy chapter because Rhir is interesting
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Jun 22, 2019 21:53
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well, yeah, but web serials are all about being blueballed the moment something interesting happens, lol.
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Jun 22, 2019 22:24
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A big flaming stink posted:TWI Patreon: A Magnolia chapter. The world building is honestly neat but I have to admit I have never felt this Just read it. Wasted chapter. We learned everything we needed about this attack from the Bethel chapters, there was no need to show the assassins attack on all of the other [Ladies]
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Jun 24, 2019 20:28
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Read the last Ward chapter, and I feel like Victoria has a pretty solid read on Amy's general character. It's really remarkable the extent to which Amy is just completely unwilling to comprehend the magnitude of her crimes. The part where Amy reveals that Chris likes Victoria was pretty interesting/surprising. I never really picked up on much regarding the specific dynamic between Chris and Victoria. My personal feeling regarding Chris is that he'll probably end up with some sort of positive character arc. I think that the main cast is actually correct about him fundamentally still being human and having the potential to not be a shithead. His strong negative reaction a few chapters back to Kenzie pointing out that he was being abrasive partly due to finally seeing Breakthrough again seemed pretty legit to me. At the very least, I see a "Chris redemption arc" as being more likely than an Amy one.
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Jun 26, 2019 05:38
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Ytlaya posted:Read the last Ward chapter, and I feel like Victoria has a pretty solid read on Amy's general character. It's really remarkable the extent to which Amy is just completely unwilling to comprehend the magnitude of her crimes. I agree Victoria knows very well how Amy works, but at the same time, comprehensibly so, she also assumes everything that could go wrong with her sister, will, which is almost the anthitesis of her character in most other matters (even the disappearance of the villains to other dimensions reads to me more as her way of coping with limitations in the present rather than her wanting a objectively final solution to a problem). I think Amy has some awareness of it, but in a completely selfish, almost solipsistic way. She can't see the situation detached from herself, her own guilt and sentiments. She reacts to the knowledge of what she did by trying to repair what was done but can't envision that as being something completely out of her (or anyone's ) hands or something you can't even start to conceptualize. And like Victoria said she will keep blindly pushing against it, until she breaks again and breaks someone again. Ytlaya posted:
Yeah i've got the same feeling, his actions when in breakthrough show him taking personal risk, even of discovery of his true nature, in order to save them. Since the lab-rat interlude his story has been framed as an attempt to free himself from limitations by biology, by his former self, by other powers, and i think he will confront the ones he imposes upon himself as well. On Amy i know Wildbow has sometimes drawn attention to the fact that her title is red queen, not queen of hearts, and, going by Alice, while the latter is a villain the former is more a plot mover/obstacle/fellow queen. Not sure how far he will go with the Alice parallels ( Dinah as the white queen?) but a Gollum situation (sometimes sympathetic, ultimately positive role, even though it never ceases to be a deplorable villain) seems likely. Of course the amy-apologizers in the fandom might just lead him to just say screw it and make her the ultimate evil.
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Jun 27, 2019 00:08
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Kefahuchi_son!!! posted:I agree Victoria knows very well how Amy works, but at the same time, comprehensibly so, she also assumes everything that could go wrong with her sister, will, which is almost the anthitesis of her character in most other matters (even the disappearance of the villains to other dimensions reads to me more as her way of coping with limitations in the present rather than her wanting a objectively final solution to a problem). I used to think that Amy at least had a reasonable amount of guilt and understanding of her role in things, but recent chapters are making me doubt that. To be honest, she seems to blame Victoria more than herself now, and seems to believe that she has done enough to "deserve" Victoria's forgiveness and engagement. As far as I can tell, she doesn't - and never has - come close to comprehending the magnitude of her crimes against Victoria (and now these other people). It's far easier for me to imagine Amy going "full supervillain" than it is for me to imagine her improving, since she hasn't even made the smallest steps in the direction of the latter.
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Jun 27, 2019 04:32
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