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If you think about it a little, her trigger gave her authority over tiny, dirty things because her trauma was authority cruelly ignoring her and treating her like she didn't exist.
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Jun 7, 2017 05:44
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Wittgen posted:It's not that Taylor has control issues because of Queen Administrator. She got Queen Administrator because she has control issues. The shards definitely influence people to behave in a certain way. One of the best examples is Bonesaw, who went from a crazy homicidal person to a not-crazy person upon recognizing the influence her shard was having over her. If I recall correctly they do choose people based upon who is suited to the "personality" of the shard, but the shard still exercise influence beyond that. It's part of why capes are almost always drawn into some sort of conflict; the shards want them to fight each other to stress test the powers.
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Jun 7, 2017 06:29
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Yes, the shards have influence over their hosts. It's not mind control, but they do have influence. My point is that the shards are attached to people in such a way that the power embodies their trauma, exacerbates their flaws, and helps lead them to more conflict. The people were handpicked via super precognition by these criteria. Taylor had control issues well before she triggered. A Taylor who would join the wards is a Taylor that would never have gotten Queen Administrator in the first place.
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Jun 8, 2017 02:58
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I've been binging The Wandering Inn for the past ~week, it's really good. It mostly follows a girl who gets sucked into a fantasy world and becomes an innkeeper, with some side character perspectives to add more depth to the world. Lots and lots of adorable, heartwarming moments mixed with the occasional bit of bleak despair and tragedy. It's really good, and it updates pretty frequently too.
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Jun 8, 2017 05:13
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So in my re-read I've just finished the Behemoth fight, of course including the stuff where she starts being a hero before that. Taylor is such an un-fun person. Every time someone makes any sort of attempt to add levity to a situation she either gets internally (or externally) annoyed at them or reluctantly plays along. I've also noticed that she tends to always think she's right and doesn't really give serious consideration to the things other people say if they disagree with her. This is definitely realistic for a teenager, and the story seems to acknowledge these character flaws to an extent, but in terms of the actual events that transpire, the narrative seems to ultimately vindicate her ideas and behavior.
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Jun 9, 2017 17:52
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Ytlaya posted:So in my re-read I've just finished the Behemoth fight, of course including the stuff where she starts being a hero before that. Taylor is such an un-fun person. Every time someone makes any sort of attempt to add levity to a situation she either gets internally (or externally) annoyed at them or reluctantly plays along. I've also noticed that she tends to always think she's right and doesn't really give serious consideration to the things other people say if they disagree with her. This is definitely realistic for a teenager, and the story seems to acknowledge these character flaws to an extent, but in terms of the actual events that transpire, the narrative seems to ultimately vindicate her ideas and behavior. Considering Wildbow has more or less outright said that (WoG spoilers about end of story interpretation) it's a ~valid interpretation~ to think that Taylor is actually in a permanent coma, and her last chapter is a dream, do you still think the narrative ultimately vindicates her ideas and behavior? Like, the line, "Finally, everyone was working together," is absolutely not meant to be read as a vindication of Taylor. Calef fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jun 9, 2017 |
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Jun 9, 2017 18:16
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Ytlaya posted:So in my re-read I've just finished the Behemoth fight, of course including the stuff where she starts being a hero before that. Taylor is such an un-fun person. Every time someone makes any sort of attempt to add levity to a situation she either gets internally (or externally) annoyed at them or reluctantly plays along. I've also noticed that she tends to always think she's right and doesn't really give serious consideration to the things other people say if they disagree with her. This is definitely realistic for a teenager, and the story seems to acknowledge these character flaws to an extent, but in terms of the actual events that transpire, the narrative seems to ultimately vindicate her ideas and behavior. If you're not listening to the We've got Worm podcast alongside your reread you're missing out
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Jun 9, 2017 19:38
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Calef posted:Considering Wildbow has more or less outright said that (WoG spoilers about end of story interpretation) it's a ~valid interpretation~ to think that Taylor is actually in a permanent coma, and her last chapter is a dream, do you still think the narrative ultimately vindicates her ideas and behavior? Not him but a the end of the day Taylor's methods work which is a kind of vindication all it's own isn't it? Like the author pays some lip service to 'oh this is totally a bad thing guys' but at the end of the day Taylor is the hero doing what no one else can 
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Jun 9, 2017 21:35
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Worm is a story of Taylor making terrible decisions and loving up at every turn. Her victory at the end wasn't the culmination of everything she'd done up to that point, and in fact was sort of the opposite. The army she amassed as Khepri was useless, and nothing she did before that was important for defeating Scion other than by coincidence.
