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SerCypher posted:(and not becoming utterly corrupted in the process) Looking forward to Victoria getting tuned back into a meat blob by act 5
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Dec 12, 2017 23:56
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I think we're all skipping over the important thing here which is that Good Simon is a universal constant and I'm p sure the animal masks thing was a reference to one of the aborted pitches between Worm and Pact Fake edit it was also the one i voted for and the one I want him to do most
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Dec 13, 2017 03:07
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:I think we're all skipping over the important thing here which is that Good Simon is a universal constant and I'm p sure the animal masks thing was a reference to one of the aborted pitches between Worm and Pact What is good simon?
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Dec 13, 2017 10:49
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Not much, just chillin’
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Dec 13, 2017 11:40
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SerCypher posted:What is good simon? Children's book series that appeared in both Ward and Twig
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Dec 13, 2017 13:17
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SerCypher posted:What is good simon? A children's book series that gets referenced a decent amount in Twig aka the best Wildbow serial Speaking of Twig, holy poo poo this enemy pov chapter about the infante
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Dec 13, 2017 18:13
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So I've been reading the Wandering Inn at the recommendation of the thread and while this does make me feel like one of those people, does the christianity thing become more prevalent? Or is the chapter about Pawn finding the light of Jesus the most obvious it gets? I should have more faith in the author trying to write Erin as a christian, but that chapter is giving me flashbacks to the born again idiots that shout that the only way to be cured of our evil sins is to find ~jesuses light~
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Dec 13, 2017 22:01
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Xun posted:So I've been reading the Wandering Inn at the recommendation of the thread and while this does make me feel like one of those people, does the christianity thing become more prevalent? Or is the chapter about Pawn finding the light of Jesus the most obvious it gets? I should have more faith in the author trying to write Erin as a christian, but that chapter is giving me flashbacks to the born again idiots that shout that the only way to be cured of our evil sins is to find ~jesuses light~ Have a little faith.
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Dec 13, 2017 22:54
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Xun posted:So I've been reading the Wandering Inn at the recommendation of the thread and while this does make me feel like one of those people, does the christianity thing become more prevalent? Or is the chapter about Pawn finding the light of Jesus the most obvious it gets? I should have more faith in the author trying to write Erin as a christian, but that chapter is giving me flashbacks to the born again idiots that shout that the only way to be cured of our evil sins is to find ~jesuses light~ It's more or less centered around Pawn. It's still evolving as there's a lot of characters to get focus.
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Dec 13, 2017 22:56
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Yo this last enemy chapter of Twig 18, the one where Sylvester gives way to the Bad Voices and has to escape a mutiny is both the realest and most heartbreaking part of the story so far Worse than Jamie
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Dec 15, 2017 06:32
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So I just caught up to Wandering Inn, does anyone think that the main character is getting more than a bit..mary sue-ish? It feels like at the end everything she does is so quirky and also extremely successful/profitable/great. Not the mention the eyerolling stuff about her inventing plays. The only consequence she faces for leaving her inn unattended with no word to Lyon is someone says some mean words at her and then five minutes later they're helping her with another quirky plan anyway. Kind of a shame because I like the world building and side characters, and its really only the recent stuff bothering me. I hope this means they're building up to something here.
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Dec 16, 2017 07:44
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Jesus Christ the end of the second to last chapter of Twig 19 when they put Jessie under until they can fix her brain is the new most heart wrenching thing in this book Goddamn you wildbow
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Dec 16, 2017 11:21
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Xun posted:So I just caught up to Wandering Inn, does anyone think that the main character is getting more than a bit..mary sue-ish? It feels like at the end everything she does is so quirky and also extremely successful/profitable/great. Not the mention the eyerolling stuff about her inventing plays. The only consequence she faces for leaving her inn unattended with no word to Lyon is someone says some mean words at her and then five minutes later they're helping her with another quirky plan anyway. Kind of a shame because I like the world building and side characters, and its really only the recent stuff bothering me. I hope this means they're building up to something here. Nah both of the protagonists are pretty straight forward mary sues imo. It's modelled after japanese isekai web novels though, so that's not too surprising. I wouldn't expect it to change though, which is kind of sad because like you say there are aspects of it which are really cool.
