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Yeah, I think I'm probably being way too oversensitive about his jerk-ness, but something about his entire demeanor rubbed me the wrong way, and A/B was where my train of thought went for some reason. I agree that AG must have some specific goal in mind, if only because a) seriously, nobody is that categorically incompetent, even the pre-GM PRT, and b) crystalclear specifically chatted with Ward about the AG being a front for PRTCJ activities, and I doubt they'd be tossed into a giant spider shouting match without a good reason.
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Mar 6, 2018 12:42
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Ward 5.4 I'm dying to see what happens between Kenzie and her old team this weekend
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Mar 6, 2018 14:10
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For some reason, the way it mentions her having the flash gun drawn makes me expect her to blind him the instant 5.5 starts.
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Mar 6, 2018 15:26
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The visual of the heroes/villains facing off in the street with Chris screaming in the background a few blocks away is too good.
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Mar 6, 2018 17:31
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This whole scene has been really rich visually. ward- Sveta-Victoria bits were great. I love that Victoria managed to casually imply that Tattletale is paying her to get the villains to use up their questions. There are so many tasty ways for this to finish up and the outcome of who gave AG the thumbs up has so many possibilities that I'm just leaning back and watching what happens.
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Mar 6, 2018 20:31
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Omi no Kami posted:For some reason, the way it mentions her having the flash gun drawn makes me expect her to blind him the instant 5.5 starts. Even if she doesn't, we're still getting some of the details about her from him that Houndstooth danced around.
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Mar 6, 2018 20:50
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Angry Walrus posted:Even if she doesn't, we're still getting some of the details about her from him that Houndstooth danced around. ward I'm hoping that mayday sent shortcut to talk to foresight or something like that, so mayday had no idea he was stepping on toes. So his day goes "hell yea we're gonna bust up some villains" followed by the villains having more heavy hitters than expected followed by spright telling him mid-fight "hey we got bad intel and need to pull out" followed by a very familiar voice going "Hey Mayday".
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Mar 6, 2018 21:13
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Angry Walrus posted:Even if she doesn't, we're still getting some of the details about her from him that Houndstooth danced around. Yeah... I've been trying not to let my inner conspiracy theorist run rampant, since a lot of Kenzie's development in 4 felt like WB directly responding to all of the hilarious paranoid theorycrafting by going "...no, she's not bonesaw or the simurgh, please enjoy this relatable and grounded mental illness backstory," but parts of Kenzie's schtick still don't add up for me. I'm kind of willing to believe her when she says she isn't using a projection to hide her real appearance, but from her and Yamada's past discussions I got the impression that she had no friends at school and suffered from severe isolation for most of her life. I find it really hard to believe that a nearly literal anime character with great fashion sense and straight As would have so much trouble making friends, even if she's as annoying as Houndstooth described her.