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Jun 9, 2017 21:51
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Basically the narrative only vindicates her actions in the way Mr. Bean is.
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Jun 9, 2017 21:53
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In other news. I have a graduate degree in tissue engineering and I keep being impressed by how creative (and biologically plausible if obviously far-fetched) the Twig monsters are. A good quarter of the reason I keep reading is because I am so drat curious to see what kind of utterly hosed up monstrosity turns up next. Someone should recruit him to write research grants or something.
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Jun 9, 2017 22:10
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Plorkyeran posted:Worm is a story of Taylor making terrible decisions and loving up at every turn. Her victory at the end wasn't the culmination of everything she'd done up to that point, and in fact was sort of the opposite. The army she amassed as Khepri was useless, and nothing she did before that was important for defeating Scion other than by coincidence. It's worse than that though, because many of her terrible decisions were directly or indirectly influenced by Contessa and the Simurgh and to some extent Dinah, because they contributed to the only possible series of events where humanity defeated Scion. So looking at the big picture, they weren't bad decisions and were in fact the only possible good decisions that could be made. Which is really, really lovely.
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Jun 9, 2017 22:22
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I don't think the story even remotely supports the claim that the way things went were the only possible way to defeat Scion.
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Jun 9, 2017 23:00
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That was the entire point of Contessa as a character. Which Wildbow has admitted was really dumb and intends to change some of it on the eventual rewrite/edit, to be fair, but still.
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Jun 9, 2017 23:04
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Contessa explicitly cannot accurately model Scion. Even if her path was "how do I defeat Scion while minimizing the damage to humanity" (and it wasn't), that still wouldn't be proof that how things happened was the best that things could have gone or that there weren't alternatives that were almost as good.
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Jun 9, 2017 23:19
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Namarrgon posted:In other news. Yes, this will end well.
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Jun 9, 2017 23:44
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Plorkyeran posted:Contessa explicitly cannot accurately model Scion. Even if her path was "how do I defeat Scion while minimizing the damage to humanity" (and it wasn't), that still wouldn't be proof that how things happened was the best that things could have gone or that there weren't alternatives that were almost as good. Right but Simurgh could, and the two of them together were responsible for pretty much everything that happened in the entire story, even a lot of the smaller details. If anything changed, the end result would not have occurred.
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Jun 10, 2017 00:35
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It's not just Contessa. There's also Smurgh (spelling?) and the Thinker Entity. Worm takes place in a world defined by the actions of three competing super precogs.
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Jun 10, 2017 00:53
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"The Simurgh directed every little detail of the entire story with the goal of killing Scion" is definitely not a thing conclusively stated in the story, and even if it was it still wouldn't be not evidence that Scion could not have been defeated in any other way. You could make dramatic changes to the first 27 arcs (and delete half of them entirely) and still arrive at the same ending without introducing any plot holes or changing any details about the setting, because the ending isn't the culmination of the events leading up to it. What you actually have is Cauldron's plan to save the world being a complete failure, Taylor's crazy idea being useless, and then a finale that didn't really rely on very much of anything from the story before it. The actual events that occur strongly suggest that pretty much all the details of the things leading up to it could have been different.
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Jun 10, 2017 00:54
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If you are going to take the perspective that zero characters in the story have any free will or agency, then the entire idea of "vindicating" Taylor's actions is meaningless.