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Dec 16, 2017 11:36
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Xun posted:So I just caught up to Wandering Inn, does anyone think that the main character is getting more than a bit..mary sue-ish? It feels like at the end everything she does is so quirky and also extremely successful/profitable/great. Not the mention the eyerolling stuff about her inventing plays. The only consequence she faces for leaving her inn unattended with no word to Lyon is someone says some mean words at her and then five minutes later they're helping her with another quirky plan anyway. Kind of a shame because I like the world building and side characters, and its really only the recent stuff bothering me. I hope this means they're building up to something here. Yeah I was expecting there to be actual consequences for how much of a selfish jerk Erin is most of the time, and other than all the poo poo with Toren there seems to be basically none of it because all the people who should be mad at her get caught up in her utterly ridiculous feats of bullshit and just kinda go with it. It's still wicked fun to read, though.
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Dec 16, 2017 14:06
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Xun posted:So I just caught up to Wandering Inn, does anyone think that the main character is getting more than a bit..mary sue-ish? It feels like at the end everything she does is so quirky and also extremely successful/profitable/great. Not the mention the eyerolling stuff about her inventing plays. The only consequence she faces for leaving her inn unattended with no word to Lyon is someone says some mean words at her and then five minutes later they're helping her with another quirky plan anyway. Kind of a shame because I like the world building and side characters, and its really only the recent stuff bothering me. I hope this means they're building up to something here. Half the plot is that Erin gets crazy ideas and has the charisma to sweep people up in them. I think in the beginning there was more resistance but at this point people actually EXPECT them to work out. If you notice with the last idea she had, the veterans of her antics made a half hearted attempt to talk her out of it then just went forward and the newer people were bemused. As for the acting stuff, you show people a new form of entertainment that's been already polished and you will get people's attention. This was already shown with chess, which she didn't introduce but showed people what you could do at a high level. It's pretty obvious that the Earth crew 'break' the system frequently with their concepts and out-of-the-box way of looking at things. And frequently they are confronted by an in-system mechanic that forces them to change their view of how things are. Ryoka hit with the hard truth that anyone with a basic running skill will match or beat her, always. Natives have noticed this, shown by the local Antinum Queen and Lady Magnolia, among others.
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Dec 16, 2017 14:14
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Kalas posted:Half the plot is that Erin gets crazy ideas and has the charisma to sweep people up in them. I think in the beginning there was more resistance but at this point people actually EXPECT them to work out. If you notice with the last idea she had, the veterans of her antics made a half hearted attempt to talk her out of it then just went forward and the newer people were bemused. The problem is that the guy who was literally JUST chewing her out for being airheaded and thoughtless and knew her for 5 minutes is now.....happily supporting her new crraaaazzzyyy plan of introducing the concept of disaster relief to the world that has no plans other than LETS DO THIS LM<AO. My problem with the play isn't because it's a huge success its just the...ridiculousness of it. A society that advanced and has existed for thousands of years has yet to invent the concept of a goddamn play? The art form that has existed since at LEAST ancient roman times? It just really causes a major eyeroll reaction from me. Not to mention how Shakespeare's stories are portrayed as these super serious and literary experiences but I can't really blame the author for that one. At least Ryoka is a Mary Sue that gets lip service to having setback, sure they don't seem to actually affect much but it's something. It feels like Erin is the author self insert so nothing bad can happen because of her ever.
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Dec 16, 2017 15:05
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As far as the play thing goes, I think the story has been pretty quick to point out that the world and its leveling system seem to be designed largely to facilitate conflict and strife, with very little in the way of true recreational activities. Even chess, which people play for fun, is only taken seriously because it's also a tool for gaining levels.
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Dec 16, 2017 15:19
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:Jesus Christ the end of the second to last chapter of Twig 19 when they put Jessie under until they can fix her brain is the new most heart wrenching thing in this book Every time I thought Twig couldn't break my heart again, it did. 
