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Cryophage posted:You're thinking of Scott Alexander. Moldbug is a Neoreactionary blogger discussed in the FAQ you posted. ...you know Scott Alexander is the author of Unsong, right? Otherwise I can't figure out why you're saying this.
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Apr 23, 2016 06:01
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Not to interrupt neoreaction chat or whatever, but I'm really glad I didn't learn about Wildbow until after Worm was already complete because Twig is stressing me out right now. HOW MANY HOSTAGES CAN TWO PEOPLE REASONABLY TAKE. Even if one of those people is Mary. Also, Mary casually explaining that her boyfriend recently died, even though it's manipulation, just... 
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Apr 24, 2016 05:29
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thespaceinvader posted:Oh nooooooo. Haha, I didn't even think of that. 
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Apr 26, 2016 06:09
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Twig talk: I guess we never figured out what happened to all the babies then did we?
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May 14, 2016 07:59
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Pavlov posted:Twig talk: I guess we never figured out what happened to all the babies then did we? not that I know of? dog and catcher are going to die though.
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Jun 3, 2016 00:35
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Or worse, only one of them will die, leaving the other alone.
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Jun 3, 2016 06:32
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catcher no, I actually liked you
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Jun 3, 2016 06:42
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I swear to Primordial God, there was a banner or something with people blending into woodwork, but I can't seem to find it.
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Jun 14, 2016 08:34
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This one seems to be new: https://twigserial.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/cropped-twigheader5.png
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Jun 14, 2016 15:28
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Nettle Soup posted:This one seems to be new: While awesome, it's not the one I am thinking of. (Looks like a Mary scene incidentslly, and we still haven't had a Helen one.)
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Jun 16, 2016 05:38
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TeenageArchipelago posted:not that I know of? I don't think they will?
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Jun 17, 2016 07:43
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It might be this one? Apparently it's the banner on topwebfiction. http://mahasim.deviantart.com/art/Commission-Twig-Banner-557896276 Suddenly the name Twig is starting to come into context.
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Jun 17, 2016 10:06
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Nettle Soup posted:It might be this one? Apparently it's the banner on topwebfiction. Maha/Mahasim is the artist officially commissioned for Twig banners, so.
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Jun 17, 2016 10:22
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Nettle Soup posted:It might be this one? Apparently it's the banner on topwebfiction. Bingo! That's the one. And all three titles of Wildbow works have been multi layered wordplays. Mary's creator, in his enemy chapter, talked about twigs as a metaphor for an ecology concept - I have to go back amd reread that in the context of everything that has been happening. And of course all the Lambs are offshoots of different bits of work on transhumanism and novel mental patterns.
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Jun 19, 2016 10:42
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Detailed description of hell in today's Unsong.
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Jun 23, 2016 11:27
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So I just finished Worm and it was really great. The only thing that really bugged me is that the author seems exceptionally fond of the phrase "head space." At first I thought it was just some vocabulary choice on the part of Taylor, but nope; it turns out pretty much every single character uses "head space" instead of one of the many alternatives that mean the exact same thing and actually show up in a dictionary ("state of mind" is an obvious potential substitute). It's one of the few things where it was obviously the author's personal voice coming through into the writing. I felt like the ending was really satisfying and answered most of the big questions. Worm's biggest strength is probably the fact that the author obviously had a general idea of where he wanted to go with the story from the very beginning. Milky Moor posted:Personally, I thought Taylor was a pretty uninteresting protagonist. Worm's real strength was the world and the secondary characters, all of whom were more interesting than Taylor. I agree with this. None of the Undersiders were very interesting/entertaining except for Tattletale and potentially Regent (though his subplot never ended up going anywhere). I actually liked more of the heroes a lot more and wish I could have seen more from people like Clockblocker, Vista, or some of the well-established Cauldron heroes like Legend. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Jul 2, 2016 |
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Jul 2, 2016 23:17
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Ytlaya posted:Worm's biggest strength is probably the fact that the author obviously had a general idea of where he wanted to go with the story from the very beginning.  He's said one of his approaches throughout was to write himself into a corner and struggle to write himself out. Also several characters lived or died by a dice roll during the Endbringer attack, including Taylor.
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Jul 3, 2016 00:03
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:
I mean in the sense of "what are superpowers/Scion" and general elements of the world, not specific plot threads. Fans posted:I liked Taylor but Worm's relentless escalation got to the point where I was just "Okay, there's no way she should be alive by now" and it really killed it for me. Pact is starting to get to the same point, but if it's really ending it might do it just in time. Found this post while reading through previous pages and it is another gripe I had with Worm. There was virtually no down time at any point. There was one part where I actually skipped through a few chapters just because I knew that Taylor would find some way out of the situation and I didn't really care about how she did it (the part where something like 7 Dragon suits try to capture the Undersiders). I feel like this got a lot worse post-Leviathan. edit: Another thing that bugged me a little was the part where the "anti-Slaughterhouse 900 task force" splits up to attack different towns and Golem's group somehow ends up defeating multiple Shatterbirds, Burnscars, and I think one or two other groups of cloned characters. I have no clue how they could have won that fight, especially since IIRC that group was mostly (or all?) heroes who couldn't even fly. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Jul 3, 2016 |
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Jul 3, 2016 00:10
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I think Taylor being a boring protagonist actually helped a lot of parts of the story, by being an observational window to everything else going on and all of those actually interesting characters. If she were exciting, the rest would stand out less and the story as a whole would feel more cluttered, imo.