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Jun 10, 2017 00:57
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Taylor killed Scion by bullying him to death. She kept making fun of his dead wife until he let her mind-controlled minions kill him.
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Jun 10, 2017 01:32
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Plorkyeran posted:Contessa explicitly cannot accurately model Scion. Even if her path was "how do I defeat Scion while minimizing the damage to humanity" (and it wasn't), that still wouldn't be proof that how things happened was the best that things could have gone or that there weren't alternatives that were almost as good. She can't model Scion, sure. But she can model "a being that is, for all intents and purposes, Scion", I'm pretty sure. Plorkyeran posted:"The Simurgh directed every little detail of the entire story with the goal of killing Scion" is definitely not a thing conclusively stated in the story, and even if it was it still wouldn't be not evidence that Scion could not have been defeated in any other way. Be careful, friend. The actual text of Worm is less important to many fans of Worm than the stuff Wildbow talks about on Reddit or Spacebattles, none of which is stated conclusively in the story.
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Jun 10, 2017 01:32
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Plorkyeran posted:"The Simurgh directed every little detail of the entire story with the goal of killing Scion" is definitely not a thing conclusively stated in the story, and even if it was it still wouldn't be not evidence that Scion could not have been defeated in any other way. The ending absolutely is a culmination of the events leading up to it. Taylor being the exact person she is with her power developed to the state it's at and also having developed an understanding of what's necessary to stop Scion from fighting, and all of the resources necessary to kill Scion being present and in the condition to destroy him, in addition to a whole bunch of other influences on the situation... yeah. Most of the events of the story led to that. Cauldron's plan to save the world was the total opposite of a failure - it worked. They just had a bunch of incorrect assumptions about why it would work, because Contessa's power doesn't tell them that. The fact that this is not presented well through the text is a pretty huge problem, but it is what it is. It's a big contributor to why I hate the last ~third of the story so much. Fajita Queen fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Jun 10, 2017 |
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Jun 10, 2017 02:15
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Milky Moor posted:Be careful, friend. The actual text of Worm is less important to many fans of Worm than the stuff Wildbow talks about on Reddit or Spacebattles, none of which is stated conclusively in the story.
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Jun 10, 2017 04:26
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:You're pretty out of touch. It's been two and a half years since he last logged in to Spacebattles. good. too much of the stuff he was coming out with seemed like silly poo poo designed to make sure his guys could beat up the justice league.
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Jun 10, 2017 05:55
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Now I'm to the part where Taylor and the Chicago Wards are being interviewed on TV and Taylor is internally thinking about how disappointed she is in Cuff and Tecton and how everyone else just isn't as ~real~ as her old edgy friends. She also does a bunch of stuff that is definitely not okay, like when her plan against Topsy starts to go off the rails and she's like "no Cuff don't call for reinforcements, instead let me carry you off this building with my jetpack...oh whoops looks like the jetpack couldn't support your weight but you survived the fall so all's well that ends well!" Like I sympathize with her perspective of needing to make a good impression with that mission, but she ends up putting other people in danger just because she feels like only she has what it takes to adequately prepare for the end of the world scenario. I find myself consistently sympathizing with the other heroes and PRT who are frustrated with her, whereas I get the impression we're supposed to be sympathizing with Taylor's concerns about the bureaucracy not being competent enough instead. I also feel like her attachment to the Undersiders (and inability to become attached to the heroes) was never really sold well. The only Undersiders that Taylor both 1. becomes attached to and 2. have any sort of personality are Tattletale and maybe Bitch. Grue is very boring post-Leviathan and Taylor never really gets close to Regent or Imp. I feel like a reader can definitely infer that Taylor has huge control issues and is a dumb teenager who always thinks she's right, but from what I can recall the narrative never brings it up directly or has any other characters really articulate why her worldview is so wrong and dumb. The closest thing is the scene with Clockblocker in the PRT van before the Echidna fight, and even that is mostly just Clockblocker saying "so about that time you almost killed Triumph" which is one of the relatively few things Taylor is explicitly remorseful about (in general she is willing to apologize for using excessive force in