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Velius posted:Given how the pace of this thread has dropped to nothing I'm guessing I'm not the only one losing patience. Pact has just been "meh" so far to me. I'm hoping that something totally awesome happens when Blake finishes off Conquest and we can get this story loving going again. I've been hugely disappointed with the Conquest arc so far.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:36
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I'll admit, it does kind of feel like the story's been jogging in place for a while now.
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Jun 10, 2014 22:07
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I am enjoying the story but it does sort of feel like Blake is running on a treadmill - lots of action but not getting ahead. Edit: which, ultimately, could be the entire point. It has been hammered home that his situation is pretty much hopeless. If it goes on too much longer (and I don't think it will, as the Conquest arc is coming to a close and I anticipate a paradigm shift with the conclusion of that) Pact is going to really suffer I think.
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Jun 10, 2014 22:13
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Treadmill is a really good way to describe things. Blake is always right on the edge of falling off the treadmill, and seems to have exhausted the list of things he can easily do during this part of the story. The constant tension seems different from the perpetual "you're-boned"ness of Worm, but in a way I'm having trouble putting my finger on. Maybe it is what someone said upthread -- that we haven't gotten any downtime for the characters to be themselves without DOOOOOOOOOOM hanging over their heads. Edit: Here's hoping the Conquest arc ends with him claiming Toronto as his demesne.
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Jun 10, 2014 22:37
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Grundulum posted:Treadmill is a really good way to describe things. Blake is always right on the edge of falling off the treadmill, and seems to have exhausted the list of things he can easily do during this part of the story. The constant tension seems different from the perpetual "you're-boned"ness of Worm, but in a way I'm having trouble putting my finger on. Maybe it is what someone said upthread -- that we haven't gotten any downtime for the characters to be themselves without DOOOOOOOOOOM hanging over their heads. And rose getting the house and small town. Dual storyline action would be neat.
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Jun 11, 2014 01:08
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Virigoth posted:And rose getting the house and small town. Dual storyline action would be neat. My theory on rose is that grandma put her in place to take over but not before all the other heirs (Blake and Molly anyway) soak up as much bad karma as possible while she gets time to setup. How it actually works out though... Agreed that the Toronto arc has started to drag a bit.
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Jun 11, 2014 02:59
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I still like it. It would have been nice if it just ended when Blake did his three tasks for Conquest and moved on. I hope this is the last chapter for the arc, but I'll keep reading it!
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Jun 11, 2014 03:58
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RC Cola posted:I still like it. It would have been nice if it just ended when Blake did his three tasks for Conquest and moved on. I hope this is the last chapter for the arc, but I'll keep reading it! Agreed. I want Blake to learn and explore the world. The setting is the most interesting part of Pact so far. I guess he needs to get free from the constant attacks for such a thing to be possible which hopefully is what happens at the climax. Laird and Conquest get defeated leaving Blake in an uneasy peace with the rest of Jacob's Bell. Grandma Rose stated in the flash back that the mirror image the Barber created would be her heir's protection rather than some trick, or at least that is how I read it.
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Jun 11, 2014 05:36
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Not to mention Blake has saved himself twice (maybe more?) doing the same thing, challenging his enemy to a fairer contest. When he did it this arc, getting three days of rest from Conquest I was like "really? again?" the first time kinda made sense, but this one was so dumb, it really let me down. I mean, it's still good and I'll keep reading it, but I'm starting to fear we'll never get our Leviathan moment. As someone else said, Pact would probably improve a bunch by an arc or two of down time, with Blake exploring the setting a bit and setting up a plot to take advantage of, later. Worm did a great job at developing the setting as you went along. Lots of names and powers where dropped out of nowhere, that later would become actual characters you could inmediately identify after hearing about them in passing. I want Blake and Evan to basically roam the world and fight demons, like Supernatural, but good. edit: quote=/= spoiler. Derp. Hugoon Chavez fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 08:50
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Worm was mainly about the characters, every side character had a name and a backstory, and it was about them as much as Taylor, Pact doesn't seem half as character-driven, the only real people we care about yet are Blake, Rose, Evan and maybe Laird. Fell is out of the picture already and none of the others have really grabbed my attention, Worm had so many I'm not even gonna list them. Maybe it's partly because of the different way he decided to do interludes, Grandma Roses diary instead of the inner musings of the hero/villain of the week, (There have been a couple of character ones, I know, but not half as many as Worm!) or maybe he's working up to something.
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Jun 11, 2014 10:32
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Yeah, I think that's about right. He appears to have skipped or compressed a bit, if we use Worm as an analogue. Virtually all of Worm arc's 11-23 were action, but it was preceded by a good solid foundation of building the world and the characters before Leviathan set things up and exploded it.
