|
Plorkyeran posted:Wow, you weren't kidding. A bunch of the later boxes also don't have readable foreground/background color combinations. I really hope it's SUPPOSED to be obtuse and confusing because I'm sure as gently caress not reading it closely
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 06:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 19:02 |
|
|
TWI 9.00 Patreon: well thats one way to bring back the Crazy Human Incidents 
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 09:57
|
|
|
She's back, baby 
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 10:52
|
|
|
Book 8 was good, but book 9 returns to why I love TWI. All the little details just make the story. Zevara being all for Erin's antics and then realizing how much work it will be, Seborn letting the adventurer step into it and laughing, the grumpy flame of irritation, it's just a great return to the previous slice of life. asur fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Jun 4, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 23:44
|
|
|
I liked Book 8 but this, THIS is what I read TWI for. Next chapter cannot come fast enough.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 03:47
|
|
|
pirateaba's note at the end of v8: "I think, for Volume 9, I will make the chapters shorter." 9.00 - 28k 9.01 - 34k lmao That said, this is the good stuff, 9.01 even moreso than 9.00 It consists almost entirely of all the inn regulars sitting around a fire and talking to Erin or to each other and nothing of tremendous import happens, but it's just lovely. Also please revoke Erin's [Advanced Cooking], thanks.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2022 11:19
|
|
|
"Vajra sighed contentedly at the memory of the shirtless man sparring with his magnificent cock." Beware of Chicken is good
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2022 13:36
|
|
|
The lovable peeping pervert archetype is so rarely a positive addition to the story. Beware of Chicken is just full of surprises.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2022 17:01
|
|
|
Man, I'm finally getting around to it and I'm in 18.7 in Worm so far, and this poo poo gets really emotionally draining. It's well written but I'm tired from this.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2022 22:35
|
|
|
Galick posted:Man, I'm finally getting around to it and I'm in 18.7 in Worm so far, and this poo poo gets really emotionally draining. It's well written but I'm tired from this. Buckle in for the ride. It only gets rougher.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 00:58
|
|
|
Galick posted:Man, I'm finally getting around to it and I'm in 18.7 in Worm so far, and this poo poo gets really emotionally draining. It's well written but I'm tired from this. Stop reading wildbow. He writes explicitly misery porn to inspire misery in his readers. Do not do this to yourself there is plenty of other reasonable stuff to read that isn't exploring how to inspire misery.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 03:36
|
|
|
Anias posted:Stop reading wildbow. He writes explicitly misery porn to inspire misery in his readers. Do not do this to yourself there is plenty of other reasonable stuff to read that isn't exploring how to inspire misery. yeah but some people like that I know I do
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 03:42
|
|
Anias posted:Stop reading wildbow. He writes explicitly misery porn to inspire misery in his readers. Do not do this to yourself there is plenty of other reasonable stuff to read that isn't exploring how to inspire misery. Hey, come now, don't steal my bit.
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 03:48
|
|
|
If your feeling exhausted after reading Wildbow's magnum opus the Worm, I'd recommend some lighter reading. IMO, you should Kick Back and Unwind with the hit book The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy. A heartwarming story of a father and son walking down the titular road, its a great way to destress after hard literature. I'd strongly recommend reading the book with no spoilers whatsoever, just to guarantee that you won't have any wholesome moments spoiled. Enjoy!
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 03:54
|
|
|
cock hero flux posted:yeah but some people like that If you go back in this thread to when Worm was coming out pretty much the whole thread was raving about it. But Goons love to hate on stuff. But yeah, Worm is draining, it's like that for pretty much everyone. Finding something lighter to read afterwards, or even as a break, is a good idea.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 03:58
|
|
|
Worm is one of the few seminal webnovels, for better and worse. If your interested in web fiction its possibly worth reading some of it just to see its influence on a bunch of other texts. The only things more influential I can think of are Harry Potter and the methods of Rationality (lmao) and fifty shades of grey.