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Dec 16, 2017 15:33
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Argue posted:As far as the play thing goes, I think the story has been pretty quick to point out that the world and its leveling system seem to be designed largely to facilitate conflict and strife, with very little in the way of true recreational activities. Even chess, which people play for fun, is only taken seriously because it's also a tool for gaining levels. I guess the often warring Italian states never developed any entertainment. And Germans never wrote an opera before they unified  I suppose I just find that reasoning completely breaks my suspension of belief in that area.Like I said I do like a lot of the story and world building so it just feels like a goddamn shame in the latest chapters about Erin. I agree that it's still fun to read
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Dec 16, 2017 15:47
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Xun posted:The problem is that the guy who was literally JUST chewing her out for being airheaded and thoughtless and knew her for 5 minutes is now.....happily supporting her new crraaaazzzyyy plan of introducing the concept of disaster relief to the world that has no plans other than LETS DO THIS LM<AO. My problem with the play isn't because it's a huge success its just the...ridiculousness of it. A society that advanced and has existed for thousands of years has yet to invent the concept of a goddamn play? The art form that has existed since at LEAST ancient roman times? It just really causes a major eyeroll reaction from me. Not to mention how Shakespeare's stories are portrayed as these super serious and literary experiences but I can't really blame the author for that one. At least Ryoka is a Mary Sue that gets lip service to having setback, sure they don't seem to actually affect much but it's something. It feels like Erin is the author self insert so nothing bad can happen because of her ever. I never even got the where you are at but this is the thing with almost everything modern that's used and it's something I severely dislike in isekai. Hamburgers and modern music really are not that special and tbh neither are the poems or god forbid the superhero comics Ryoka tells the fairies about. e: I think one other thing had the epic invention of advertising and they also almost always do crossbows and guns as if some random nerd would know anything useful about those. e2: also crop rotation and fertilizer Absum fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Dec 16, 2017 |
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Dec 16, 2017 16:53
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Is it worth powering through the rest of Worm if I'm at 12.1 and my interest is starting to flag? Taylor is quite boring, and I'm rather sick of how she and the Undersiders never seriously mess up or outright fail at anything/how utterly abysmally incompetent all of their opposition (primarily thinking Wards/Protectorate/PRT; obviously Coil etc. are threats) is. Plus I'm not a fan of much of Wildbow's style (too much just bluntly spelling everything out, too much wordiness just for wordiness' sake, seems to have no concept of blocking a scene or making characters talk differently from each other, for example) but from some bits and pieces I've heard about how things get later I'm hoping that improves.
Flesnolk fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Dec 16, 2017 |
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Dec 16, 2017 19:48
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Just read Twig instead imo Also Radham is totally like Portland or Seattle right
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Dec 16, 2017 20:15
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That's my answer to every question itt as I close in on the end of twig: Read Twig There's one story arc that drags a little in the first "act" of the serial but once you get past that it picks up speed quickly and then goes right off the rails in the best way
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Dec 16, 2017 20:20
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Flesnolk posted:Is it worth powering through the rest of Worm if I'm at 12.1 and my interest is starting to flag? Taylor is quite boring, and I'm rather sick of how she and the Undersiders never seriously mess up or outright fail at anything/how utterly abysmally incompetent all of their opposition (primarily thinking Wards/Protectorate/PRT; obviously Coil etc. are threats) is. Plus I'm not a fan of much of Wildbow's style (too much just bluntly spelling everything out, too much wordiness just for wordiness' sake, seems to have no concept of blocking a scene or making characters talk differently from each other, for example) but from some bits and pieces I've heard about how things get later I'm hoping that improves. By now I think you should have started picking up on the subtext that implies that Taylor probably isn't as good as she thinks she is and avoids confronting her failures or herself, among other subtleties. If you haven't, then maybe read slower and listen to We've Got Worm as you read through it.
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Dec 16, 2017 20:40
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Of course, the alternative is that the subtext isn't spelled out as clearly as it should be. Flesnolk, those things never really improve. Particularly those elements of Wildbow's style. If you're not liking it now, it is unlikely you'll enjoy it later because some of those things -- such as the ineffectiveness of the PRT and such, or the fact that Taylor just keeps winning -- only get more obvious.
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Dec 16, 2017 22:03
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Yeah, it's not so much me "not getting it" as growing bored of Taylor and Friends' invincible plot armour and how useless the people standing against her are. That and stylistic quibbles I'm sure have been discussed to death. There are some things I know happen that I'm curious to see how they play out, and I'm curious about if the sequel is any good/improved over Worm, but otherwise I'm kind of wavering on it.
Flesnolk fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Dec 16, 2017 |
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Dec 16, 2017 22:36
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Flesnolk posted:That and stylistic quibbles I'm sure have been discussed to death. Not really. I wouldn't mind hearing further about them. I think Ward is a bit better technically but I think those issues are still there.
