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Wait a minute, wait a minute... (Ward) so, cauldron had untapped plans and resources they were squirreling away in anticipation of another Scion-level event, and those plans were... make an army of capes and throw it at the problem? Because that worked so well the first time? Is nobody in WB's stories capable of coherent, rational thought? I'm kinda starting to root for the villains, at least they wait to job until the very end of an arc.
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Jul 2, 2019 23:23
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lol @ Metaworld having a character who's pretty much Jason Mendoza
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Jul 3, 2019 00:10
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Omi no Kami posted:Wait a minute, wait a minute... (Ward) so, cauldron had untapped plans and resources they were squirreling away in anticipation of another Scion-level event, and those plans were... make an army of capes and throw it at the problem? Because that worked so well the first time? Is nobody in WB's stories capable of coherent, rational thought? I'm kinda starting to root for the villains, at least they wait to job until the very end of an arc. You have to remember they were largely using Contessa's Path to Victory to figure almost everything out. Sometimes when you are told to do x, y and z for an end result, questioning the process can break the solution.
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Jul 3, 2019 00:14
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Oh yeah for sure, I mean I recall Worm being pretty explicit that Doctor Mother was kind of an idiot... if I recall correctly, Cauldron's entire planning phase basically went "I can't see the space alien through my bullshit author fiat superpower, how do you think we could beat it?" "I dunno, with an army?", then they worked super-hard for like 40 years without ever second-guessing that initial pull. But what gets me is that they're doing the exact same thing a second time, after it's already been established that parahuman armies are astonishingly bad solutions to literally every problem they have ever been used to solve. I really need to stop being surprised by bizarrely poor decisionmaking by characters in WB stories, but Ward is still managing to regularly make me go '...wait, what? Why??'
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Jul 3, 2019 00:22
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The latest Practical Guide epigraph is a quote from the Wizard of the West, who I had sort of forgotten ever existed. I’d like to read an extra chapter about the battle that he lost to Warlock, if only to see how powerful a Named magic user from the west can be at the height of their power. We got some of that from the Witch but she seems like an unconventional caster even by western standards.
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Jul 3, 2019 01:14
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Chatrapati posted:I think I've almost finished Not All Heroes. I've just finished the chapter where Jack visits Sam's corpse. I can't believe she died, I wanted her and Jack to have a happy ending more than anyone else. Arc 2 will be finishing up in a few weeks, hence the feeling of reaching a conclusion, which will leave only Arc 3. The whole of NAH will probably finish in about a year, if Arc 3 is the same length as Arc 2. The only deliberate homage to Worm is the one no one picks up on: Taurine. Good to hear it's entertaining, though! And yes, that spoiler hit a lot of people pretty hard. It hit me hard!
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Jul 3, 2019 04:20
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Arc 2 will be finishing up in a few weeks, hence the feeling of reaching a conclusion, which will leave only Arc 3. The whole of NAH will probably finish in about a year, if Arc 3 is the same length as Arc 2. The only deliberate homage to Worm is the one no one picks up on: Taurine. Good to hear it's entertaining, though! And yes, that spoiler hit a lot of people pretty hard. It hit me hard! Huh, unless I'm totally misremembering wasn't Miss Millennium's horrible bone disease caused by a crazy lady with biology powers who called herself Panacea? I always figured that was an intentional reference.
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Jul 3, 2019 04:30
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Omi no Kami posted:Huh, unless I'm totally misremembering wasn't Miss Millennium's horrible bone disease caused by a crazy lady with biological manipulation powers who called herself Panacea? I always figured that was an intentional reference. That's true, but that's more like... parallel evolution? Panacea is a pretty typical name for a super healer, and it was intended more as a sign of the Classical Greek cultural renaissance the Golden Age ushered in than a Worm easter egg as such. It's why he's specified as a man, too. It was a name I wrestled with for a long time because of that reason, but there aren't many words better suited in that context.
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Jul 3, 2019 04:36
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:That's true, but that's more like... parallel evolution? Panacea is a pretty typical name for a super healer, and it was intended more as a sign of the Classical Greek cultural renaissance the Golden Age ushered in than a Worm easter egg as such. It's why he's specified as a man, too. It was a name I wrestled with for a long time because of that reason, but there aren't many words better suited in that context. Ooh huh, I totally missed that it was a guy... my brain probably auto-completed from Worm once it got 2-3 items into the Crazy Incest Wonder-Twin checklist that is Amy.