Rob Filter fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Jun 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 04:21
|
|
|
Bremen posted:If you go back in this thread to when Worm was coming out pretty much the whole thread was raving about it. But Goons love to hate on stuff. One thing I like to keep in mind when recommending fiction to people, whether it's a web serial, webcomic, TV show, or whatever, is that there's a fundamental difference in experience between reading it as it comes out versus reading it archivally. I really liked Worm as it was coming out. The gaps between chapters meant that each one had room to breathe, which meant that the crushing misery that saturates Wildbow's work was not a constant weight on my mind. The weird pacing issues didn't matter so much when I was spending maybe fifteen minutes max on each chapter, twice a week. I had friends who were reading it too, which meant that it was a frequent topic of conversation. Cliffhangers were exciting. We pounced on each new weird bit of lore. Plot twists and character deaths prompted deep speculation about what might come next. That doesn't happen anymore, because it is finished. It is no longer a serial and is no longer experienced as one. I tried rereading it a few months back. It doesn't hold up. It makes for a terrible read if you're reading through it today, with no mandatory breaks between chapters, for reasons that this thread has discussed to death. It is in bad need of editing to make it into something that would be fun to read as a book, because it wasn't written to be read as a book. It is a first draft, written the day before (or day of) publication, with each post aimed at an audience that had fully processed the previous chapter and was eager for just a little bit more. There are serials that hold up to archival reading. I'd even say that most do, or at least do so well enough that the story shines despite the flaws of the format. Worm is not one of them, so despite the fact that I really liked it, I do not recommend it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 04:43
|
|
|
blastron posted:One thing I like to keep in mind when recommending fiction to people, whether it's a web serial, webcomic, TV show, or whatever, is that there's a fundamental difference in experience between reading it as it comes out versus reading it archivally. I really liked Worm as it was coming out. The gaps between chapters meant that each one had room to breathe, which meant that the crushing misery that saturates Wildbow's work was not a constant weight on my mind. The weird pacing issues didn't matter so much when I was spending maybe fifteen minutes max on each chapter, twice a week. I had friends who were reading it too, which meant that it was a frequent topic of conversation. Cliffhangers were exciting. We pounced on each new weird bit of lore. Plot twists and character deaths prompted deep speculation about what might come next. Conversely, I read Worm after it was completed and enjoyed it just fine without chapter breaks. I'd actually blame something else - time and discussion. Worm's bleakness is its most notable feature, and the most common thing to come up when someone starts talking about it, so if it's been several years since you've read it and you keep getting reminded about the bleakness, it starts to get easy to remember only that and forget the stuff that actually made you finish reading a 1.7 million word series (and no one's stubborn enough to hate read that much). Also I suspect Worm is just pretty unpleasant to reread in general, due to the whole bleakness and Taylor making constant horrible decisions being even worse when you know where it ends up. To pick an example where I do agree the difference between serial and consolidated reading making a difference, I read Mother of Learning the same way and found the ending fine (not great, not bad) but I suspect that had a lot to do with reading it all at once instead of one chapter a month and expecting an epic crescendo only for it to be just sort of a steady journey into an epilogue. Bremen fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Jun 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 05:08
|
|
|
Worm has a legitimately great hook and initial premise in Taylor's story, but it's just mired in so much stuff that gets in its own way, is otherwise irrelevant to that story, rudimentary errors in the text, and general misanthropy and Wildbow brand weirdness, that you basically end up skimming to get to the good bits sooner rather than later. I don't think it's so much that people just decided to start hating on Worm, although there's definitely been a shift in how acceptable it is to criticise Wildbow in web serial circles. But that's because Ward came out and, to put it as diplomatically as possible, didn't exactly meet the expectations of the fans. He should edit the first eight arcs into a YA superhero trilogy and make bank but not only would that require a ton of work, I think it'd drive his fanbase to full-blown sectarian violence. At this rate, the person querying their own high school accident insect lady and blonde telepath superhero story will get there first. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Jun 9, 2022 |
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 05:17
|
|
|
I read Worm in a week and I spent most of it really mad at Taylor for constantly making bad decisions and that overwhelmed the bleakness for me.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 05:20
|
|
|
Worm starts off as bleak, but I found it very quickly loses that feeling. Taylor always makes the worst possible decision so it turns into reading to see the trainwreck that will occur as the bad decisions compound.
asur fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Jun 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 07:11
|
|
|
Worm is about all the fun side characters doing neat things while watching Taylor continuously making bad decisions. Ward broke a whole bunch of peoples' brains and made them retroactively hate that, though.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 07:14
|
|
|
it's both: the situation is bleak but taylor also manages to make it even worse by being insane in a very specific way
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 07:21
|
|
|
it helps that when I read worm i hadn't yet spent several years of talking to otherwise comfortable and successful middle class people who are completely convinced the future is hopeless and everyone should just give up basically the book feels like a bad conversation I wish I could escape after a dsa meeting at the bar lmfao. like it's bleak and sad... in a very unattached way. it goes for almost shock value over anything actually sad, I guess. it's more horror, although most of it is gore-related which I fine kind of trite and I don't like
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 08:46
|
|
