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Ytlaya posted:Regarding Ward, I'm not caught up yet but one thing that's been bugging me a little is that I feel like Wildbow is trying too hard to create "unique" powers. Like half of the powers that have been introduced so far have been pretty convoluted. In Worm, even the grab-bag capes generally had a set of powers that worked together in some coherent way. An example of one of the newly introduced characters with a power that is both unique and easy to understand is the guy who you can't look or aim at from Arc 1. But a lot of these other characters have powers that are just overly complex in my opinion. I wouldn't mind if just a couple characters had powers like this, but they're so frequent it feels noticeable in comparison with Worm. I think that the thing that really set Zorian apart is the time loop. Let me explain, the most abundant resource that Zorian possesses at the start of the loop is time. During high school, how much time people spend to improve themselves and how much time do they spend on studying for tests/socialising? And afterwards how much time do they spend on working to feed themselves and other sundry costs? Zorian gets to sidestep those issues by being in a timeloop with a modest stipend and being an antisocial loser (albeit slightly improving on the latter issue). Zorian can fully dedicate himself to improving himself on a level that few can match, he also has infinite money (though not necessarily an inexhaustible amount). It still is has that YA optimism that 'if you really applied yourself you can succeed', but it's tempered by the timeloop so it becomes 'if you really apply yourself and have enough time to compensate for your lack of talent you can succeed'. SITB fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 08:29
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lurksion posted:Practical Guide I know that the song is supposed to be The Girl Who Climbed the Tower, but in my heart, it will always be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBMBbf6mLJs
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Feb 16, 2018 15:35
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Practical Guide newest chapter: First, I loved this chapter. The different paths that her life could have taken were cool as gently caress; especially the one where she joined the hero's side as they kept bitching at her about in book 2. I like how it worked out just like she had thought it would - they win, but Callow is absolutely destroyed in the process. I also found it interesting that Akua defeated the Malicia in all of the alternate timelines - Malicia is so smugly certain that she has Akua under control (even bragging about helping her in the dark to Tasia in "Closure") that it's interesting to know that she would ultimately fail - if you can believe in the truth of these visions. My question is this - does the last sentence mean that the "real" version of the scene in this chapter was a vision as well? She looks UP, implying that we're back at the bottom of the stairs where she split, but she looks at OPEN gates where they were closed before. I'm torn and can't wait until Monday to see what happens next; If there's an interlude coming I riot.
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Feb 16, 2018 16:20
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It's Xvim. Zorian is good at magic because of Xvim, and everyone else is bad at magic because they don't have Xvim.
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Feb 16, 2018 18:16
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The Shortest Path posted:Victoria is a very, very different person from Taylor, and that's gonna take a lot of adjustment for people. And thank god for that. I strongly disliked Taylor (she's a good character, but not a likable one and not one I want as a protagonist/narrator) and like Victoria a lot more.
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Feb 16, 2018 19:10
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Silynt posted:Practical Guide newest chapter: I reread the chapter at lunch today (I liked it a lot), and a closer reading illustrated that I had misinterpreted some of the action the first time around. I originally had assumed that these visions were internally generated, her Name reliving the consequences of her original Pivot just before she has her next one. On a second pass, however, it seems clear to me that these visions were some form of spell left by Diabolist - just before it starts Cat notices the heavy traces of sorcery around her and how that is obviously an array of some sort. This understanding colors the content of the visions in a different light. While they are all still believable outcomes for Cat's life, they clearly were all set up to end in her kneeling at the feet of Dread Empress Magnificent (Diabolist). These weren't real alternate timelines, but alternate realities specifically crafted by Akua to make Cat think that this moment was inevitable. Thus, I retract my statement that Malicia is underestimating Akua, at least based on the evidence of this chapter- Akua specifically crafted these visions to make herself the winner. As for the ending, a closer reading essentially confirms that even the "real" vision was still just a vision from the array. The final paragraph perfectly mirrors the start of the "real" vision, with slight variation: "My boot touched the stone. I was myself, across three lives I had never lived and one I was living. I began the climb in utter silence." is the start of the vision and "My boot touched the stone. I looked up to doors of bronze wide open and began the climb, humming the tune to a song I had never heard." is how the chapter ends. I really like that juxtaposition to show how the showdown between Cat and Akua to come will not be the same as the scene we already witnessed.