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Mar 7, 2018 00:12
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ZypherIM posted:I don't really like Spright, but he isn't anything like Assault? Sure he starts with flirting, and Victoria responds in kind, and then when she turns him down he stops. Yeah, my feeling is that while you could totally validly interpret his actions with the original flirting as rude/unacceptable, the story/Wildbow didn't intend for that interaction to come off that way. Victoria basically plays along and shows no offense, and as you mentioned he stops when she mentions not being interested. Omi no Kami posted:Yeah... I've been trying not to let my inner conspiracy theorist run rampant, since a lot of Kenzie's development in 4 felt like WB directly responding to all of the hilarious paranoid theorycrafting by going "...no, she's not bonesaw or the simurgh, please enjoy this relatable and grounded mental illness backstory," but parts of Kenzie's schtick still don't add up for me. I'm kind of willing to believe her when she says she isn't using a projection to hide her real appearance, but from her and Yamada's past discussions I got the impression that she had no friends at school and suffered from severe isolation for most of her life. I find it really hard to believe that a nearly literal anime character with great fashion sense and straight As would have so much trouble making friends, even if she's as annoying as Houndstooth described her. Yeah; it could be that Wildbow is just mistaken about her behavior being quite as universally off-putting for a young teenager as it would be for someone older. While her general clinginess/insecurity would probably cause some social problems, teenagers who act that way tend to be able to still find social groups among other awkward outcast types. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Mar 7, 2018 |
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Mar 7, 2018 04:39
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Ytlaya posted:Yeah, my feeling is that while you could totally validly interpret his actions with the original flirting as rude/unacceptable, the story/Wildbow didn't intend for that interaction to come off that way. Victoria basically plays along and shows no offense, and as you mentioned he stops when she mentions not being interested. Yeah, plus I just really have trouble buying her as an outcast. Maybe it's as you say, and Wildbow is writing her too much like an adult (spoiler: writing child characters is really hard), but the way she talks and acts comes off to me like a pretty decently socially aware person who's being goofy and purposely eccentric for fun, not as someone who genuinely doesn't know how to function with other people. And I think anyone who simultaneously has an even basic grasp of social skills and does cool Geek Stuff wouldn't have too much trouble finding a group of other kids they identify with in school.
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Mar 7, 2018 05:23
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Epilogue Prac Guide. Ahahahaha. I really enjoyed the payoff to the fae in Cat's scene, which really does appear straight out of legend, the Thief being sent to Procer (ahahaha, Malicia really screwed the pooch there and doesn't seem to have realized with Black's comment that he expects Cat to challenge her and he doesn't know which one will win and that it's not clear who he'd support), and the Bard getting figuratively owned by the Hierarch. Glad something's not going her way. That very last part though, is all this foreshadowing about Dread Empress Triumphant - may she never return - going to pay off?! That would be the cherry topping on this giant clusterfuck of plans. Amazing.
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Mar 7, 2018 06:53
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I'm more amused by the Bard running face first into anti-protagonism and just failing to wrap her brain around it. God, Practical's cosmology is such incredibly vile bullshit. Why is she so invested in keeping it running? e: I wish Anaxares was the main character, frankly. KOGAHAZAN!! fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Mar 7, 2018 |
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Mar 7, 2018 13:13
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Autonomous Monster posted:I'm more amused by the Bard running face first into anti-protagonism and just failing to wrap her brain around it. Because she's the cosmology incarnate, she's the Creator, she just picked the role that would let her gently caress around the most and then went that's me
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Mar 7, 2018 17:09
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Autonomous Monster posted:e: I wish Anaxares was the main character, frankly. This. I want him to team up with Black and go full militant atheist, tear down all the gods, above and below.
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Mar 7, 2018 17:14
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Epilogue pract So are we thinking black fights the crusade as Catherine invades praes for next book? Obviously cats deal with Cordelia is “you keep black off my back and I’ll deal with the empress” Followed by Cat betraying the crusade and coming to blacks aid a la Gandalf at helms deep.
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Mar 7, 2018 17:19
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Autonomous Monster posted:I'm more amused by the Bard running face first into anti-protagonism and just failing to wrap her brain around it. That bit had me cheering, to be fair, and I’m glad he’s finally off his rear end and embracing the crazy! Hierarch/Tyrant hijinks FTW!
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Mar 7, 2018 21:07
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Autonomous Monster posted:I'm more amused by the Bard running face first into anti-protagonism and just failing to wrap her brain around it. Anaxares is hands down my favorite character and I love Bellerophon's nutso communist democracy. I also enjoy that they're nominally Evil because, well, duh, Any Law Not Created By A Vote Of The People Is An Imposition By Tyrants, including the laws of Creation.
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Mar 8, 2018 02:06
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Katreus posted:Epilogue Prac Guide. I got the impression that the last bit was about people like her in their narrative-breakery making a blip on the Magic Radar, but you might very well be right.