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Jul 3, 2019 04:40
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:That's true, but that's more like... parallel evolution? Panacea is a pretty typical name for a super healer, and it was intended more as a sign of the Classical Greek cultural renaissance the Golden Age ushered in than a Worm easter egg as such. It's why he's specified as a man, too. It was a name I wrestled with for a long time because of that reason, but there aren't many words better suited in that context. Asclepius could have also worked in the Greek mythology and healing context, I guess. Oo Koo fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Jul 3, 2019 |
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Jul 3, 2019 05:52
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Oo Koo posted:Asclepius could have also worked in the Greek mythology and healing context, I guess. I try to avoid using the names of deities. Even Panacea was invoked more in the sense of the generic term and not the goddess.
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Jul 3, 2019 06:08
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:I try to avoid using the names of deities. Even Panacea was invoked more in the sense of the generic term and not the goddess. There's also Caduceus, but that's kind of iffy, since it's medical connotations are really recent and the result of visual confusion between the two snakes of the staff of Hermes that it refers to, and the single one of the rod of Asclepius, which doesn't have it's own name.
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Jul 3, 2019 09:33
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navyjack posted:Wait till you get to Burma Hahaha oh man. Love that the triumphant conclusion to that arc included "and Britain gets its colony back!". And how the gently caress did Britain get an empire anyway in that universe, when the entire planet is a monster-infested nightmare realm outside a few carefully-managed cities? Not that Metaworld's politics have ever been particularly great. The whole thing just oozes class and privilege.
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Jul 3, 2019 19:56
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Burkion posted:Starting tomorrow, I'm going to be putting up a chapter a day of The Lightning Brigade on the website and RR. I’m reading it right now and I just have to ask why you made the three kids so young? Isn’t Jordan like 11?
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Jul 3, 2019 21:03
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Metaworld Chronicles is the one with the Mary Sue Instagram influencer as the MC right? I bounced off that pretty fast.
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Jul 3, 2019 21:52
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I couldn't survive more than a few chapters of Metaworld Chronicles, but among the many things that baffled and weirded me out, I thought that making it an Isekai thing was a feckin' weird narrative choice. Like, maybe it becomes a critical plot point later on, but as far as I could tell she adapts to wizard-world so quickly and so thoroughly that her being from an entirely different dimension never actually did anything in or for the story. That seems like an awfully core element of your main character to just kinda forget about 3,000 words in.
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Jul 3, 2019 22:02
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Omi no Kami posted:I couldn't survive more than a few chapters of Metaworld Chronicles, but among the many things that baffled and weirded me out, I thought that making it an Isekai thing was a feckin' weird narrative choice. Like, maybe it becomes a critical plot point later on, but as far as I could tell she adapts to wizard-world so quickly and so thoroughly that her being from an entirely different dimension never actually did anything in or for the story. That seems like an awfully core element of your main character to just kinda forget about 3,000 words in. She eventually uses her past life's memories to introduce capitalism to Magical Communist China.
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Jul 3, 2019 22:07
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Man, I want the plot of Practical Guide to continue as much as the next person, but I freaking love Hakram
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Jul 3, 2019 22:27
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Metaworld's just really weird. Protag swings back and forth between acting her mental age...and not. The eventual elemental affinity justification kinda falls flat, and that flattens the other characters too. RE: isekai effects I think the implication is that the (original) uniqueness of the protag is due to the merger - where host Gwen's would have been void conjuration (?) (dunno where the reader that brought things up is at), while transported Gwen would be lightning evocation (?) if magic had been a thing in original universe. And yeah, introduction of modern financial instruments is lol.
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Jul 3, 2019 22:51
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Metaworld has the character become upset because instead of living in a mansion, she is forced to live in a really nice apartment instead, and she doesn't get TWO huge inheritances just one.
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Jul 3, 2019 23:22
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:She eventually uses her past life's memories to introduce capitalism to Magical Communist China. why would anyone willingly do something so terrible?
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Jul 3, 2019 23:35
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I also sort of got the impression that it was only because Gwen isekai'd in that her magical affinity or whatever was even discovered? I remember there being a big hoopla in the first few chapters about how super determined she was in her magical studies and training that got chalked up to her older mentality?