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Feb 16, 2018 19:19
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Ward: I'm interested to see where this ends up going, because I genuinely can't figure it out. Team Therapy seems to have a really bad plan, I'm struggling to see how Victoria looked at a group of kids with brute and extremely lethal breaker/blaster powers and decided that their best play was to do a black ops/Las Vegas Protectorate deal. I'm assuming they must be sneaking up on either a really embarrassing implosion or something else that forces them to fundamentally rethink their entire schtick, because I can't see the stealth angle working at all, but I also don't see them making a go of things as a dedicated front line/combat team; their membership is too young and volatile, and reading about sad teenagers murdering things for 10-20 arcs wouldn't be that engaging. I'm almost convinced we're sneaking up on the big reveal being that Tattletale never stopped working with the PRT, and she's simply taken over the watchdogs/black ops wing that does all the dirt Cauldron used to take care of, but that's so cliche that I don't think it's right.
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Feb 17, 2018 13:07
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it wasnt victorias idea it was tristans, and shes just kind of following along doing whatever the team wants instead of coaching or guiding them at all because she desperately wants something to belong to
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Feb 17, 2018 13:26
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Hmm I definitely missed that when they did the initial strategery-ing, that makes a lot more sense. Speaking of Tristan, remember how early on Yamada mentioned that there were three members of the group she was particularly worried about? Simply based on structure I'm getting pretty paranoid that two of them must be Chris and Tristan, since Chris is pretty much a blank and Tristan has been far too reasonable and non-crazy. I'm not sure on the third, though; Kenzie seems like an obvious decoy (big ol' problem, but she kinda-sorta has it under control and she's getting better at managing it), we've been inside Rain's head enough to know that he isn't the mustache-twirling villain I originally pegged him for, and Sveta's main problem is giving too many hugs, which the hamster ball helps with. Ashley is volatile in the sense that she seems to have some kind of personality disorder, but just like Kenzie she's aware of it and actively working on managing it.
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Feb 17, 2018 13:36
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ward things: Unlike what violent sex idiot is saying, while Victoria definitely wants to belong to a group she isn't just like "yeah whatever you guys want just take me". Her role wasn't to be an in-charge coach/manager, but more of an advisor leveraging her cape/cape-team know-how, and that was after she realized that the group wasn't going to stop and that a lot of them needed to be handled carefully. Tristin lays out the goals of the plan (glare 3-4), based on priorities of the group's members, as A: leave the group mostly free to help Rain when/if his cluster comes for him. B: give Kenzie an integral non-backseat role. C: make money. The skeleton of the plan is Ashley/Chris can pass as villians well enough to place surveillance, kenzie runs the surveillance, and when they've discovered intel they either act or sell the info to other cape teams. As Victoria brings up issues, Tristin has reasoned answers (there is also some of this between the others). He also agrees this isn't a long term setup for the team, but it is something that is workable currently that fulfills their needs (they talk a bit about plans after the first job). It is a low risk plan (super spy tinker, front facing members aren't the vulnerable ones) that is reasonable and gives the team time to work kinks out while meeting the needs the members talked about in the therapy chapters as to why they wanted to form a team. Something Victoria pushed for in the therapy chapters was for them to wait 6 months before forming a team to see if they still wanted to (when it was clear they weren't going to NOT make a team), and this is basically the next best thing to that. Also you might not be tracking properly on how powerful Kenzie's power is. Imagine you were trying to watch people that live in 2 dimensions. If they build a wall to avoid the eyes of other people in their 2d reality, it doesn't stop you at all from looking behind it. Kenzie's poo poo is basically the equivalent of that but for our 3 dimensions.
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Feb 17, 2018 15:48
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If you don't enjoy Kitchen Sink, the cape whose power is to literally create everything but the kitchen sink in his hands to chuck at you, then there is something wrong with you.
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Feb 17, 2018 19:14
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Omi no Kami posted:Ward: I'm interested to see where this ends up going, because I genuinely can't figure it out. Team Therapy seems to have a really bad plan, I'm struggling to see how Victoria looked at a group of kids with brute and extremely lethal breaker/blaster powers and decided that their best play was to do a black ops/Las Vegas Protectorate deal. I'm assuming they must be sneaking up on either a really embarrassing implosion or something else that forces them to fundamentally rethink their entire schtick, because I can't see the stealth angle working at all, but I also don't see them making a go of things as a dedicated front line/combat team; their membership is too young and volatile, and reading about sad teenagers murdering things for 10-20 arcs wouldn't be that engaging. I'm currently predicting that the Fallen/Hollow Point fight causes the team to implode. There are so, so many things that could go horribly wrong there, and I'm pretty sure a lot of them will.