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Mar 8, 2018 02:13
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Here are some serials I've been checking out, mainly because people asked me to review them. Chosen Shackles It has a lovely website and presentation that grabbed me immediately. Unfortunately, that just made me more aware of the uneven, jerky nature of the prose. Frode, the protagonist, kind of sucks (I can't even recall how old he is, just that he likes noodles and drugs and maybe goes to school) and the story itself is maddeningly unclear. On the other hand, maybe I'm just not grounded enough in cyberpunk/vaporwave/etc to understand it. The most interesting part was when Frode braved the cyberpunk dystopia to try and find someone's lost cat, and that was where the story grabbed me... but then it just kind of moved on immediately. I don't know if it's good or bad that I wanted to read about someone trying to find a cat in a cyberpunk dystopia but, well, I did. Specimens Someone really liked Worm and wanted to do it but with plants. The criticisms I level at Worm I can level at Specimens, too, but it lacks the things about Worm that drew me in to my first reading. Specimens has cleaner writing than Chosen Shackles, for example, but it's just flat and bland. The characters feel more like caricatures, particularly Lisa's (the protagonist) parents and a lot of the dialogue feels like the prose equivalent of stock photos. Clunky exposition tends to ruin some genuinely tense moments. I didn't get too far into it before putting it down, primarily because I felt like I'd read all of this before. If it can step out of Worm's shadow, it might be interesting. I did skip ahead to some of the later chapters and it does seem to improve. But it's hard to recommend it in a world where Ward is updating, I guess, if you want more of that sort of YA girl-with-powers fare. But the author seems to know a fair bit about plants, so, that might be cool? Touch Now, Touch surprised me. The subject matter can be a bit much, as it deals with children with a variety of traumas, but I feel the writing is decent. It's easily the strongest of these three. It has some issues stylistically (a lot of usage of 'the boy [said/did]' or 'the girl [said/did]') but the writing has a nice flow. The flaws it has seem to be that the author likes being overly-complex with wording and phrases and therefore paragraphs sometimes meander about, but it's not terrible. It feels a bit too early to judge, really. But it's a nice beginning. The big thing that's annoying about it is that it feels like the reader has no idea about anything in the world, not even what the average person would know, which makes reading it this weird feeling of having your expectations be in constant flux but also having the carpet yanked out from under you. There are superpowers in the world but there's also a touch of mysticism to it. But for some people the content might be a hard no (sexual abuse as a superpower allegory). Existential Terror and Breakfast I'm still thinking on this one. The title says it al. It's certainly a different concept and fairly well-written, like a mash-up of classic existential quandaries like Do I Have Free Will? with Hitchhiker's Guide or The Stanley Parable. But, by Part 20, I was thinking that the general concept had overstayed its welcome. There's a repeated incorrect use of 'it's' that kept distracting me. It does have a wicked sense of tension throughout, though. Weirdly enough, the whole thing made me think more of a webcomic than a web serial despite the fact it's entirely prose.
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Mar 8, 2018 13:49
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Worm's fanart community is really something else, holy poo poo. 
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Mar 8, 2018 16:14
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, plus I just really have trouble buying her as an outcast. Maybe it's as you say, and Wildbow is writing her too much like an adult (spoiler: writing child characters is really hard), but the way she talks and acts comes off to me like a pretty decently socially aware person who's being goofy and purposely eccentric for fun, not as someone who genuinely doesn't know how to function with other people. And I think anyone who simultaneously has an even basic grasp of social skills and does cool Geek Stuff wouldn't have too much trouble finding a group of other kids they identify with in school. Nah, she definitely does not act in a way that is just "cute/eccentric," unless you include the opinions of awkward/nerdy 13 year olds. There's this sense of insecurity and desperation that makes her behavior distinct from that of someone who is just acting that way because they find it fun. It reminds me of a more manic version of the way I sometimes chatted online with people as a teenager.
