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sunken fleet posted:Daybreak on Hyperion is pretty cool too. It's technically still updating ...just slowly. But the three volumes already up are well worth the read I think. Note the author has stated that it started as a gag project intended to be like four chapters long or something and blew up into the epic war fantasy it currently is - so the very beginning bits are a bit different tonally from the rest of the story. Blast from the first page. Really? It's a story about a guy who summons a familiar waifu for himself. A transgendered familiar waifu. Does it steer clear of all the creepy poo poo that entails? And is it amazing? Because I sorta like the alternate history earth preussia with mages that is in the background. But creepy transgendered familiar waifu is just really weird.
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Jan 28, 2018 22:04
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Affi posted:Blast from the first page. Really? It's a story about a guy who summons a familiar waifu for himself. A transgendered familiar waifu. Well if what you care about is indeed that alternate magic history with a lot of military action including mages it might be fun enough. Sadly I have to say though that personally I think its a very flawed story. Flawed because the authors writing skill can't quite live up to the story they are trying to write. Let me summarize some of my problems with this story. An rear end in a top hat summons his perfect assistant, into the form of a girl. But they were not a girl before. Also he's engaged to a woman who finds this out and is pretty pissed off he did it. This seems like it could go many places options for drama, self discovery, becoming less of an rear end in a top hat, how do I deal with the fact I have a woman's body now, etc. But then it just sort of doesn't go anywhere. The story never really addresses the whole man summoned into a womans body thing besides bringing up that it happened a lot. The relationship problems that this brings between the three of them are frequently pointed out but never go anywhere until the princess has a hosed up manic episode because it turns out she's got some sort of fantasy bi-polar disorder. Saying this thing happened and it sure is upsetting isn't development, its re-iterating the state of affairs. Finally forcing the situation with fantasy bi-polar manic episode fallout is... clumsy, overwrought and frankly undermines Sylviane as a character. Kaede the nominal protagonist of this story stops having agency past say halfway volume 1. They exist purely to end up doing what Pascal wants. They make barely any choices and then they are only short-term reactions to whats going on right now. Long term Kaede does no planning and expresses no real desires. If there is one thing I hate in protagonists its not Doing Stuff. And the summoned into the wrong body situation. You decided to write this story, so actaully Write That Story. Don't just walk up to the line and back off, step over it. Address it. Have Kaede make definite choices about the situation. I don't even really care what way you decide to go with it but actually Do It. But no instead Kaede gets told they can't "crossdress" as a man and just sort of, accepts the situation as is. Not in a "I'm unsure how I feel about this lets see how it goes" but in a "I can't change anything so I guess this is it" sort of way. Further lets look at what Kaede is in this story. An Isekai character from a different world with a modern education, some ability to shoot a bow and a huge nerd for Prussian war history. Do they get to use any of that ? No, the modern education is mostly stuff that gets explained to Pascal offscreen that he then uses mostly offscreen to do stuff like implement a stock exchange. Oh and use magic for nuclear explosions. Kaede gets to shoot a bow real cool like... once. All that history stuff ? Allowed to silently watch meetings and discuss stuff with Pascal, offscreen. Its an infuriating way to handle basically all of this. Why is Kaede even in this story. Sylviane gets to lead flying cavalry charges with her phoenix. Pascal gets to be a military genius. Kaede does... nothing besides whatever Pascal asks them to do. And finally this is a story about war. Wars with magic. With a magic system that gets a lot of words devoted to it. But for all the talking about magic the actual magic system is... not that interesting. If you want a story about war with magic in it A Practical Guide to Evil is much better at it. The one place it does shine though is when its actually describing large scale battles, those were cool to me. Is that enough for you, then yeah probably give Daybreak on Hyperion a read. But probably just skip it.
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Jan 28, 2018 23:25
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Tzarnal posted:Good Stuff Thanks. I'll give one of the big battles a try. I'm just tapped out on good webserials. Up to date on practical guide, mother of learning, worm and all that jazz.
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Jan 28, 2018 23:56
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Tzarnal posted:-snip- I'm curious, how exactly would you want Kaede to "deal" with their sex change? I mean the genderbend part of the story is one of the weaker parts but that's kinda what happens when someone decides to turn a short gag story into a full project. Apart from that though it's not "fantasy" bipolar, Sylviane is just bipolar and Kaede letting everyone walk all over them is probably their number one in-story flaw. I personally don't really mind one character in a multiple viewpoint story being more passive (though I also suspect Kaede being more of an observer is actually intended and never fully going away). If I were to criticize the story I'd probably focus more on the way Sylviane treats Kaede and the Stockholm syndrome Kaede seems to be suffering from because both of those are rather unsettling to me.