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Feb 17, 2018 20:43
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Does the rest of the team know Rain’s backstory? “I killed a lot of people doing terrorist things as part of a cult that I’m still technically a member of” would be a good implosion point. Also, what’s the spoiler policy? Are we just covering up discussion about everything, since not everyone is current on every single series that gets posted about in here?
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Feb 17, 2018 21:34
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blastron posted:Does the rest of the team know Rain’s backstory? “I killed a lot of people doing terrorist things as part of a cult that I’m still technically a member of” would be a good implosion point. I think Victoria might be the one who takes it worst, too. quote:Also, what’s the spoiler policy? Are we just covering up discussion about everything, since not everyone is current on every single series that gets posted about in here? IDK, following everyone else's lead here.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:36
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blastron posted:Also, what’s the spoiler policy? Are we just covering up discussion about everything, since not everyone is current on every single series that gets posted about in here? I think just spoilering the latest chapter for the first day or two it's out is common convention, so people don't get dunked if they don't know the exact release schedule of each story they read.
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Feb 17, 2018 22:14
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21 Muns posted:I think Victoria might be the one who takes it worst, too. That's what I was thinking, too. I think Tristan and Sveta are the only ones who know everything, and especially considering how Sveta is one of Victoria's few genuine, close friends, I could see her reacting really badly to not being told. I actually feel dumb for not keying into this earlier, but Victoria's setup (here is a ill-advised team of weird jerks that I absolutely should not be a part of and know it, but oh wait, friends and belonging) is a lot closer to Taylor's than I initially picked up on.
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Feb 17, 2018 23:09
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Victoria is badly naive, still seeing the world in terms of super heroes and villains, when that is likely only superficially still the case (seriously, a good number of the "big" villains around are going to be working with the Wardens(Wards? i've forgotten what the big group is called lol) on some level, Tattletale almost for sure). She still trusts in/believes in authority and thus can't really be a "hero". I mean, poo poo, she's trying to go back to the status quo as she knew it before Tattletale talked Amy into saving her life. Lets play cops and robbers with these teenage gently caress ups she says. poo poo is going to blow up and it's going to blow up badly. Maybe she'll kill Tattletale in a fit of uncontrolled rage, and in so doing, basically gently caress god damned everything over. Also, stop trying to hack the Wardens servers Kenzie!
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Feb 17, 2018 23:39
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NecroMonster posted:Also, stop trying to hack the Wardens servers Kenzie! This is probably just Victoria's paranoia leaking over to me, but at this point I'm kinda assuming that Kenzie has hacked everything, everywhere, at all times. (Before the current arc, when all we knew of Kenzie was that Houndstooth and the other wards didn't want to have anything to do with her, I set about trying to think what could cause a whole group of heroes to be nervous about talking to or getting near someone who came off as a lot more well-adjusted than we were expecting. I came up with some really glorious nonsense, too- the fact that she's a living, breathing anime character made me expect a Siberian rehash, where we'd learn that she was like a creepy middle-aged agoraphobic guy piloting a projection from his bunker, or maybe a creation of that mold guy from glow-worm, but I briefly considered the possibility that she was Bonesaw with plastic surgery.) Speaking of Victoria's naivete though, here's something I've been second-guessing myself on: I've been ready to hate Carol ever since Worm, since most of the times we saw her she was either 1) being a dick to Amy, or 2) being a dick to Victoria. But I also tend to get pretty easily swayed by the protagonist goggles; I vastly under-estimated what a massive piece of poo poo Taylor was until I reread Worm much later. Given that, even though Carol is definitely a jerk, I get the feeling that I'm really softballing how much of their relationship problems lie with Vicky. I was initially somewhat okay with her decision to try and cut what she perceived as toxic elements of their relationship off, but given how hard she (internally) flipped out in the most recent thing, I'm starting to wonder if we're not heading towards Glory Mom being at least slightly less of a unabated jerkwad than I want her to be.