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Jul 3, 2016 01:22
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Anything post-timeskip in Worm is shaky and the timeskip itself should be excised. Worm begins really, really well. The conflict between Taylor and her school life, Taylor and her dad, Taylor and Armsmaster, and so on, are all very cool. They're also things that a lot of superhero fiction tends to ignore. Shortly afterwards, though, it becomes a bit boring because Taylor never really loses. There's also a heap of things in the text that don't make sense, either because WB neglected things or forgot things, which he then clarifies as 'intentional' with increasingly convoluted Word of God posts on Spacebattles or Reddit. Or there's things like how shards control people and their powers which are narrative cyanide. Or there's the problem of numbers (Endbringers have a galaxy's worth of mass... really, WB?) quote:I agree with this. None of the Undersiders were very interesting/entertaining except for Tattletale and potentially Regent (though his subplot never ended up going anywhere). I actually liked more of the heroes a lot more and wish I could have seen more from people like Clockblocker, Vista, or some of the well-established Cauldron heroes like Legend. Tattletale was interesting before she became a walking Deus Ex Machina device. The whole idea that you can feed her bogus information - like at the bank - and get her predicting things wrong is dropped entirely and she starts pulling plot threads from thin air. It's maddening.
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Jul 3, 2016 01:30
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Tattletale really quickly went from a great character to an exposition device and it sucked, yeah.
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Jul 3, 2016 01:41
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Oh, and Armsmaster's whole 'You can't touch me Tattletale, I have psychic shielding' in the museum sticks out like a sore thumb when, later, Worm states that there are no psychic powers (with the exception of the the Simurgh). It's small things like that and there's heaps of them.
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Jul 3, 2016 01:45
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Oh, and Tinkers in general. I want to say TT directly states that Tinker tech stops working once it is taken out of the general proximity of a Tinker (during the museum fight, too).
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Jul 3, 2016 01:45
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The Shortest Path posted:I think Taylor being a boring protagonist actually helped a lot of parts of the story, by being an observational window to everything else going on and all of those actually interesting characters.  Milky Moor posted:Anything post-timeskip in Worm is shaky and the timeskip itself should be excised. Milky Moor posted:Oh, and Armsmaster's whole 'You can't touch me Tattletale, I have psychic shielding' in the museum sticks out like a sore thumb when, later, Worm states that there are no psychic powers (with the exception of the the Simurgh).
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Jul 3, 2016 02:51
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if the dice had not come up in taylor's favour aegis would have been our protagonist. what could have been... (i really don't like taylor)
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Jul 3, 2016 06:00
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:It's worth noting that the Queen Administrator shard/power /is/ literally psychic. "Psychic powers don't exist in this setting, except for the Simurgh... and Taylor because it's not good enough that she is cunning enough to use her bugs well, but she has The One Shard To Rule Them All."
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Jul 3, 2016 06:14
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no sense of humour, always wins, super super power, high handed moral hypocrite... the fact i feel wildbow is aware of taylor's flaws is the only thing preserving the character for me.
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Jul 3, 2016 06:41
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Every time this thread gets bumped, it's always about Worm. Are people reading Twig? It's actually really good and I'm surprised nobody's talking about it at all. It's doing the same kind of thing that Pact did where the protagonist keeps getting chunks of his support base carved away out from under him, but it's far better than Pact because he actually is competent (in his own strange way) and is able to find new ways to make up for his losses. He wins, and frequently, but not without making things worse in some other way. His world is crashing down around him and I am extremely interested in what happens next. I'm pretty drat sure the blood flowers aren't an engineered plague at all, but the tiny fragments of primordial life that were told to bloom by the last remaining primordial in Lugh. I'm hoping that the next Enemy chapter we get gives us some insight into how the Academy is handling the thought that there's a horrific bioweapon out there that they didn't create. The worldbuilding is also super interesting to me, because I am a huge fan of alternate histories. There's so many unanswered questions about the backstory that Wildbow has been slowly dripping out answers for, although the scale of the plot is currently small enough that I don't think we're going to get a complete history of the world unless a character starts awkwardly expositing.