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Dec 16, 2017 23:10
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ward slaps so far, but twig is so much better. twig. twig twig twig. have i mentioned twig? because twig.
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Dec 16, 2017 23:25
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Flesnolk posted:Yeah, it's not so much me "not getting it" as growing bored of Taylor and Friends' invincible plot armour and how useless the people standing against her are. That and stylistic quibbles I'm sure have been discussed to death. There are some things I know happen that I'm curious to see how they play out, and I'm curious about if the sequel is any good/improved over Worm, but otherwise I'm kind of wavering on it. Personally, I thought the "plot armor" was generally kept as reasonable levels in Worm (aside from the Alexandria fight). Taylor usually wins and obviously doesn't get randomly killed, but she occasionally loses and there's generally reasons for her victories. Plus she's usually wearing bulletproof armor and often fighting against people who are trying to keep things non-lethal. I have much more issues with the plot armor in Twig, where the main character's enemies always make the mistake of hearing him out before shooting him. At least in Worm, people eventually realize that you should just attack Tattletale instead of letting her spout half-truths.
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Dec 17, 2017 00:38
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I mind it less in twig because a lot of twig is about politics and manipulating situations before they occur, and because Sy talking his way out instead of fighting drops off around the midpoint of the book and by the end he's stabbing fuckers at least as often as not Also Gordeux is the best minor character and I will never tire of him half heartedly reminding Sy he has a name
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Dec 17, 2017 03:06
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And that's arc 20 That was a hell of a trip and I wasn't expecting literally any of it
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Dec 17, 2017 05:10
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Xun posted:The problem is that the guy who was literally JUST chewing her out for being airheaded and thoughtless and knew her for 5 minutes is now.....happily supporting her new crraaaazzzyyy plan of introducing the concept of disaster relief to the world that has no plans other than LETS DO THIS LM<AO. My problem with the play isn't because it's a huge success its just the...ridiculousness of it. A society that advanced and has existed for thousands of years has yet to invent the concept of a goddamn play? The art form that has existed since at LEAST ancient roman times? It just really causes a major eyeroll reaction from me. Not to mention how Shakespeare's stories are portrayed as these super serious and literary experiences but I can't really blame the author for that one. At least Ryoka is a Mary Sue that gets lip service to having setback, sure they don't seem to actually affect much but it's something. It feels like Erin is the author self insert so nothing bad can happen because of her ever. Yeah, I agree with the play thing. I mean plays or some form of performative art has definitely been around since ancient greece and probably before then, and I think they've been independently invented by different cultures multiple times on nearly every continent. It's kind of weird because it's as if this world which has apparently existed for millions of years and is several times larger than our own apparently lacks lots of cultural practices that we would consider normal parts of civilization or just general human society, despite the structure of society being basically analogous to some sort of medieval society with aristocracy and all that. Also the attitudes of the people within the society are very modern, despite having no material or cultural basis for anything similar to modern attitudes, and they're super open to the attitudes of the protagonists. I mean this is sort of understandable from a story perspective, but it kind of stretches the reasonable boundaries of suspension of disbelief, especially when the story tries to portray itself as having realistic consequences to the actions of the protagonists in the setting that it's constructed and tries to present its setting as consistent. Also I second what benghazi is saying wrt twig being great, I started reading it again a few days ago after I stopped following it around arc 8 or something a couple years ago and it's really good
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Dec 17, 2017 21:10
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It's a game world. It's supposedly been around for millions of years, but in reality it was pre-programmed and booted up the moment Erin, or whoever the first person was, was dragged in or spawned. Everyone thinks they have a history, but what is memory really. That's my BS theory anyway. It's probably just inconsistant.
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Dec 17, 2017 23:09
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Flesnold, I will say that you should at least finish the coil/dinah arc you're in the middle of. In my opinion, wildbow does a good job of constructing a world that is internally consistent. In terms of how serious of a threat the authorities are, just keep in mind that the undersiders are much more a low priority gang in this world (compare the reaction from early in the story with Bakura versus currently). If you don't like his writing style that is fair enough, but he does pack in a lot of more subtle things in. Sometimes he does a better job, sometimes worse. There is a lot of unreliable narrator going on, which should be pretty apparent from how different the interludes are from the normal chapters. Stuff like how people are thought of or labeled. It is very much a character work set in a super hero world, with a lot of detail worked into internal consistency. It holds a lot of the cards that show you this until the characters discover them, so it isn't exactly apparent quickly. The way the story works isn't for everyone, and like all web serials isn't as polished as a book, but there are a lot of reasons a lot of people like it.