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Jan 29, 2018 01:13
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Absum posted:If I were to criticize the story I'd probably focus more on the way Sylviane treats Kaede and the Stockholm syndrome Kaede seems to be suffering from because both of those are rather unsettling to me. I actually came really close to just dropping the story after Sylviane blew up at Kaede that one time and everyone was just like "meh, that's your lot in life now." and the story moved on. It was really uncomfortable and I made a comment on the chapter to the effect of "You know this pushes Sylviane past the moral event horizon, she can't be a likable character anymore" and got shouted down by the author so... I don't think that aspect of the story is going to change. That said it's a fun read and any "creepiness" you might expect from the hook is pretty much completely nonexistent - the author seems much more intent on writing about a grand dramatic war with intrigue and plots than about the ostensible main character.
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Jan 29, 2018 05:27
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I just wanted to pop into this thread to say thank you for the recommendations. I finally finished reading Worm, it was really great. I've been reading it slowly, whenever I had downtime at work, for the last couple months. Now that I'm done I feel a little lost. I'm trying to decide on the next one to dive into. I'm thinking maybe The Gods are Bastards?
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Jan 29, 2018 17:35
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I will never not recommend Ra. Fairly short so if you hate it, youve only wasted a few days
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Jan 29, 2018 17:40
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Brewmaster posted:I just wanted to pop into this thread to say thank you for the recommendations. I finally finished reading Worm, it was really great. I've been reading it slowly, whenever I had downtime at work, for the last couple months. Now that I'm done I feel a little lost. I'm trying to decide on the next one to dive into. I'm thinking maybe The Gods are Bastards? There's a sequel to Worm being written right now, he just started arc 4. https://www.parahumans.net/ TGaB is great, apparently Twig (also by Wildbow) is also great. The Wandering Inn is good, but not quite on the level of those imo.
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Jan 29, 2018 17:42
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CaptainJuan posted:I will never not recommend Ra. Fairly short so if you hate it, youve only wasted a few days The author has mentioned he's been reworking it to create a better ending, like, a year ago. Don't know where he is with that now. Personally, I'd suggest Practical Guide to Evil and Mother of Learning. These are the two best ones, IMO.
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Jan 29, 2018 19:31
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Megazver posted:Personally, I'd suggest Practical Guide to Evil and Mother of Learning. These are the two best ones, IMO. Seconded. Those, plus Worm and Twig (jury is still out on Ward) are what I'd unequivocally recommend. The Wandering Inn is also quite good but has streaks of annoying storylines. The Gods Are Bastards goes off the rails IMO.
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Jan 29, 2018 19:38
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The Shortest Path posted:There's a sequel to Worm being written right now, he just started arc 4. https://www.parahumans.net/ The Gods are Bastards was very enjoyable. Then it abruptly became interminable and boring. I stopped a few months back and haven’t regretted it from skimming occasionally. Practical Guide I like a lot, and it’s stayed consistently good even as it keeps the stakes high. It helps that the characters and dialogue are great by genre standards, even if there are tons of typos. Mother of Learning was good but I felt like it dragged a bunch. Maybe another go through would stick better.
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Jan 29, 2018 19:38
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Ra and Practical guide are in the OP but don't have any links. Does anyone have a link for those?
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Jan 29, 2018 19:58
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Oh, also, Unsong. Just remember it's okay to fast forward through the qabbala pun sections. The numerous, extensive qabbala pun sections. EDIT: https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/ https://qntm.org/ra
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Jan 29, 2018 19:59
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Velius posted:The Gods are Bastards was very enjoyable. Then it abruptly became interminable and boring. I stopped a few months back and haven’t regretted it from skimming occasionally. I stopped a few months back too, around the point of "holiday to pirate city" has anyone been keeping up with it?
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Jan 29, 2018 21:18
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Finally caught all the way up in Practical Guide to Evil. What a great serial. Now I feel empty inside though, like I do whenever I catch up to the current end of a serial/series. Oh well, think I'll tackle Wandering Inn next. I wanna say that for Mother of Learning, I really hope that the series doesn't end right when the main characters get out of the loop. I wanna see what they do with their incredible knowledge and abilities in the real world, goddamn it!
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Jan 29, 2018 21:32
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Cicero posted:Finally caught all the way up in Practical Guide to Evil. What a great serial. Now I feel empty inside though, like I do whenever I catch up to the current end of a serial/series. Oh well, think I'll tackle Wandering Inn next. I'd be very surprised if we didn't see them resolve all the big problems (invasion, necromancer, his brother probably dying, etc) once they're out.