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Jul 3, 2016 07:12
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Milky Moor posted:"Psychic powers don't exist in this setting, except for the Simurgh... and Taylor because it's not good enough that she is cunning enough to use her bugs well, but she has The One Shard To Rule Them All." There are tons of psychic powers. The 'no psychics' is a rule from the character's point of view and what they mean is no 'true psychics' like straight-up mind reading and mind-to-mind communication. Worm is pretty good, and without a doubt up there in the superhero genre (which, admittedly, does not take a whole lot) but it is certainly not without it's flaws. I agree that shards-influence-your-personality and Taylor never really losing are definitely high up there with the flaws. That's one of the things that Twig is definitely doing better than Pact. Sylvester is not supposed to be some average schmuck sucked up in a lovely situation. He is a superweapon (not a spoiler, surprisingly) sucked up in a lovely situation.
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Jul 3, 2016 10:27
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blastron posted:Every time this thread gets bumped, it's always about Worm. agreed that Twig is really good. It did take a few arcs for me to get into, basically after it gets over the villain of the week bits. So after Sub Rosa but after that it easily became my favorite Wildbow series. Granted, I skipped over something like a half-dozen arcs in Worm, and didn't even finish Pact, so that may not be saying much?
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Jul 3, 2016 11:50
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blastron posted:I'm pretty drat sure the blood flowers aren't an engineered plague at all, but the tiny fragments of primordial life that were told to bloom by the last remaining primordial in Lugh. I'm hoping that the next Enemy chapter we get gives us some insight into how the Academy is handling the thought that there's a horrific bioweapon out there that they didn't create. Well duh. Was there any question that they were not?
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Jul 3, 2016 14:04
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Question is, will Sy and Jamie ever get to work that out...
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Jul 3, 2016 14:08
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I like Twig and think it's good but I also like Taylor so my taste may not be the best
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Jul 4, 2016 22:49
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Twig is cool and good and Sy never understanding sexual references will never stop being funny, especially as he gets older.
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Jul 5, 2016 18:26
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I've been reading Twig, though I'm not very far (just started the 2nd arc not too long ago). It's very good so far, has a more polished feel to it than Worm did. Sy is a kind of interesting character, with some of the stuff he does being very morally questionable. A good example is the stuff with Mary. On one hand it is kind of morally reprehensible to emotionally manipulate the poor girl, but on the other hand she would be dead if not for his actions and (for now, at least) she has something vaguely resembling a support group. Regarding Aegis as a possible Worm protagonist, I'm not sure how well that would have worked in terms of fight scenes. Isn't Aegis just a guy who can fly that is really hard to kill and is somewhat stronger than a normal person (due to the adrenaline stuff, irrc)? There's a lot more you can do with Taylor's power than that.
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Jul 5, 2016 19:47
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Ytlaya posted:Regarding Aegis as a possible Worm protagonist, I'm not sure how well that would have worked in terms of fight scenes. Isn't Aegis just a guy who can fly that is really hard to kill and is somewhat stronger than a normal person (due to the adrenaline stuff, irrc)? There's a lot more you can do with Taylor's power than that. For me, at least, Worm isn't just about the powers. It's about the whole setting. That said, Aegis could have quite some potential in the S9 arc. Bonesaw or Jack could really go to town on him without any significant damage (his power was redundant physiology; break a bone, surrounding muscle spontaneously hardens and takes over function, he is stronger than normal because his body allows him to go all-out without being scared of trivial things as rupturing tendons)
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Jul 5, 2016 20:13
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Namarrgon posted:That said, Aegis could have quite some potential in the S9 arc. Bonesaw or Jack could really go to town on him without any significant damage (his power was redundant physiology; break a bone, surrounding muscle spontaneously hardens and takes over function, he is stronger than normal because his body allows him to go all-out without being scared of trivial things as rupturing tendons) Oh, no doubt he would be useful. I just think it would be hard to have much variation in his fights. Did they ever mention how Leviathan killed him? Wouldn't you have to completely destroy his head or completely crush or cut his body into little pieces? It seems like Leviathan's normal attacks wouldn't be sufficient to kill him, unless he drowned.
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Jul 5, 2016 21:43
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Ytlaya posted:Oh, no doubt he would be useful. I just think it would be hard to have much variation in his fights. Wildbow mentioned that one of the problems of brute powers is that you usually don't know what your limit is until you're dead. I don't remember what happened in-story, but I always imagined him being squashed underfoot. But likely any form of severe instant trauma would do. I don't think he had (strong) regeneration powers (more likely to work over a time period of days), so if you just keep going at it I wager a normal person could kill him if unopposed.
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Jul 5, 2016 21:51
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I want to say that Clockblocker or some other Wards basically say they they were asked to identify the red smear that was Aegis post-Leviathan. I don't buy the story that WB would have killed Skitter during the Leviathan fight, but it's a nice thing to say for Internet cred.
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Jul 6, 2016 00:15
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Milky Moor posted:I want to say that Clockblocker or some other Wards basically say they they were asked to identify the red smear that was Aegis post-Leviathan. Honestly, if any of the Wards could have become the protagonist I would have assumed Clockblocker, Aegis is kind of random.
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Jul 6, 2016 00:24
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