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Jul 4, 2019 02:20
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:She eventually uses her past life's memories to introduce capitalism to Magical Communist China. ...so that might be one of the worst Isekai decisions I have ever heard, right up there with (TWI spoilers) Erin introducing Abrahamic religion to a race of fanatical bug warriors.
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Jul 4, 2019 02:47
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There's a scene where she's explaining her brilliant plan to make a lot of money and completely revolutionize China's economy to one of her college professors, and the guy is completely horrified because he realizes this will inevitably result in tons of people being killed or disappeared when things go wrong and the government starts another round of Purges to bring things back under control.
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Jul 4, 2019 03:48
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New Worth the Candle. I know a lot of people really don't like the current topic, but I think it was handled really well.
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Jul 4, 2019 13:01
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He introduces a lot of weird creepy poo poo but he’s generally been handling it well in the past. But I still wish he’d keep away.
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Jul 4, 2019 14:13
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Personally I'm not, like, enthused about rape being a topic in the serial, but it was handled well enough that I don't count it as a downside here either. Definitely a far cry from the stereotypical "have the villain rape some random woman to show how evil and dastardly he is". Did I miss people complaining about rape in TWI? Because I don't remember seeing controversy here about that, and it's had a way more stereotypical handling of rape that's come up repeatedly in the story.
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Jul 4, 2019 14:25
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Cicero posted:Personally I'm not, like, enthused about rape being a topic in the serial, but it was handled well enough that I don't count it as a downside here either. Definitely a far cry from the stereotypical "have the villain rape some random woman to show how evil and dastardly he is". There was some minor grousing but TWI doesn't linger on that subject. People are more eager to talk about how boring Flos is or how bad Ryoka is as a person.
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Jul 4, 2019 15:06
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Cicero posted:Personally I'm not, like, enthused about rape being a topic in the serial, but it was handled well enough that I don't count it as a downside here either. Definitely a far cry from the stereotypical "have the villain rape some random woman to show how evil and dastardly he is". Who has gotten raped repeatedly in TWI? All I can think of is the goblin city.
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Jul 4, 2019 15:20
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I don't think there was a specific person but it was A Thing with the goblins
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Jul 4, 2019 16:58
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I think that's sorta retconned given Rag's chapters dealing with the mountain "city" goblins that did have rape dungeons as "not goblin." (Retcon from implications of Erin's first encounter with a hobgoblin attack early on)
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Jul 4, 2019 20:15
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Affi posted:I’m reading it right now and I just have to ask why you made the three kids so young? Isn’t Jordan like 11? Jordan is 11 going on 12, he's only a few months younger than Anna Rick is 14 The trick is they're not going to stay that young for very long. We're about to get to some time skipping after the second act- by the end of the first volume Jordan will be 13 going on 14, and the other two will be 14 and 16 respectively. They're going to age organically like that as the story goes on until they're adults themselves. Part of the reason for why they're so young is tied into what inspired me when making the series, and also some logistics concerning the timeline. Jordan is so young because he needs a lot of that immature fantasy still alive and well in his head, that you often lose after you become a teenager and stuff like Mr. Rogers becomes uncool to you. This also leads the characters to behave appropriately in certain situations- Jordan makes choices at this age that he wouldn't do if it was older and better aware. Rick being the oldest but also the least effective, out the gate at least, ties into his frustrations and Anna is ever the middle ground between the two and often annoyed about it Also it's a small nod to DBZ and how Gohan was really loving young and how hosed up that is also act 2 might not finish next week as planned for a small warning I got hit by a kidney stone yesterday that's being a bastard. I should be able to pass it and I hope to get 19-22 finalized in time, but we'll see how the thing crumbles Burkion fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Jul 5, 2019 |
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Jul 5, 2019 00:05
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I have been reading through Prac recently and the author desperately needs a grammar checker. The latest chapters don't even look spell checked. Nothing takes me out of the story faster than having to reread a sentence multiple times so I can comprehend the intent of the author.