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Jun 11, 2014 10:40
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I like the point about character-driven narrative. I was hoping that Blake's friends getting inducted would help with that, but they pretty much did a total of about nothing and then got shot or bled unconscious.
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Jun 11, 2014 14:32
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Pavlov posted:I like the point about character-driven narrative. I was hoping that Blake's friends getting inducted would help with that, but they pretty much did a total of about nothing and then got shot or bled unconscious. Making it pretty drat necessary that they come back soon. They were one of the grounding forces for us readers. Since it looks increasingly likely that Blake *is* the rare genius-level talent with magic -- the kind of intellect and instinct that completely understands things on (or before) the first time they come up -- Blake's friends were our window into the system from a layman's point of view. The chapter or two spent awakening them was really interesting, and I think Pact could use some more of that.
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Jun 11, 2014 14:41
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My favorite parts of Worm were the early bits and the interludes. Once the action really started going it almost became monotonous, particularly late in the S9 arc and its immediate aftermath. Pact so far is more like the parts of Worm I didn't like.
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Jun 11, 2014 21:31
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Yeah, late in Worm I just started skipping large parts of the action, without feeling like I lost anything. Worm should be really great after an editor gets to it though.
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Jun 11, 2014 22:20
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Man, Blake is a walking corpse basically. Made up by pieces of ghosts, demons, others and his friends. Held together by magic glue and a bird. That is an interesting bit about him.
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Jun 13, 2014 07:09
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Jesus christ that was a bad chapter to be a Behaim in.
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Jun 14, 2014 05:28
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Now the question is whether Blake will be forsworn, or if his promise was vague enough to weasel out of it.
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Jun 14, 2014 05:57
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Pavlov posted:Now the question is whether Blake will be forsworn, or if his promise was vague enough to weasel out of it. Pretty sure that would be easy enough to weasel out of, especially with the modifier of "if I can help it." Either way, this chapter is a good step forward is seeing resolution for the whole Conquest ordeal.
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Jun 14, 2014 07:31
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I have to say, at the moment the only thing I come out of most updates really thinking is 'Evan's awesome I hope Wildbow doesn't go all GRRM on him'. Seriously, egging the ghouls, skipping to the end, little dude's the best thing about Pact, and knowing Wildbow it's all going to go HORRIBLY wrong for him somehow 
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Jun 14, 2014 09:36
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Pavlov posted:Now the question is whether Blake will be forsworn, or if his promise was vague enough to weasel out of it. Blake can't be forsworn in the same way your main character in a superhero story can't lose their superpowers.
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Jun 14, 2014 14:54
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Remind me why he'd be forsworn?
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Jun 14, 2014 19:06
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Pact posted:“I promise I won’t hurt your Uncle Laird too badly. I won’t kill him, if I can help it. But Duncan may well die without help.” Did he hurt Laird "too badly"? Does the "if I can help it" apply to the previous sentence? Could he have helped it? We really haven't seen how the spirits interpret ambiguously worded promises like this.
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Jun 14, 2014 19:23
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I've been waiting for Conquest to finally attempt to use Blake's past trauma's against him. I've been pretty sure it wouldn't turn out the way Conquest was imagining it would for a while. Not super happy that Blake was raped, but it's been looking like that was what happened for a while.
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Jun 14, 2014 21:14
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Jon Irenicus posted:Pretty sure that would be easy enough to weasel out of, especially with the modifier of "if I can help it." Somehow I don't think the spirits will take "I made a good faith effort to save him" as an excuse. RIP Laird.
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Jun 17, 2014 07:55
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Oh poo poo Laird is dead, Conquest is trapped in the mirror world and everyone got a good dose of Pauz radiation. That was crazy. Also what was with Lairds eye? The Eraser demon from the shard of wood or something else?
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Jun 17, 2014 08:25
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I am wondering if Laird had been possessed for awhile now. Maybe even intentionally trying to push Blake to use demons.
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Jun 17, 2014 08:42
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What was the deal with the shard of wood, btw? I don't remember that from the ErasUrr eps.
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Jun 18, 2014 20:07
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While I'm glad that the Conquest arc is over (it was starting to really drag), the ending didn't feel earned to me. Sure, the Chekhov's gun was introduced in the opposites-binding data dumps, but it's like (to continue the gun metaphor) that he didn't reload the Checkhov's gun before he used it again. The hair and demon pages were just kinda tacked on at the end to make his super-secret plan come --suprise!-- into being, but they didn't describe those things being set up. Even if we, as the readers, didn't know what they were doing while they were setting it up, it should still have been described during the events.thespaceinvader posted:What was the deal with the shard of wood, btw? I don't remember that from the ErasUrr eps.
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Jun 18, 2014 20:30
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Blasphemeral, you hit on exactly the point I wanted to make about this chapter. Pact seems vastly worse than Worm about doing this sort of thing.
