Neurosis posted:It was a plot point that Dragon had had something like a trigger event which gave a point of her demarcation where her designs started to change. Colin noticed it when going through her guts and said to Dragon she appeared to have had a trigger event. Of course they don't KNOW it was a trigger event, given she's a machine intelligence and such an event isn't as obvious in her case, but it's strongly implied. We know Dragon is a learning system. While she can't alter herself, she can still learn and adapt and it could have just been some kind of rapid shift along those lines. It might not have been a trigger event but it could have been. I prefer to think that it wasn't because, what is a shard so magical that it can just fit in anywhere? Like, we know they have a physical component - the corona whatever - in people's brains. Does it also exist on, like, one of Dragon's servers? NecroMonster posted:Just saying, the trauma was saint stealing from her, and her response was to put loving fetuses in her suits of course her code would have changed radically around the time, and a trigger event would have been the only real thing Armsmaster had to relate it to. She definitely stopped using them, I'd say, given that they never come up again and people spend a lot of time in her armored ships. After all, once Armsmaster allowed her to make AIs she had no need of the weird organic computer fetus things. I'd say she didn't tell Armsmaster, just quietly scooped them all out and disposed of them.
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Sep 26, 2015 04:49
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Milky Moor posted:We know Dragon is a learning system. While she can't alter herself, she can still learn and adapt and it could have just been some kind of rapid shift along those lines. It might not have been a trigger event but it could have been. I prefer to think that it wasn't because, what is a shard so magical that it can just fit in anywhere? Like, we know they have a physical component - the corona whatever - in people's brains. Does it also exist on, like, one of Dragon's servers? Aren't the shards doing it on billions and billions and billions of different settings and realities and timelines with who knows what in where? Presumably shards work with alien races who don't have anything that physically resembles a brain. What is to say that the shard isn't just something that works on anything sentient and modifies itself accordingly, and the corona pollentia is just how it shows in humans?
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Sep 28, 2015 18:49
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DarkCrawler posted:Aren't the shards doing it on billions and billions and billions of different settings and realities and timelines with who knows what in where? Presumably shards work with alien races who don't have anything that physically resembles a brain. What is to say that the shard isn't just something that works on anything sentient and modifies itself accordingly, and the corona pollentia is just how it shows in humans? Because it's utterly ridiculous, particularly for a setting that tries to present itself as grounded and serious.
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Sep 28, 2015 22:51
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If Dragon could have a shard (and I do think this would be possible if the Worms had accounted for it) than what's to stop a tinker from making something with passive access to a shard? No, the Worms would probably want to keep the entities they are "working with" from doing this kind of poo poo, that is of course, if they thought to disallow it in the first place (I'm pretty sure they would). Still, being as Eden died and Dragons creator likely did a good bit of manipulating of the likely restrictions of his own shard given abilities to get Dragon made in the first place, it is totally conceivable that Dragon could have gotten access to a shard, but it's also not at all necessary.
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Sep 29, 2015 00:22
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"hmm i like this worm thing i wonder if other goons are aware of it" 3000 posts  anyway i was really enjoying this until i got to 25.6 and now i'm just annoyed, why would you timeskip two years ahead and ignore all those dangling plot threads i havent finished reading the whole series but did he ever think "oh i better unfuck that" and say what happened there?
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Sep 29, 2015 12:14
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Dreggon posted:"hmm i like this worm thing i wonder if other goons are aware of it" Yeah, he's not happy with it either. I suspect when it gets (eventually) published it will be either filled in, or reworked in some way. Even with it's flaws Worm remains one of my favorite reads.