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Feb 18, 2018 00:21
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I'm just wondering how she's rationalizing ignoring Amy at this point. Not saying she should actually go meet her of course, but I mean she HAS to know that no matter what they're running around the same general areas and, yeah, in theory she could be really lucky and they never happen to cross paths (I dunno if 'randomly in a mall' or 'at the site of a huge parahuman slugfest' is the worse option here) but they absolutely will. Even without meta-knowledge that it's a story so obviously they will, this place doesn't exactly seem that big AND they both frequent at least a few of the same places like the Wardens HQ. She seems just purely in denial that this is a possibility at all and doesn't appear to be remotely prepared for it. Maybe I'm underestimating her, but it's almost kind of annoying how clammed up and careful she is about everything else that has to do with her family yet apparently is completely unworried about just looking up and seeing Amy across the street or whatever. And nothing I've seen in the story so far makes me think she gets out of that without at least a personal breakdown, if not collateral damage.
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Feb 18, 2018 01:10
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wardens hq seems to be kinda safe since they somehow got the message to amy to stay upstairs while victoria was in the building last time
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Feb 18, 2018 02:30
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The "big" villains already weren't in more cops-and-robbers mode pre-worm, but they also don't go all out because both sides realize that if one side goes all-out so will the other side. And when everyone breaks out the big guns they can easily break whatever they're fighting over. So far in the Ward all the cape action outside of broken triggers has been cops-and-robbers mode, the jarring step outside of that was a non-powered person shooting fume hood. The looming threat from Rain's cluster is the first change of tune from any of the shown capes. Basically the majority of people want to stay in that mode (people are all about tattletale, and she is definitely pro cops-and-robbers). Tristin has been shown to know all about Rain, Sveta knows some things about Rain but not everything (we don't know which parts she doesn't know). Go re-think about what happened to Victoria (mind/body rape and left as a horrible blob in an insane asylum and slowly ignored), and then ask yourself if she is really unjustified in not wanting those people back in her life. Like if someone was sexually abused by their step-dad and they cut ties with him and the part of the family that sided with him, you wouldn't be all "they should get over it" or "they're overblowing the situation". I'd say that our view of Carol is colored, but even the best light you could put her actions in involves her just completely not understanding Victoria's state of mind at all and doing things that Carol 'knows' are best. Victoria is ignoring thinking about Amy issues (which can be a problem), but she wants/needs to be a hero, and that involves going to places like the Wardens HQ. It isn't like they have multiple branches and she can just go to one of the others. She spends as much time as possible not being in areas she'll likely run into Amy, but she is still trying to go on with life. I don't think she'll deal well with running into Amy, but what else can she realistically do and still be doing this hero thing? I've got a feeling that Kenzie isn't the hacker, because I've got a feeling that she wouldn't have been caught.
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Feb 18, 2018 03:40
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having semi recently reread worm i would like to remind everyone that after not only did amy mind gently caress victoria to make her romantically love her she also used her body as a jet pack after crawler gooed her up. she did all of the wrong things taylor did at the end of the story except not to save the world, and also to her sister who loved her already
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Feb 18, 2018 03:48
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I think that Amy was definitely net in the wrong, but I'm not sure that Taylor is the fairest comparison; Amy had to contend with the triple threat of emotionally absent parents (her dad was super-duper depressed and her mom was Carol), long-term exposure to Victoria's aura messing with her, and her passivity ticking off her shard to the degree that it started goading her towards more active uses. Taylor was incredibly close to her shard from the beginning and only got more in-tune with it as the story went on, and had both a loving dad and several early opportunities/invitations to join the wards, yet she still decided that the best path forward was forging the Undersiders into an incredibly terrifying psychological and unconventional warfare team who acted as the enforcement branch of a criminal syndicate whose business model she and Tattletale both explicitly compared to the Yakuza. (Incidentally, I bounced off of the start of Worm a few times, but when I finally gave it another try the chapter that completely sold me was the bank robbery, where Taylor's plan involved soaking a bank full of civilians in dog blood, covering them in spiders, telling them all that if they moved, they'd be bitten and die, then cutting off all of their senses and giving herself a mental pat on the back for the way her awesome and heroic plan kept anyone from getting hurt.) While we're talking about both characters' headspace, one thing that always made me a little nervous was the Tattletale/Taylor dynamic in worm. I think the intended reading was that they genuinely were best friends, and that by the end of the story Tattletale genuinely loved her like a sister. That having been said, Tattles started their relationship out by explicitly manipulating and recruiting her, and her power is so incredibly suitable for manipulating a lonely, emotionally needy teenager, that I could never shake the possibility that it was all a long con, and even after years of friendship she was still playing and manipulating Taylor.