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Jun 18, 2014 22:05
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thespaceinvader posted:What was the deal with the shard of wood, btw? I don't remember that from the ErasUrr eps. Pretty sure that's the shard fell/conquest gives him to find eraser to begin with.
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Jun 19, 2014 00:05
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builds character posted:Pretty sure that's the shard fell/conquest gives him to find eraser to begin with. I think Wildbow edited the last paragraph of 7.6, because I was much less confused on a reread. You're correct. Also noticed on this reread: right before the second vision of the (edit: Grundulum fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Jun 19, 2014 |
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Jun 19, 2014 06:31
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I've been enjoying pact so far but I agree that this arc has been dragging, and in particular the payoff for this chapter was pretty lame. Blake was just about to lose, then he was seriously about to lose, then he was mere moments from losing, and then all of a sudden he won, and I didn't really understand how we got to that point. I guess Conquest went into the mirror because he randomly decided that he needed to subdue Rose as well, instead of just bitching Blake some more, and then he was somehow bound in the mirror because of reasons? It would definitely be good if Blake had an arc of down time where he could recover, learn a bit more, and we could see what he's like as a character without him constantly scrabbling for solutions and running on fumes.
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Jun 19, 2014 16:48
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Coca Koala posted:I've been enjoying pact so far but I agree that this arc has been dragging, and in particular the payoff for this chapter was pretty lame. Blake was just about to lose, then he was seriously about to lose, then he was mere moments from losing, and then all of a sudden he won, and I didn't really understand how we got to that point. I guess Conquest went into the mirror because he randomly decided that he needed to subdue Rose as well, instead of just bitching Blake some more, and then he was somehow bound in the mirror because of reasons? Conquest is driven to dominate what he deems weak. Blake was showing (false) bravado, he went after weaker targets. The flow did feel a bit off, this is one of those moments when the detective reveals what happened and why but we got an end of chapter instead.
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Jun 19, 2014 18:12
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Coca Koala posted:I've been enjoying pact so far but I agree that this arc has been dragging, and in particular the payoff for this chapter was pretty lame. Blake was just about to lose, then he was seriously about to lose, then he was mere moments from losing, and then all of a sudden he won, and I didn't really understand how we got to that point. I guess Conquest went into the mirror because he randomly decided that he needed to subdue Rose as well, instead of just bitching Blake some more, and then he was somehow bound in the mirror because of reasons? Hopefully this is the setup for that now. I just went back and reread and the contest won't end until Conquest dies or surrenders. Since he can't die he'll have to surrender. They also never established what Blake got if he won, hopefully he'll be able to demand his freedom and protection so he can return to Jacob's Bell without constant attacks.
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Jun 19, 2014 19:13
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Lyon posted:Hopefully this is the setup for that now. I just went back and reread and the contest won't end until Conquest dies or surrenders. Since he can't die he'll have to surrender. They also never established what Blake got if he won, hopefully he'll be able to demand his freedom and protection so he can return to Jacob's Bell without constant attacks. This whole contest, actually, is similar in theme to a demesne contest. He got all the major players in Toronto either on his side or against him and then won. It'd be really cool if he could claim a large portion of Toronto as a demesne because of this nonsense.
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Jun 19, 2014 19:40
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Blasphemeral posted:This whole contest, actually, is similar in theme to a demesne contest. He got all the major players in Toronto either on his side or against him and then won. It'd be really cool if he could claim a large portion of Toronto as a demesne because of this nonsense. That would be pretty boss, and take the Conquest mirror as his implement hah.
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Jun 19, 2014 19:45
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Blasphemeral posted:This whole contest, actually, is similar in theme to a demesne contest. He got all the major players in Toronto either on his side or against him and then won. It'd be really cool if he could claim a large portion of Toronto as a demesne because of this nonsense. I don't think any of the major players in Toronto were on Blake's side. Fell was the only native on Blake's side, and he wasn't exactly a major player. Everyone else was either neutral (e.g. the priest of Dionysus) or opposed to Blake (Astrologer, the Eye, etc.). If anything this should strengthen Blake's claim of demesne.
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Jun 19, 2014 19:46
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Grundulum posted:I don't think any of the major players in Toronto were on Blake's side. Fell was the only native on Blake's side, and he wasn't exactly a major player. Everyone else was either neutral (e.g. the priest of Dionysus) or opposed to Blake (Astrologer, the Eye, etc.). If anything this should strengthen Blake's claim of demesne. Yeah, his argument could be, "Hey, you had a puppet dictator, and I took him away. Why not accept me as the new puppet dictator, and enjoy your status quo?" It would totally work.
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Jun 19, 2014 20:50
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Then two days later an inquisitor walks into his house and shoots him in the head.
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Jun 19, 2014 20:57
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