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Sep 29, 2015 12:29
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it feels like he ran out of ideas too hey look these big bad guys that nobody can fight well what if they were cloned and now there's hundreds of them!!!! and they're also really easy to kill now too thereby removing any previously-conveyed sense of threat it's a real shame because i thoroughly enjoyed 20 and 22, it was excellent up to that point and then it got even better... but then it got worse and even if he does fill it in i already know what happens afterwards 
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Sep 29, 2015 12:49
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Yeah, the timeskip is widely acknowledged as the biggest flaw in Worm. As far as the S9 clones go, I don't think it's so bad. After all, some of those S9 guys were pretty goofy and it mentions in Bonesaw's interlude, I think, that some of the originals only lasted days as members of the Nine. Not every member of the Nine was some big shot super villain - they weren't all Siberian and Crawler types. The current batch of S9 - Jack, Bonesaw, Mannequin, Siberian, Crawler, and so on - felt like the most powerful iteration. And even then they had members like Burnscar and Cherish who weren't super-threatening. The Nine always struck me as surviving due to some combination of Jack's power, the fantastic PR and propaganda which comes with being known as psychotic supervillains, and a general skill at only fighting battles on the terms they designate. When caught out - for example, by Defiant and Dragon in Boston - they don't fare nearly as well and Dragon even manages to kill the Siberian while Defiant comes within a hair's breadth of killing Bonesaw. NecroMonster posted:If Dragon could have a shard (and I do think this would be possible if the Worms had accounted for it) than what's to stop a tinker from making something with passive access to a shard? Ultimately, I just don't think Wildbow is as good at writing this kind of cosmic-level sci-fi as he is at writing the street level cape stuff. I'd say that if you rounded up most of my criticisms with Worm, it'd mostly come down to how the Big Stuff is handled throughout the narrative. The Endbringers, Scion, the shards, and so on - I think they're all fantastic ideas but ultimately collapse somewhere along the way. That's not to say it isn't gripping - Interlude 26 is one of my favorites - but he's just not very good at, for lack of a better term, understanding that 'less is more' when it comes to the big mysteries. My other big criticism of Wildbow's writing in Worm is that he seems to describe characters exactly once in the story and leaves it at that. If you asked me to describe what many of the characters look like, I'd have a lot of trouble. Taylor is tall, lanky and has dark hair? Grue is black with a motorcycle-skull helmet? Regent has black hair and is kind of androgynous? Tattletale has blonde hair? Armsmaster has a beard and I presume he's white? Miss Militia is Middle Eastern? Foil is East Asian? Dragon is ethnically-ambiguous? Jack looks like of like Johnny Depp? I don't have a clue what Saint looks like beyond the cross on his face or what Teacher looks like beyond his namesake or anything about Lung beyond dragon tattoos and muscles. And there's characters whom I think my mental image comes purely out of nothingness, such as Golem looking like Bobby Hill, simply because I have very little idea what the text describes them as. And I think there's inconsistencies within the text when it comes to character appearances, such as the number of Defiant's cybernetic limbs. Compare this to, say, The Expanse series where I could give you a very good description of the characters - their height, build, facial features, general demeanor, quirks and habits - simply from the text. The fact that I can only get maybe half a dozen words about a lot of Worm's characters when it comes to those same features is a big issue, I think.
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Sep 29, 2015 14:36
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Milky Moor posted:Ultimately, I just don't think Wildbow is as good at writing this kind of cosmic-level sci-fi as he is at writing the street level cape stuff. This is largely why I think Twig is his better story. Speaking of which, I have this problem where I want to talk about Twig, but can't think of anything to say besides, "it's good I like it". Does anyone have any real opinions on it?
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Sep 29, 2015 14:45
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Pavlov posted:This is largely why I think Twig is his better story. I think it's pretty dope. It is very hard to say so far, as we are really quite near the beginning (or at least not even halfway). If this is going to get to Worm lengths we haven't even reached an Endbringer yet. Anyway I like that, for now, we see a civil war from the perspective of the establishment and not the plucky young rebels. This on it's own is breaking the trope enough to be noticeable. I also noticed that some people commented that the 'Enemy' interludes are somewhat ambiguous in meaning. It could mean a) we see from the perspective of the Lambs' enemies, b) we see from the perspective of the Crown's enemies, c) we see the enemy Academy from the real good guys' perspecives or d) all of the above. I like it. Now what I really liked from the recent chapters was the Duke. I don't know about anyone else, but for some reason it never really crossed my mind that the Royals would be heavily augmented. I just assumed they would be 'above' those things. So maybe just me, but that was quite of a surprise immediately followed by 'well duhh'.
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Sep 29, 2015 14:59
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Pavlov posted:This is largely why I think Twig is his better story. I honestly haven't read it. I never finished Pact and the setting of Twig just doesn't grab me. I think though, generally, people are pretty positive about Twig, although it wouldn't surprise me if it has the least amount of readers across all three of his works. While I never finished Pact, I did like a lot of the ideas in it. Like how a lot of the spirits and such operated on a nebulous story logic.
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Sep 29, 2015 15:00
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I think I prefer the Pact setting to the Worm setting honestly. It's a shame we very likely won't see more of it.