Larry Parrish posted:it helps that when I read worm i hadn't yet spent several years of talking to otherwise comfortable and successful middle class people who are completely convinced the future is hopeless and everyone should just give up I'd argue that's because Worm reduces everything down to bad individuals. Even the entities, Endbringers, Doctor Mother, and so on are all basically that -- bad actors preventing the world from being great. Whenever Wildbow attempts to address problems that're bigger than that, everything gets weird because he doesn't get that the true horror of Worm isn't the eleven foot tall hydrokinetic monster or Johnny Deep's The Joker, but the fact that the Wards are basically child soldiers who gave one of their members, a twelve year old girl, boob-plate as part of her uniform. And even then, it's because of Director Piggot (who is fat and corrupt) and then Director Tagg (just corrupt) Not the Protectorate as an institution. Another thing is probably that no one in Worm really gives much of a drat about anything. The Undersiders basically have particular pet issues that only affect them. The Protectorate capes are all generally happy being company men or women. It's Armsmaster who probably exhibits the most drive for change in the whole story when it comes out that Cauldron is a conspiracy within the Protectorate, but that gets shot down as quickly as he brings it up. Worm's ending at least has a bit of lightness to it where it feels like the structure has been torn down and everyone will be free to try and make something better -- even Taylor. Too bad about Ward. I guess it truly is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Jun 9, 2022 |
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 09:37
|
|
|
yeah it's very... odd. that's before you even get into how it depicts poverty or race or drugs, or hell even the violence. in a way it has to be a super hero story to explain why it's so... daytime TV.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 09:43
|
|
|
I think one of the reasons I like Worm so much more than most people in this thread seem to is I actually love Taylor as a protagonist because she makes terrible decisions. She's self-righteous and short-sighted (i.e. a teenager!) and watching that type of person get super powers and lock themselves into a spiral of ever increasing conflict was ridiculously entertaining to me.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 10:51
|
|
|
Worm is one of the rare few stories I have given up on. The relentless pace of bad decisions, misery, and always more pointless action just made me quit near the end. There are a ton of amazing serials available now, there is no need to read Ward. Peachfart fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Jun 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 18:25
|
|
|
It feels wild that he even wrote a sequel to Worm. The story is so fully complete. Worm has problems but leaving things unfinished is not among them. I enjoyed Worm a lot but have not been tempted to start Ward.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 18:41
|
|
|
Man I've got no idea how you read web serials if you aren't willing to bail when they get bad.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 18:53
|
|
|
Ward was very bad, but Pale is pretty good so far. Not sure having the protagonists being 13ish was the best choice, though I guess it brings in the teen market which might be pretty big for web serials? The Pactverse is much more interesting to me than the Wormverse.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 19:10
|
|
|
Unlike a lot of folks here I enjoyed Worm, the flaws didn't bother me much because I enjoyed the worldbuilding and to an extent, the escalating story. Ward was a slog, especially the first half but I appreciate what Wildbow was trying to do. He points it out himself in his post-Ward essay that he got away from the worldbuilding in Ward because he assumed that readers already understood it from Worm. Unfortunately, he didn't understand at the time that the worldbuilding was probably his strongest element. Moving away from that and trying to make it a character driven piece turned a lot of people off.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 19:26
|
|
|
Patrick Spens posted:Man I've got no idea how you read web serials if you aren't willing to bail when they get bad.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 19:40
|
|
|
THIS_IS_FINE posted:Unlike a lot of folks here I enjoyed Worm, the flaws didn't bother me much because I enjoyed the worldbuilding and to an extent, the escalating story. That's such a weird thing to say, because he literally blew up the world in Worm. I always found it so bizarre how Ward had a brand new world and it was basically Brockton Bay with a yellow coat of paint.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 20:47
|
|
|
Clean Your Teeth posted:Ward was very bad, but Pale is pretty good so far. Not sure having the protagonists being 13ish was the best choice, though I guess it brings in the teen market which might be pretty big for web serials? I felt like Pale's been really great, I caught up a few weeks ago though I'm not following regular updates. One thing I particularly appreciate about it compared to most of Wildbow's works is that the protagonists all have a pretty good support structure of friends and allies. Taylor was an outlaw, Blake was a pariah, and Sylvester was inhuman. Victoria did have some but I still felt like most of her relationships were within her team. It's cool that the witch trio have genuinely helpful people to seek advice from.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 22:54
|
|
|
Patrick Spens posted:Man I've got no idea how you read web serials if you aren't willing to bail when they get bad. Royal Road's follow list makes it really easy to click on new chapters of things I don't really care about while I'm bored on the bus or whatever. I don't need it to be good, just better than reading Twitter. There are probably better things I could be doing with my time, but that involves making proactive decisions about what I want to do with my time, which is more mental effort than I can muster while on the bus.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 23:20
|
|
|
What the gently caress pale is awful and very gross at points. Yes please give me a serial where wildbow of all people tries to depict puberty and awkward teenage sexuality and has to keep reminding his community to not be creepy
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 23:23
|
|
Patrick Spens posted:That's such a weird thing to say, because he literally blew up the world in Worm. I always found it so bizarre how Ward had a brand new world and it was basically Brockton Bay with a yellow coat of paint. I feel like a lot of Ward was constructed from things he didn't use in Worm, whether that was just stuff he cut while writing or full alternate ideas. Ward was just a bad idea but it makes sense as a response to Twig. Anyway, here's Pale. 
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2022 23:48
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2022 00:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 19:02 |
|
|
Horizon Burning posted:What the gently caress pale is awful and very gross at points. Yes please give me a serial where wildbow of all people tries to depict puberty and awkward teenage sexuality Huh that sounds interesting, thanks for the rec. Milkfred E. Moore posted:I feel like a lot of Ward was constructed from things he didn't use in Worm, whether that was just stuff he cut while writing or full alternate ideas. Ward was just a bad idea but it makes sense as a response to Twig. That's one hell of an act there, what do you call it? Web serials
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2022 01:52
|
|