specific situations, but she never apologizes for her overall courses of action). And I'm also pretty sure that the Khepri stuff (which was basically treated as her Ultimate Evil Action) was entirely vindicated in the end and ended up being necessary to defeat Scion (I'm ignoring all the "Contessa/Simurgh set all events into action" stuff because it's confusing). It's very unlikely she could have fully coordinated everyone to do the "imitate Scion's dead partner" plan without having direct control over people. Plorkyeran posted:Worm is a story of Taylor making terrible decisions and loving up at every turn. Her victory at the end wasn't the culmination of everything she'd done up to that point, and in fact was sort of the opposite. The army she amassed as Khepri was useless, and nothing she did before that was important for defeating Scion other than by coincidence. While not related to Scion specifically, I got the impression that the Undersiders taking over Brockton Bay was portrayed as a positive thing that overall greatly improved life for people. What always bugged me about that is that most of the reason they were able to help so much is by spending all of Coil's ill-gotten crime money. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Jun 10, 2017 |
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Jun 10, 2017 06:00
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Neurosis posted:good. too much of the stuff he was coming out with seemed like silly poo poo designed to make sure his guys could beat up the justice league.
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Jun 10, 2017 08:40
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There are enough things not to like about Worm, but the author super-snowflake overpowering his characters is not one of them. I think he even somewhere explicitly says that the Justice League could probably take out the Endbringers. As for Cauldron's secret plan, the epilogue explicitly mentions that Taylor/Khepri was entirely out of their widest estimates and Contessa feeling some guilt over that all the misery and suffering they as Cauldron caused meant exactly nothing as it was not their plan that saved the day in the end. Khepri was an accident, and the idea that she is some super convoluted subconscious Contessa plan or a Simurgh plant is completely baseless.
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Jun 10, 2017 09:29
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Namarrgon posted:There are enough things not to like about Worm, but the author super-snowflake overpowering his characters is not one of them. I think he even somewhere explicitly says that the Justice League could probably take out the Endbringers. Each EB has a galaxy's worth of mass in their body. I don't know much about the Justice League, but I think that is a bit beyond them. And I think when someone asked what would happen if an EB was thrown into the sun, Wildbow said the sun would be extinguished or something.
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Jun 10, 2017 09:44
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Milky Moor posted:Each EB has a galaxy's worth of mass in their body. I don't know much about the Justice League, but I think that is a bit beyond them. https://www.reddit.com/r/whowouldwin/comments/2sju2u/the_endbringers_worm_vs_the_justice_league/cnqkz88/ Commentary by Wildbow. The tl;dr version; Endbringers cause massive damage worldwide (to the civilian peasants), but are ultimately defeated. While the Endbringers are bullshit, the JL (and comic book heroes in general) are even more bullshit.
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Jun 10, 2017 12:16
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Namarrgon posted:https://www.reddit.com/r/whowouldwin/comments/2sju2u/the_endbringers_worm_vs_the_justice_league/cnqkz88/ Then he has no conception of numbers, of what it means to say there's a galaxy's worth of matter compressed into a giant monster. They would have to be pretty bullshit to punch through that much mass without getting caught in, say, Behemoth's 'if you get close to me I turn you to energy' field. I used to SB.com VS Debate, back in the heyday of that forum. Whowouldwin is child's play in comparison. All of those arguments without citations or based on naked supposition. Terrible! Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Jun 10, 2017 |
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Jun 10, 2017 12:45
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Milky Moor posted:Then he has no conception of numbers, of what it means to say there's a galaxy's worth of matter compressed into a giant monster. I mean yes, but it's a bit weird to say Wildbow is bad with the numbers due to this stupid who would win argument thing, as if Endbringers and the Justice League were just hunky dory and totally plausible/numerically consistent before they were ruthlessly pitted against each-other on a nerdy internet forum
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Jun 10, 2017 15:01
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Milky Moor posted:Then he has no conception of numbers, of what it means to say there's a galaxy's worth of matter compressed into a giant monster. Sure but like, The Flash and probably also Superman can unmake reality by going fast enough to break time and other such nonsense, if they decided not to hold back. A couple of Marvel heroes are similarly bullshit. Comic books are really dumb sometimes.