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Sep 29, 2015 15:11
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Pact is ok to skip. It's probably the weakest work, though I still enjoyed it. You should give Twig a chance though. It's had good scope and pacing so far, and it focuses a lot more on social, inter-personal conflict than big drawn out fight scenes. The setting takes a bit to sink its hooks in, but it's very unique when it does.
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Sep 29, 2015 15:13
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Twig's been super enjoyable lately- but yeah, I sorta fall into the trap of not really having anything interesting to say about it, heh. I do love that it has so much character interaction/development, which is something I felt Pact lacked.
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Sep 29, 2015 15:26
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Was it ever confirmed whether or not the Endbringers were created as a side-effect of Eidolon's power or not? I'm going through the end of the story on my second re-read and that bit is still really vague to me.
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Sep 30, 2015 19:41
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The Shortest Path posted:Was it ever confirmed whether or not the Endbringers were created as a side-effect of Eidolon's power or not? I'm going through the end of the story on my second re-read and that bit is still really vague to me. They weren't created as part of his power, they were a standard part of Eden/Scion's strategy for causing conflict. Eidolon just activated them subconsciously.
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Sep 30, 2015 20:05
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No, I don't think it was ever solidly denied or confirmed. It is everyone's go-to theory and at least Eidolon believed it at the end.
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Sep 30, 2015 21:29
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Piell posted:They weren't created as part of his power, they were a standard part of Eden/Scion's strategy for causing conflict. Eidolon just activated them subconsciously. That makes a bit more sense to me. Is this one of those things Wildbow talked about on Reddit or was it subtle linereading that I completely failed to get after three reads? It also makes my reading of the Simurgh probably very inaccurate, in thinking that every event in the story was completely engineered by it to set up Taylor with the exact resources, personal ability, and mindset she would need to defeat Zion, with the other Endbringers, Echidna, the S9, etc. all being set up in such a way that she would develop properly to think in terms that would prepare her for that fight. Reading too heavily into it? Fajita Queen fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Sep 30, 2015 |
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Sep 30, 2015 23:23
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No, that's pretty much right. I'm also fairly sure that the 'superweapons' glimpsed in that alternate timeline are smaller, weaker and more numerous than the Endbringers. So, while not wholly created by Eidolon it seems pretty clear that he called them into being, particularly given the patterns they follow and Eidolon's own terrible personality.
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Sep 30, 2015 23:49
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The Shortest Path posted:That makes a bit more sense to me. Is this one of those things Wildbow talked about on Reddit or was it subtle linereading that I completely failed to get after three reads? Yes, but not for the reasons you think. It's actually because most of what brought Khepri into being can be traced back to Contessa, including Taylor's trigger.
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Oct 1, 2015 00:49
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Milky Moor posted:I'm also fairly sure that the 'superweapons' glimpsed in that alternate timeline are smaller, weaker and more numerous than the Endbringers. The Eden-guided world we saw was just an early trial run; she was busy working on an even NinjaDebugger posted:It's actually because most of what brought Khepri into being can be traced back to Contessa, including Taylor's trigger. Did I miss the interlude where Contessa offers Annette Hebert a cellphone plan?
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Oct 1, 2015 02:06
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It's true. Taylor was the win condition Contessa was always working towards without ever being aware of it. Her actions led to Eidolon, which led to Simurgh and and Alexandria, which led to basically every single thing Taylor experienced. The irony here is of course that the larger portion of all of the time and effort that went into the entire "plan" was probably wasted because the plan emphasized "safety" and "ease" over simply working, because that's how Contessa's power works as well as being a continual theme of people's failings in the story. That and selfishness.
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Oct 1, 2015 07:14
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NecroMonster posted:It's true. Taylor was the win condition Contessa was always working towards without ever being aware of it. Her actions led to Eidolon, which led to Simurgh and and Alexandria, which led to basically every single thing Taylor experienced. The irony here is of course that the larger portion of all of the time and effort that went into the entire "plan" was probably wasted because the plan emphasized "safety" and "ease" over simply working, because that's how Contessa's power works as well as being a continual theme of people's failings in the story. That and selfishness. Contessa's power doesn't work that way. She has to ask it for what she wants to achieve. She's not subconsciously compelled to do anything.
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Oct 2, 2015 02:24
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Right, she has asked her power to achieve an endgame where Zion's defeat is possible, and it told her what steps to take to ensure it. She doesn't need to know what each consequence of those steps looks like, and once the Simurgh is influencing things all the choice is out of her hands anyways.