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Feb 18, 2018 08:01
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There are a lot of little hints (which Taylor completely misses, of course) that Tattletale is both completely sincere in her friendship (and subsequent enabling) towards Taylor, as well as terrified out of her loving mind every time she does something batshit crazy like rip open an experimental dimensional portal in the middle of a proto-endbringer fight, but manages to hide both of those things behind her mask. RE: Amy/Victoria, it baffles me to this day how anyone is able to look at Victoria being mindraped by her sister, then having her body warped into a garden of flesh and locked up in an asylum for two years while constantly horny for said sister, and thinks she should forgive her or get over it or whatever. How do people not understand how much trauma fucks your brain up after reading a 1.7 million word story about exactly that?
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Feb 18, 2018 09:33
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Plus it doesn't help that Tattletale takes a borderline Sylvester-esque level of joy in screwing with people for the sake of it- I remember they shared a moment during gold morning when she gives Tattletale a hug to try and slow her down (since she's doing the mind racing, mile-a-minute iteration of her analytical trees), Tattletale appears to be crying, makes up a lame lie about needing to fix her makeup because she smudged it on Taylor's shoulder.. ...except then when she turns around it does look like it was smudged by her shoulder, and that the entire crying thing was just a put-on to mess with Taylor. (Except-except, conspiring to muss her makeup in a different way to conceal her original intent by making the whole thing look like an overly elaborate joke is exactly what she would do. And the fractal tree just starts sprinting from there.) Wildbow plays a whole bunch with the superhero name versus civilian name throughout that entire book (I first remember it being a Thing in the Jessica Yamada interlude, but I probably missed it earlier). The most obvious one is Taylor's thing, but multiple other heroes go through various phases where they identify more towards their civilian or their cape identity, except, really, for Tattletale. As far as I can remember, the only moments we ever get close to her being Lisa (or Sarah, or whatever; the identity that isn't everyone's favorite goofy sociopath) are when she does ice cream and shopping with Taylor in the very beginning, and when they have that brief heart to heart after Echidna when Taylor finally gets around to noticing that Tattletale has been acting considerably crazier than usual. For the entire rest of the story she's Tattletale, up to and including when her windpipe's been crushed and she's obviously terrified. Since she's a Thinker this isn't as obvious and troubling as with some powers, but holy crap that seems like an unhealthy way to live. And as far as the Vicky/Amy thing goes, I've always felt that family/couples therapy is the way to go there. It'll never happen, but I think the only way they can hope to reach a remotely happy outcome to this whole thing is to sit down with Jessica Yamada, savior of the world and sole remaining stable mammal in the wormverse, and spend a year or two in therapy going "Okay, both of you are terrifying monsters (especially you, Amy), but you're at the root of each others' trauma, and you both need to deal with that, especially if either of you happen to have a power that would allow you to bioengineer a giant plague to kill everything, and if your name rhymes with 'Jamie'."
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Feb 18, 2018 10:44
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The Shortest Path posted:RE: Amy/Victoria, it baffles me to this day how anyone is able to look at Victoria being mindraped by her sister, then having her body warped into a garden of flesh and locked up in an asylum for two years while constantly horny for said sister, and thinks she should forgive her or get over it or whatever. How do people not understand how much trauma fucks your brain up after reading a 1.7 million word story about exactly that? Well, not to go back to the old argument but...