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Jun 10, 2017 16:15
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Milky Moor posted:Then he has no conception of numbers, of what it means to say there's a galaxy's worth of matter compressed into a giant monster. Yeah it's not like Scion or Eden store most of their mass outside the universe and express themselves as something much smaller - oh wait, they do. Or that that is a visible part of the plot - oh wait, it is. Or like other heroes have physics-breaking powers that move mass between universes - oh wait, they do Literally in the text itself...
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Jun 10, 2017 17:50
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I did not get the impression Eden was anything near the size/mass of a galaxy, given its dead corpse seems to be sitting around on Earth somewhere being harvested by Cauldron (or rather split across a number of alternate Earth's or whatever).
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Jun 10, 2017 20:32
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:Yeah it's not like Scion or Eden store most of their mass outside the universe and express themselves as something much smaller - oh wait, they do. Who said anything about Scion or Eden?
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Jun 11, 2017 00:57
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The Shortest Path posted:I've been binging The Wandering Inn for the past ~week, it's really good. It mostly follows a girl who gets sucked into a fantasy world and becomes an innkeeper, with some side character perspectives to add more depth to the world. Lots and lots of adorable, heartwarming moments mixed with the occasional bit of bleak despair and tragedy. I just spent much of the weekend reading this thanks to your post; there are some parts that could stand improvement (it could do with fewer references to pop culture, primarily) but overall I'll be happy to keep reading it. It seems to be written by an American, but is clearly drawing inspiration both from Worm and from Japanese isekai novels like Kumoko, with just a teeny bit of Honzuki. The characters are fun, and I like that it subverts the tradtional isekai cliche of levelling up by having a larger plot around why levels and classes even exist.
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Jun 11, 2017 09:53
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Milky Moor posted:Each EB has a galaxy's worth of mass in their body. I don't know much about the Justice League, but I think that is a bit beyond them.
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Jun 11, 2017 14:47
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The Shortest Path posted:I've been binging The Wandering Inn for the past ~week, it's really good. It mostly follows a girl who gets sucked into a fantasy world and becomes an innkeeper, with some side character perspectives to add more depth to the world. Lots and lots of adorable, heartwarming moments mixed with the occasional bit of bleak despair and tragedy. I just spend the majority of the past two days reading this, like the poster above, and I have to agree with what he said. It's a really interesting story that could use improvement in a few areas. For one, why does everyone have such awful taste in music? I understand the whole 'you've been abandoned in another world and the music reminds you of home' but, Disney songs, chart hits, and the pokemon theme song, really? Also I don't think people with a semi-medieval outlook on life who've only ever heard folk music would enjoy that sort of stuff to the point of everybody who hears the music thinking it's movingly beautiful and an entire city basically dancing to it. I don't know it just feels like a very fanfictiony sort of thing to happen. The world's appropriately horrifying and deadly and magical though and there's depth to the background of the world so when it's not references to pop culture and that sort of thing it's not all bad. Like there isn't too much nerd culture creep if that make sense. And the characters are pretty good in a lot of ways for a web serial.
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Jun 12, 2017 20:28
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A Spherical Sponge posted:The world's appropriately horrifying and deadly and magical though and there's depth to the background of the world so when it's not references to pop culture and that sort of thing it's not all bad. Like there isn't too much nerd culture creep if that make sense. And the characters are pretty good in a lot of ways for a web serial. I'm enjoying it too, I just wish the characters didn't have a Horror Movie Character level of recklessness/stupidity.
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