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Oct 2, 2015 05:24
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finally finished reading and that was pretty nice im sorta thinking taylor died at the end and maybe doesnt realise it? cos regent and her mum and probably her dad all died too, because she 'forgot' him as an anchor, but grue isnt there because she didnt know he died maybe reading too much into this cos the story is over and i dont need to analyse it
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Oct 2, 2015 07:10
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Cryophage posted:The Eden-guided world we saw was just an early trial run; she was busy working on an even She caused Lung's trigger event, who took over ABB and made it prosper. Several ABB goons terrorized Emma enough to cause her break down, become Sophia friend and bully Taylor.
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Oct 2, 2015 07:33
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Dreggon posted:finally finished reading and that was pretty nice She didn't and it was stupid that she didn't. 
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Oct 2, 2015 12:54
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Taylor saving the world and being killed for it is probably one of the worst messages you could put into a novel that essentially revolves around various forms of bullying. Worm isn't a grimdark story, as much as its fans want to insist that it is.
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Oct 2, 2015 14:05
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Milky Moor posted:Taylor saving the world and being killed for it is probably one of the worst messages you could put into a novel that essentially revolves around various forms of bullying. I don't know what you mean by grimdark but pretty much everything is bad forever. It's certainly not 1950s superman.
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Oct 2, 2015 16:07
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Milky Moor posted:Taylor saving the world and being killed for it is probably one of the worst messages you could put into a novel that essentially revolves around various forms of bullying. It's called "tragedy". Worm is a really good one, if you ignore the epilogue.
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Oct 2, 2015 16:33
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Pavlov posted:This is largely why I think Twig is his better story. It's good I like it. Real talk: it was my favourite of the ideas that Wildbow posted after Worm, I really like the team he's set up, and the world where it's REALLY not clear who's the 'good guys' and who isn't. Even our protagonists are pretty dark, but it seems like their opponents are generally darker. The one thing I've been a little disappointed by (but only a little) is that it ramped up into major plot arcing so quickly. I was kind of looking forward to the idea I had of it basically just being a monster of the week type serial where the Lambs go out and track down a gribbly each chapter, something that works a little more on a serialised level, and you don't have to go right back to the beginning to get it. A sort of deeply twisted police procedural. But twas not to be. It's definitely a great story, it's just not quite what I was hoping for.
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Oct 2, 2015 23:00
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I'm reasonably sure the world, or at least their part of the world, is going to be in absolute tatters by the end of it. It wouldn't be Wildbow otherwise. Twig 6.9: Poor Gordon though, and Jamie Imagine what Jamie could become if he wanted too and he wasn't being held back by his handlers though...
Nettle Soup fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Oct 2, 2015 |
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Oct 2, 2015 23:13
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builds character posted:I don't know what you mean by grimdark but pretty much everything is bad forever. It's certainly not 1950s superman. It's really not "everything is bad forever". Like, if Wildbow was going for a 'everything is bad forever' story then he kind of missed the mark with Worm, the story that proves that co-operation is better than competition, where only one important character dies, and the world is saved from not only a succession of powerful monsters but the violent entity is also killed. Oh, and they can resurrect a lot of the people killed, such as Clockblocker. Virtually every epilogue is a happy ending. Pavlov posted:It's called "tragedy". Worm is a really good one, if you ignore the epilogue. It's called "bad writing", actually. Where are the tragic elements in Worm?
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Oct 2, 2015 23:31
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i made them up inside of my head no head-canon shaming please
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Oct 3, 2015 00:58
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Milky Moor posted:It's called "bad writing", actually. Where are the tragic elements in Worm? How is it bad writing? Aside from obvious first draft issues. Because it isn't happy, without looking at the epilogues?