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Feb 18, 2018 11:43
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Omi no Kami posted:I think that Amy was definitely net in the wrong, but I'm not sure that Taylor is the fairest comparison; Amy had to contend with the triple threat of emotionally absent parents (her dad was super-duper depressed and her mom was Carol), long-term exposure to Victoria's aura messing with her, and her passivity ticking off her shard to the degree that it started goading her towards more active uses. Taylor was incredibly close to her shard from the beginning and only got more in-tune with it as the story went on, and had both a loving dad and several early opportunities/invitations to join the wards, yet she still decided that the best path forward was forging the Undersiders into an incredibly terrifying psychological and unconventional warfare team who acted as the enforcement branch of a criminal syndicate whose business model she and Tattletale both explicitly compared to the Yakuza. I think that's being unfair to the depth of Taylor's pathologies. She was failed by basically every authority figure and power structure she was supposed to rely on - the legal system didn't get her much by way of justice, the school did nothing about her bullies, she appears to have some resentment towards her mum for dying and her dad neglected her pretty badly in the immediate aftermath of that death. Then her best friend turned into a vicious bully out of nowhere, and she's betrayed and socially isolated. She falls in with the first group of people around her age that seem to like her and want her around even though she's definitely for real going to rat them out. Armsmaster is harsh with her when she tells him her monumentally stupid plan and because of her dysfunctions this moves him from 'ok adult authority figure' to 'mean awful power abuser bully'. And rereading that part he did handle it very poorly, and he's the adult in that situation. (Also her immediate thought of 'I'm going to rob the gently caress out of that bank' is something). One of the wards opportunities is after the heroes are somewhat justifiably unkind to her after she gets her back broken being unambiguously heroic and finds out they're sheltering one of her main tormentors, she wasn't exactly primed to like their offer. The first time she delays accepting it because she's exhausted after nearly dying and doesn't want to commit to anything in that state, then armsmaster is a meany and she has friends for the first time in a couple years. I can't think of others but I didn't reread much before Levi. Like obviously she doesn't make good decisions, but I think it's pretty understandable why she winds up where she does. My favourite Taylor moment is the arc she's outed when she's thinking of slowly murdering Emma with her bugs and how shed probably enjoy it then goes 'hm, in the context of a high school dispute this is a bit monstrous.' E for effort, Taylor.
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Feb 18, 2018 14:07
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Gitro posted:I think that's being unfair to the depth of Taylor's pathologies. She was failed by basically every authority figure and power structure she was supposed to rely on. Hmm that's definitely true, I suppose I'm looking at Taylor from too high a perspective- especially early on she had so many ways she could've handled a lot of her problems, but since one of the hallmarks of her pathology is that extremely binary position where you either agree with her all the way, or you're her enemy, I can totally buy that she at least felt a lot more cornered than she actually was. (Incidentally, some of the most fun I had re-reading Worm was going back through the Undersiders parts with full knowledge of how Taylor's pathology worked and how unreliable her narration was, and watching how frequently Tattletale or the others had to go well out of their way to accommodate her control issues.) It's not a pure Taylor moment, but I think one of my very favorite "Geez, these freaking people" sequences was late in the Echidna arc when they were chilling in the meeting room with the Chicago wards and waiting for the Protectorate to get everyone organized, and the Undersiders started a brainstorming/strategy session that started with a minutes-long tangent on different ways they could try mind-controlling an endbringer to fight in their place, and started quickly jumping down more feasible but equally disturbing (yet very constructive!) rabbit holes while the Chicago wards just kinda watched and silently freaked out. It really helped that between S9 and the early Echidna stuff, this was the first time in quite a while that we got to see a neutral third party react to their behavior, so we (or at least I) had forgotten how scary their default methodology tended to be. (The first time I read it I mistakenly thought that Alexandria was with the Chicago protectorate, not LA, so Taylor taking an Alexandria lunch box on her stakeouts with the rest of the wards struck me as an astonishingly mean and extremely funny gently caress-you to the entire hero community. Sadly, it only ended up being a slightly inappropriate jab at the same.)
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Feb 18, 2018 14:53
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New Mother of Learning.
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Feb 19, 2018 10:42
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Practical: I hope that wasn't supposed to be your killing blow, Cat. No one's ever dead if you didn't see the body.
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Feb 19, 2018 17:05
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Autonomous Monster posted:Practical: I hope that wasn't supposed to be your killing blow, Cat. No one's ever dead if you didn't see the body. I am pretty sure this entire setup was to force Akua away from her prepared ground and into Arcadia where Cat hold the advantage (if nothing else because the only one with guaranteed safety from Fae bullshit is Cat). Black and Akua's monster are still in play so this isn't over anyhow. Also, possibly force Akua to draw her soul back to her rather than risk it being destroyed by the goblin fire?