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Dec 18, 2017 09:41
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ZypherIM posted:but there are a lot of reasons a lot of people like it. Not to be too critical of Wildbow, because I kind of hate the fact that so many posts in this thread of mine are critical, but this thread has pointed out in the past that a lot of the reasons people like it are based on 'Taylor just keeps winning, I love that she's so badass!' and so on. Or things like 'everyone has a unique superpower' or 'wow, the numbers in this story are huuuuge, who would win between Superman and Scion?' If those are the reasons why Flesnold doesn't like it, then they are unlikely to find something that suddenly turns them around. Especially, from what I remember, that the Coil arc ends in one of Tattletale's more dubious uses of her power. It's about the time that TT starts feeling like a crutch. He's already passed the single biggest moment that seems like a cool act of clever subtlety that's actually nothing like it at all. Those reasons don't really correct, the story just kind of supports them better. I do hope they come back to talk about the stylistic issues, though. It might be illuminating, particularly because they're the sort of things I thought when I started reading Ward and I'm always down to see someone dissect writing. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 12:03 on Dec 18, 2017 |
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Dec 18, 2017 10:22
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The protagonist winning conflicts every time they're tested and the protagonist eating poo poo for the duration of the story then barely squeaking out a win at the end are are equally valid storytelling approaches.
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Dec 18, 2017 11:10
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:ward slaps so far, but twig is so much better. twig. twig twig twig. have i mentioned twig? because twig. What the hell does slaps mean
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Dec 18, 2017 11:13
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Sure, plenty of people enjoy a story for those reasons. There is also not anything wrong with people enjoying the work for those reasons. I'm not going to poo poo on someone for liking superman because he's invincible(even though I personally don't find him interesting most of the time). The reason I enjoy the story is the world feels like it is actually impacted by powers existing, and the problems that come from that, and how the various characters in the story approach the world and the issues in it. The moral issues and how/if your (and the characters) views change on them, or don't, as the stakes change adds a lot of depth. Not liking an author's writing style is something that happens. There are plenty of books I've enjoyed less than I want to because of how the author writes. Web serials as a genre suffer from a lot of problems inherent from the structure of the format (limits on editing, drafts, revisions, story planning, etc). I think Wildbow's writing doesn't overly suffer from them and does a solid job on the technical side. Putting this in a spoiler because I can't recall exactly where the story fleshes out some coil stuff. The complaint that "the undersiders keep coming out on top" is explicitly handled by Coil's power literally letting him keep trying combined with him using Dinah to figure out the best way to hedge his bets with it. That literally handles all of Flesnold listed story complaints. He either hasn't gotten the reveal or didn't think about the implications of it. Coils overall character of 'what if your power let you always avoid the negative consequences of your actions' fits interestingly in a story heavily about the consequences of your actions (and the protagonist rationalizing her actions to avoid dealing with consequences).
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Dec 18, 2017 11:51
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This thread just gets weirdly condescending when people say they don't enjoy Wildbow's stuff. We've had 'go back and read more slowly' (lol), 'listen to this podcast to 'get it' (lol again -- if you have to listen to a podcast to understand a work, then something's gone wrong along the way), lots of people like it (haha really?) and so on. I understand that some posters in here are pretty tied up with the Worm community, but those sorts of responses are not the best way of handling criticism. It is, as mentioned, defensive and condescending. It's okay for people not to like Worm, or Wandering Inn, or Twig, or whatever. If someone's read 12/30 arcs, they're probably not going to turn around because they read any further. There are very few texts, of any kind, where things suddenly snap together in such a way to make however many hours of previously unenjoyable stuff suddenly good, particularly if you dislike how the author plots and how they write. edit: Like, looking at the eight books I've read over the past six or so months, there's not one where if someone said 'I'm 40% of the way in and not liking it for the following reasons' I'd think that advising them to power through it would do them any good. Worm isn't a story where the core abruptly changes halfway through. It very much stays the same kind of story. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Dec 18, 2017 |
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Dec 18, 2017 12:23
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Wildbow definitely really sucked at giving each character distinctive voices and writing dialogue generally in Worm he is right in that respect for my money.
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Dec 18, 2017 14:13
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