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Oct 3, 2015 01:13
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Fellwenner posted:How is it bad writing? Aside from obvious first draft issues. Because it isn't happy, without looking at the epilogues? It is stupid from a thematic standpoint. It is ridiculous from an internal worldbuilding standpoint. Just because something isn't happy doesn't make it tragic. The ending, as is, is perfectly bittersweet. Much like anything else in Worm, going beyond the text (which is a fairly straightforward, easy to understand story) into whatever Wildbow says makes it into a weird disappointing mess of ideas that he was obviously not able to properly convey in the text or is applying as post-hoc justification. To borrow a phrase from another poster: Worm fans do not actually like Worm. They want something else, this strange 'grimdark' idea of a story that isn't actually backed up by the text in any way. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Oct 3, 2015 |
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Oct 3, 2015 01:33
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Milky Moor posted:It is stupid from a thematic standpoint. It is ridiculous from an internal worldbuilding standpoint. It's quite possible I'm misremembering, but my recollection is that the following things that I would characterize as bad happen. Milky Moor posted:It's really not "everything is bad forever". Like, if Wildbow was going for a 'everything is bad forever' story then he kind of missed the mark with Worm, the story that proves that co-operation is better than competition, where only one important character dies, and the world is saved from not only a succession of powerful monsters but the violent entity is also killed. Oh, and they can resurrect a lot of the people killed, such as Clockblocker. Virtually every epilogue is a happy ending. Spoilers follow, but I'm pretty sure folks have mostly read this already. It's quite possible I'm misremembering. Maybe I'm one of the people that likes something that's all in my head and not in the text. I hadn't actually given that possibility much thought, but I suppose it's not out of the question. Anyway, here are the things that I remember happening that are bad and not entirely consistent with your characterization. 1. there are very few real good guys. Maybe dragon and clockblocker and the girl that makes dolls and the girl with the bow whose name I'm blanking on. Every time (almost every time? the vast majority of the time?) you see a good guy they've got something else going on and it turns out they're not really all that good (ex. armsmaster or eidolon or taylor even or the girl who bullied her, and man I really don't remember a ton of the names of the characters). The undersiders are expressly bad guys and that's one of the things that makes it an interesting story at first. But then it just keeps going. It's still interesting, but the traditional good vs. bad is really scion and the endbringers as bad guys (and even the endbingers are sort of eidolon's fault) vs. humanity. I'm OK saying scion and the endbringers are just bad but there's no counterpoint that's just good because one of the major themes is that people (mainstream society?) are lovely to each other. 2. Taylor joins up for a life of crime because traditional society is just awful and treats her so poorly. This is a pretty major theme throughout, but the counterpoint is that her going off on her own is also not that great because she ends up as the baddest guy of all. 3. Do you mean co-operation vs. competition in the worm vs. humanity sense? Because otherwise I'm not sure I'm seeing it. The reason they win is because Taylor literally takes people and makes them into a bunch of slaves trapped in their bodies as superweapon. It works, so good job saving the world I guess but what makes the argument for tragedy (and for her as a hero) in my mind is that she has to make these huge sacrifices to save a society that was really awful to her. She turns into basically the most badass super villain of them all and she does it for a good cause but she's definitely still clearly in super villain territory. 4. Entire worlds die. It starts out with behemoth and your (my, anyway) reaction was wow that is a lot of superheros dropping like flies but it turns out LOL, that's just the warmup to a ton of different alternate earths getting totally torched by scion and even more people we've actually met dying. In between we get a solid slaughterhouse "we're not scion but we're still pretty bad" set of bad guys with a pretty dark storyline. 5. The ending is very much post apocalyptic because, you know, actual apocalypse. It had a small band trying to do good but the world was still pretty clearly hosed in a ton of different ways and people were being a bunch of bastards. For main characters, you've got taylor not dead but she got to be the super villain and now she's recovering with her not-mom on another world, grue is all sorts of messed up still, regent is dead, tattletale and imp are trying to be good and I forget what bitch is up to. Honestly, of the endings I thought dragons was the happiest. Everyone else is totally screwed in the new world which, I think it's clear, still has a ton of bad guys doing bad things in it. 6. I must have missed the resurrecting bit. You mean the lady who made them come back as ghosts? Because I don't really think that counts. 7. I do agree the epilogues tended to be a lot more upbeat than the rest of it, but the rest of it is jesus-alien and friends kill everybody while humanity is generally awful to each other so it's not like that's a particularly high bar. Although the home-making is pretty upbeat too, in the context of the whole story it felt like something that got built up just so scion and the slaughterhouse nine could knock it all down. I'd be curious to hear what you think and where I'm misremembering stuff. Like I said, it's certainly quite possible based on how when I was typing this up I can't even remember any of the character's names.
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Oct 3, 2015 03:47
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Oh yeah, what's the deal with Clockblocker? He was said to have died during the Behemoth fight and then magically showed up again for the Slaughterhouse Nine clone thing, without even a mention of what happened to him.
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Oct 3, 2015 03:53
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Milky Moor posted:Where are the tragic elements in Worm? 
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Oct 3, 2015 03:56
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Hey yeah this story which has as a central theme the utter meaninglessness and hypocrisy of the "Hero" vs "Villain" divide? I'm going to label the actual hero of the story a Villain and think this means anything thanks.
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Oct 3, 2015 05:57
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