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Feb 19, 2018 17:47
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Autonomous Monster posted:Practical: I hope that wasn't supposed to be your killing blow, Cat. No one's ever dead if you didn't see the body. She hasn't even brought out the monster yet, and my money's on it being a mind controlled Black. Cat 100% doesn't expect to win at this point, she's only a third of the way through, maybe 40% now. Her continuing to not even play the same game as anybody else keeps being great, though.
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Feb 19, 2018 18:02
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Autonomous Monster posted:Practical: I hope that wasn't supposed to be your killing blow, Cat. No one's ever dead if you didn't see the body. Climactic winner take all battles in the Big Bad's throne room are just how stories work. That's why Cat isn't having any of that.
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Feb 19, 2018 18:21
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Tom Clancy is Dead posted:New Mother of Learning. A whole chapter on one conversation. It was a pretty important conversation though I guess. I will say that I've always felt like the ancient lich does not talk nearly enough like an ancient lich. It's a tone thing - he talks way too normal for a thousand year old monster, in my opinion. Tone aside I liked the chapter, it's good to be reminded that there are serious threats in the world even for our overpowered protagonists. And we finally get to see them shamelessly abusing the timeloop to rip someone off wholesale!
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Feb 19, 2018 18:30
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sunken fleet posted:A whole chapter on one conversation. It was a pretty important conversation though I guess. I will say that I've always felt like the ancient lich does not talk nearly enough like an ancient lich. It's a tone thing - he talks way too normal for a thousand year old monster, in my opinion. Tone aside I liked the chapter, it's good to be reminded that there are serious threats in the world even for our overpowered protagonists. And we finally get to see them shamelessly abusing the timeloop to rip someone off wholesale! I can't help but wonder if that's going to backfire somehow.
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Feb 19, 2018 21:29
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Practical Guide: I found today's chapter to be very frustrating to read - not just because I want Cat to win (which obviously I do) but because Akua's particular brand of smug "All according to my plan" villainy is so aggravating, and the successes she sees just reek of authorial bullshit to push the story forward. For all that she professes to have learned from the mistakes of the past from watching Black and Malicia, at the end of the day she acts EXACTLY like all of the traditional villains whom they stomped on. So why is she winning? Because the author decided that in this case she would, against the entire premise of the story thus far. Also, its bullshit that the Diabolist has such power over the Fae - they are pretty explicitly not Devils or Demons. Also also, Cat's reaction to losing was so out of character that it drove me nuts. I'm hoping that it will be retconned later into "Name Bullshit" messing with her head, like her reaction to the healing in Book 1, because otherwise I can't follow. I hope this is leading to Cat doing something to break the obvious "Black sacrifices himself to save his student and turn the tide" story that is being foreshadowed, because that story is so cliche that if it plays out in a novel that is supposedly about destroying tropes I will have lost all faith in the author's intent. tl:dr, I'm salty that Cat's plan failed and now I'm ranting about it with poorly formulated excuses. I'm getting too invested in this storyline lol.
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Feb 21, 2018 16:35
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Silynt posted:Practical Guide: Subverting tropes by slamming directly into them and ignoring them/being practical is in itself a tired trope. I think this is going for a meaner, more shattering setup. Akua is indeed, a cliched, masturbatory villain like the ones of old. Those always lose when they're at the edge of victory and start monologuing. The first step of the villain's plan always works. Cat isn't the villain here, she's the very technical hero, so she's gonna have to work with the constraints, which means losing round one, getting dragged into the lair, and THEN the sudden turnaround happens. The lesson she hasn't learned and needs to learn is that she's been beating tropes into submission when she needs to start using judo. She's the hero now, in this place, so unarmed, at the villain's mercy as she goes on about her plans? That's exactly where you want to be. The mentor dying thing is a hero side story, not a villain one. K Prime fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Feb 21, 2018 |
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Feb 21, 2018 16:57
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Silynt posted:Practical Guide: authorial bullshit I'm just here for the ride. lurksion fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Feb 21, 2018 |
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Feb 21, 2018 17:10
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You realise that Winning and Having Won are not the same thing, right?
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Feb 21, 2018 17:24
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Ward: geez, I think the mama mathers bit is the first wildbow thing that genuinely gave me the wiggins since Bonesaw's first appearance. By objective threat level standards the fallen still kinda feel like jobbers, but yeesh are their bits uncomfortable to read.
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Feb 22, 2018 14:43
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