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Jan 29, 2018 22:04
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So Ward 4.1: Bitter Pill is Amy right? Also someone explain the Pearl joke but ALSO wet and horny teens is a great name
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Jan 29, 2018 22:38
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Newest Ward was great, newest Practical Guide to Evil has had the same problem that has plagued all the recent chapters; it's full of terrible spelling and grammar errors and needed to be very thoroughly edited.
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Jan 29, 2018 23:49
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Sometimes I feel like I'm crazy for running my chapters through something like Grammarly and another pair of eyes when I read some recent uploads. Of course, I've also been told it's done deliberately to promote engagement via corrections, so, maybe I'm the fool.
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Jan 29, 2018 23:58
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probably Pearl necklace aka cumshot
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Jan 30, 2018 00:02
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CaptainJuan posted:probably Pearl necklace aka cumshot Oh hell yes
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Jan 30, 2018 00:05
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:So Ward 4.1: Bitter Pill is Amy right? Where are you getting that from? Amy is working for The Wardens, she was the Red Queen talking to Nilbog. Milky Moor posted:Of course, I've also been told it's done deliberately to promote engagement via corrections, so, maybe I'm the fool. Maybe for others, but Prac Guide never goes back to correct them even after they've been pointed out. Practical Guide would be greatly improved by letting some fan do that and only that. Tom Clancy is Dead fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Jan 30, 2018 |
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Jan 30, 2018 00:12
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i read pearl as a clitoris joke , clamshell protecting it etc. im stupid as hell
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Jan 30, 2018 03:13
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Megazver posted:Oh, also, Unsong. Just remember it's okay to fast forward through the qabbala pun sections. The numerous, extensive qabbala pun sections. I dunno, I really liked all the awful puns and such, but then again all that Quabala and ceremonial magic stuff is very much of interest to me. Other people's mileage may vary.
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Jan 30, 2018 03:20
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Unsung was great and I appreciate that it ended before overstaying its welcome. Mother of learning: I hope [b]they get to solve the invasion and i hope they get into another time loop where the primordial is lose and they need to survive and escape and find a way to defeat it.
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Jan 30, 2018 14:01
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Megazver posted:Oh, also, Unsong. Just remember it's okay to fast forward through the qabbala pun sections. The numerous, extensive qabbala pun sections. On the one hand, Unsong is great and there's a lot more to it being great than kabbalistic puns, but if you don't like the puns I doubt you'd like the rest of it either. Why would you read it if you didn't like the puns, that's just dumb. Nettle Soup posted:I stopped a few months back too, around the point of "holiday to pirate city" has anyone been keeping up with it? Yeah. It's not getting better. The problem here is that the author doesn't want to cut, anywhere. He's got too many characters with too many plots and is determined to document every individual plot beat in excruciating detail, with exhaustive commentary. This is why a simple scene about doing repair work has been stretched piecemeal over like half a dozen chapters instead of knocked off in the five or so paragraphs it actually deserved. Trissiny's sections are still alright, mostly. But we're cutting from her to the group in Puna Dar to the freshmen at the university to the group attacking the freshmen at the university to Tellwyrn's own separate branch of that to Vadrieny's own private quest... Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut e: Mother of Learning is sort of doing the same poo poo, covering all the i-dotting and t-crossing that "needs" to happen before the story can get to the interesting parts, but as ratfic the bean-counting is sort of the point of the thing. KOGAHAZAN!! fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Jan 30, 2018 |
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Jan 30, 2018 15:35
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violent sex idiot posted:i read pearl as a clitoris joke , clamshell protecting it etc. im stupid as hell You're not stupid, that's definitely the joke.
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Jan 30, 2018 15:35
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Silynt posted:You're not stupid, that's definitely the joke. thank you for your confidence in me but getting one joke doesnt really weigh up against all of the other evidence pointing towards "im stupid"
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Jan 30, 2018 15:36
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Tom Clancy is Dead posted:Where are you getting that from? Amy is working for The Wardens, she was the Red Queen talking to Nilbog. Bitter pill is going to have some medicine slash healing related power, their identity is almost certainly going to be a reveal, and your spoiler doesn't preclude it from being Amy.
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Jan 30, 2018 15:40
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:Bitter pill is going to have some medicine slash healing related power, their identity is almost certainly going to be a reveal, and your spoiler doesn't preclude it from being Amy. It'll be a medicine power, and that's not really Amy's bailiwick (she could manage it through clever use of her power of course), but more to the point, I got the feeling from Dot's interlude that Amy isn't involved in or doing loving anything. She seems really lonely and neglected... again.