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Jul 6, 2019 06:47
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The Shortest Path posted:The Wandering Inn is the only web serial I know of whose author is a woman and it’s noticeably better with respect to its depiction of women in the story than most of the others that get discussed in here. I write Into the Mire and I’m a chick! A gay chick even. So yes, I have some Opinions about how a lot of webfic handles ~the female/lesbian experience.~ I try not to get too preachy because it’s all just fiction and we’re all just here to have a good time, but you can definitely tell when a straight dude who has no clue how lady bodies work is writing that stuff, lol. Well I kept meaning to type up a post to introduce myself/my serial but I guess that’s as good an excuse as any. Thank you very much to everyone in this thread who’s recommended and read Mire over the last year and a half.  Coincidentally, I just posted the final chapter of Book 1 last week, so the first story is now totally self-contained if you’re the type of person who likes the assurance of knowing the thing they’re reading actually has an ending.
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Jul 6, 2019 09:05
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Peachfart posted:I have been reading through Prac recently and the author desperately needs a grammar checker. The latest chapters don't even look spell checked. Nothing takes me out of the story faster than having to reread a sentence multiple times so I can comprehend the intent of the author.
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Jul 6, 2019 09:58
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Anomalous Blowout posted:I write Into the Mire and I’m a chick! A gay chick even. So yes, I have some Opinions about how a lot of webfic handles ~the female/lesbian experience.~ I try not to get too preachy because it’s all just fiction and we’re all just here to have a good time, but you can definitely tell when a straight dude who has no clue how lady bodies work is writing that stuff, lol. Hi! Welcome. I like Mire a lot. The update rate means I tend to let it build up a bit and binge though. I'll probably catch up again now that book 1 is done. Peachfart posted:I have been reading through Prac recently and the author desperately needs a grammar checker. The latest chapters don't even look spell checked. Nothing takes me out of the story faster than having to reread a sentence multiple times so I can comprehend the intent of the author. Yup this is my main complaint about Prac Guide.
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Jul 6, 2019 10:05
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Anomalous Blowout posted:I write Into the Mire and I’m a chick! A gay chick even. So yes, I have some Opinions about how a lot of webfic handles ~the female/lesbian experience.~ I try not to get too preachy because it’s all just fiction and we’re all just here to have a good time, but you can definitely tell when a straight dude who has no clue how lady bodies work is writing that stuff, lol. Dude, thank you for writing ItM! It's pretty much the only serial I recommend people without a disclaimer in the form of "Just ignore the <bad writing/weird structure/creepy nonsense>", and I appreciate the heck out of the low fantasy vibe the early bits have going on. I don't have a good idea of where you're taking it, but I'm interested to find out.
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Jul 6, 2019 10:22
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Anomalous Blowout posted:I write Into the Mire and I’m a chick! A gay chick even. So yes, I have some Opinions about how a lot of webfic handles ~the female/lesbian experience.~ I try not to get too preachy because it’s all just fiction and we’re all just here to have a good time, but you can definitely tell when a straight dude who has no clue how lady bodies work is writing that stuff, lol. Oh neat, I liked Mire a fair bit. I think I ran out of chapters in January and decided to put it down and let it build up, I'll definitely get back to it now.
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Jul 6, 2019 10:30
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Cicero posted:Related note, why do web serial authors not know the difference between discrete and discreet? This happens repeatedly in Practical Guide and Metaworld. Has no one else pointed it out to them? The audience doesn't give a poo poo.