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Jan 31, 2018 00:28
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If anyone is looking for more webfiction, I blew through Worth the Candle in a few days. The main character gets thrown into a fantasy world based off all pen and paper worlds he created all shoved together, it's not a happy place. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11478249/chapters/25740126
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Jan 31, 2018 16:43
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I read Worth the Candle last week and enjoyed it. I like how the conflicts are not resolved by the protagonist steamrolling the opposition. There's a lot of shaky alliances and interesting situations with no perfect solution. I really want to see where the author goes with the level up addiction.
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Jan 31, 2018 18:15
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I just started reading Mother of Learning and it's pretty good (I'm on chapter 8). One minor thing that bugs me is that I'm not sure what these characters are supposed to look like. I have a very, very poor visual imagination, so it helps to have clear descriptions. I've been imagining Zorian as sorta like Mishima from Persona 5 but with glasses for some reason. I have zero clue what Akoja is supposed to look like. I'm guessing Zach is basically just an attractive looking guy with black-hair. I like Zach because my name is also Zach and he seems like a cool guy who isn't a paranoid antisocial loser like Zorian.
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Jan 31, 2018 19:01
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Yeah Zorian was annoying in early Mother of Learning, but I started reading Wandering Inn (at 1.12 R right now) and wow Ryoka is a far more unlikeable jackass. I don't understand the point of writing a main character who's such an rear end in a top hat. And not, like a glorious bastard or funny rear end in a top hat or something like that, she just loving sucks. Is it some kind of Mary Sue wish fulfillment thing where she gets to be successful and surrounded by friends and praised even though she's a huge douche to everyone around her? And honestly the main character seems only marginally better for this, but at least Erin seems like she's trying to be a decent person. I hope this poo poo gets better over time.
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Jan 31, 2018 23:57
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Cicero posted:Yeah Zorian was annoying in early Mother of Learning, but I started reading Wandering Inn (at 1.12 R right now) and wow Ryoka is a far more unlikeable jackass. I don't understand the point of writing a main character who's such an rear end in a top hat. And not, like a glorious bastard or funny rear end in a top hat or something like that, she just loving sucks. Is it some kind of Mary Sue wish fulfillment thing where she gets to be successful and surrounded by friends and praised even though she's a huge douche to everyone around her? And honestly the main character seems only marginally better for this, but at least Erin seems like she's trying to be a decent person. I hope this poo poo gets better over time. both of those things do improve substantially.
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Feb 1, 2018 00:11
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Cicero posted:Yeah Zorian was annoying in early Mother of Learning, but I started reading Wandering Inn (at 1.12 R right now) and wow Ryoka is a far more unlikeable jackass. I don't understand the point of writing a main character who's such an rear end in a top hat. And not, like a glorious bastard or funny rear end in a top hat or something like that, she just loving sucks. Is it some kind of Mary Sue wish fulfillment thing where she gets to be successful and surrounded by friends and praised even though she's a huge douche to everyone around her? And honestly the main character seems only marginally better for this, but at least Erin seems like she's trying to be a decent person. I hope this poo poo gets better over time. I'm optimistic about Zorian because, relatively soon after I made that post, he started to finally think "wait a sec, maybe I've kinda been an rear end in a top hat to people?" edit: This story is written well. I would actually say that the prose/dialogue are overall better than, say, Wildbow's. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Feb 1, 2018 |
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Feb 1, 2018 02:34
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Cicero posted:Is it some kind of Mary Sue wish fulfillment thing where she gets to be successful and surrounded by friends and praised even though she's a huge douche to everyone around her? It is in fact the exact opposite of that.
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Feb 1, 2018 03:01
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Autonomous Monster posted:It is in fact the exact opposite of that.
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Feb 1, 2018 22:41
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I've been listening to the We've Got Worm podcast at work as sort of a recap between Ward updates, and it's really fuckin good. I'm learning so much minor detail that I missed in my three readthroughs of the book.
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Feb 1, 2018 23:32
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The Shortest Path posted:I've been listening to the We've Got Worm podcast at work as sort of a recap between Ward updates, and it's really fuckin good. I'm learning so much minor detail that I missed in my three readthroughs of the book. I've been listening to it more or less in sync with my own reread and I love listening to Scott make predictions, because he's either dead on for no apparent reason or hilariously off
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Feb 2, 2018 00:07
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