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Jul 6, 2019 11:06
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Anomalous Blowout posted:I write Into the Mire and I’m a chick! A gay chick even. So yes, I have some Opinions about how a lot of webfic handles ~the female/lesbian experience.~ I try not to get too preachy because it’s all just fiction and we’re all just here to have a good time, but you can definitely tell when a straight dude who has no clue how lady bodies work is writing that stuff, lol. So two of my characters in my web serial are gay girls. One written as gender neutral and one coming from a conservative family who felt like she needed to hide her sexual preferences in order to keep from disappointing her mom. So when I started writing them, I started reading the r/actuallesbians reddit which is full of gay women and trans women. It's incredibly positive and accepting and it's one of the few places on the internet that I've found that doesn't accept TERFS so trans people can feel acceptance which I think is super cool. Once a day I'd read the comments when they're dropping spicy memes or reading stories about success or failure. There are some cultural differences, but from what I've gathered it tends to reflect the gay community as a whole in that their romantic and sexual awakening has been stunted by compulsory normative heterosexuality, so what people learn in their teens about dating get rolled back to post-high school. That's changing, but not as quickly as people may think. Also gay women are still largely seen as sex objects. Food, not friends, essentially. This hasn't changed. In fact it's probably getting worse as porn becomes more accessible. There's a thirst for representation. Cultural juggernaut, Disney, did some serious baiting in the Captain Marvel movie. Hey, we're going back to the 80's. First women fighter pilots. They just happen to live together. Also they're basically raising a daughter together. And there's this undercurrent of sexual tension between the two characters. And Disney is doing that thing where it's sliiiiightly left of center, but doesn't actually pull the trigger on either making it a gay relationship or them just being extremely close friends. But then you have cool movies coming out like Booksmart where the movie just has real representation because it's not Disney which is largely artistically bankrupt and culturally shallow. I skip "not knowing how bodies work" by not focusing on sex at all. I used to write romance and erotic for a living and I have typed so many words about the mechanics and it is so extremely boring to me to write erotic scenes. I have the dubious distinction of being extremely good at them while also having zero interest. In fact, sex isn't even on the table and I instead delve into dating and romance in my cyberpunk story. So one of the subplots of book one (there are multiple books) is that girl meets girl, girl catches feelings and by the end of the book, both girls catch feelings and flowers are involved. It's cute. But I go beyond that. I'm not really interested in the chase or people circling one another only for the credits to roll as it were. So by book two, the two are dating and figuring one another out. By book five, they're cruising into a long term relationship and you get to see what people look like who are transitioning from constant excitement to becoming truly comfortable with one another. And this is because as a culture, we're obsessed with the chase and to a lesser extent, that new relationship energy, but not really showing off what a relationship looks like. Not sex, because I'm done with that and also the age bracket would make it creepy and illegal, but relationships. And I think there's a real thirst for that. So besides some cultural stuff, the takeaway that I had from the reddit forum, one that's so drat good it really shouldn't belong on reddit, is that gay women are basically like normal women, but gay. That's it. Full stop. They're just as neurotic and broken and confused and hilarious as the rest of us. Then at that point, you just have to know how to write women. What I believe in as a writer is representation, not just being seen. Being gay in a story shouldn't be their defining trait any more than being bisexual is mine. It doesn't even rank in the top ten of what's most important about my identity and for a well written character, if they are gay, it probably shouldn't define theirs either. There are moments where being gay is at the forefront. The adolescent giddiness in that romantic and sexual awakening after coming out for instance would be an example of when it comes to the forefront. Pride parades. That sort of thing. But to me, while sex is extremely important to making a relationship function, so is doing the dishes and having cats together. Simply being seen turns into tokenism. The person becomes a flagship for their identity instead of a person. You can't relate to an identity, you relate to people and through that relation you create empathy and through empathy you create acceptance. Representation is how you disarm fear and ignorance. Tokenism does have a place in introducing the concept of say, a trans person for example. So you'll see the first trans person on TV as a plot point in "All in the Family" in 1975. And that's over 40 years ago. Ironically, this is two years before "Soap", which was a sitcom, introduced the first openly gay character on television in 1977. Again, over forty years ago. So unless something new needs introducing to the public, tokenism is fully counterproductive to acceptance. The same goes for misrepresentation, either willfully or through ignorance. Getting it right is important so individuals from that group can feel seen and accepted and those who aren't from that community can see them as people instead of their single facets of identity. When I write, I don't tend to focus on the struggle of being gay because what I'm writing is near future science fiction. So someone being gay or trans or non-binary for instance is that no one really gives a poo poo. It's not about acceptance, because you'll have people who will speak about that poo poo out of one side of their mouth while talking poo poo the moment they're comfortable around other bigots. I mean the real acceptance of no one really giving a poo poo. There will still be thirsty dudes creeping on gay women thinking their dick is magic or whatever, but you were always going to have that and whatever combination of gender and sexuality being lovely towards each other. Anyway, lesbian representation was a broader policy of mine. If a character goes into the story, they are represented if their identity is not well understood. I certainly don't understand the lesbian experience, but by accepting that I don't have that knowledge in me I look for answers elsewhere. I find that pool of culture and learn from it rather than making assumptions and screwing up the story and alienating/misinforming my audience.
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Jul 6, 2019 14:03
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