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Mar 10, 2018 01:00
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Also add in that she has spent plenty of time also being a superhero, so it isn't likely that she got to spend a lot of time being a kid and making friends. We also know that she is very smart, and that combined with all the poo poo she can do as a tinker is another thing that distances her from her peers.
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Mar 10, 2018 01:26
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Ytlaya posted:Nah, she definitely does not act in a way that is just "cute/eccentric," unless you include the opinions of awkward/nerdy 13 year olds. There's this sense of insecurity and desperation that makes her behavior distinct from that of someone who is just acting that way because they find it fun. It reminds me of a more manic version of the way I sometimes chatted online with people as a teenager. Hmm, I could buy that; I hadn't been reading her interactions with that close of an eye, but I could buy a lot of her behavior being far more performative than I'd initially read it as. That whole bit with defacing her homework using quantum ink to prevent everyone from noticing that she was also filling it out until the reveal is probably the most obvious example, but I could see her trying to tune a lot of her behavior to entertain/engage the people around her.
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Mar 10, 2018 03:22
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Ward 5.5 holy poo poo Kenzie is basically The Cable Guy. holy loving poo poo Undersiders.
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Mar 10, 2018 15:33
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Ward: So I feel silly for not thinking of this earlier, but you know how Rain hasn't mentioned mama mathers to anyone on team therapy? That might be a really, really useful thing for them to know if, for example, they had an incredibly powerful surveillance tinker and reason to stake out the fallen compound.
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Mar 10, 2018 16:00
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poo poo is about to get extremely real. I can't fuckin wait to see how Undersiders against the Fallen works out, probably very poorly for the latter.
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Mar 10, 2018 16:04
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I'm only a third of the way in but I can't wait to finish before I say that all the villain names we've seen have been incredible Sidepiece
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Mar 10, 2018 18:41
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The Shortest Path posted:poo poo is about to get extremely real. I can't fuckin wait to see how Undersiders against the Fallen works out, probably very poorly for the latter. I'm less sure about that because they're down half their members, including arguably the most powerful ones and the one with the best grasp on yoloing crazy plans super hype that the heartbroken are still with imp tho
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Mar 10, 2018 18:57
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:I'm less sure about that because they're down half their members, including arguably the most powerful ones and the one with the best grasp on yoloing crazy plans Imp alone could completely dismantle their entire command and control structure in under a week, even without Taylor and Alec the Undersiders eat groups like the Fallen for breakfast. Especially with another couple dozen capes working alongside them. I just hope Tattletale is lying about the loving over Rain part.
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Mar 10, 2018 19:49
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The Shortest Path posted:I just hope Tattletale is lying about the loving over Rain part. Lying or not, she knows Team Therapy is watching and hasn't said anything about it to the others. At the very least, she's giving them advance warning.
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Mar 10, 2018 20:55
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The Shortest Path posted:Imp alone could completely dismantle their entire command and control structure in under a week, even without Taylor and Alec the Undersiders eat groups like the Fallen for breakfast. Especially with another couple dozen capes working alongside them. I just hope Tattletale is lying about the loving over Rain part. We don't know exactly what powers the Fallen have, some of them (like Mama Mathers) might counter Imp pretty effectively. Hell, I'm willing to bet that Tattletale don't know for sure either, because she can't really risk scanning the group, because of Mama Mathers.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:23
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:I'm only a third of the way in but I can't wait to finish before I say that all the villain names we've seen have been incredible This is my favourite name since Scrub.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:45
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Moose continues to be the best. I love Moose so much.
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Mar 10, 2018 22:53
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So two former "teammates" of Kenzi's on AG who show up, based on bad info, after someone fails to hack the Wards computers. Moose is loving great, Chris is loving great, Tattletale is great (looks directly as Kenzi's camera drone, explains exactly what is happening without mentioning the camera drone) but the whole of the Undersiders showing up to this gives me a bad feeling.
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Mar 11, 2018 02:32
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My first reaction to seeing all the Undersiders show up was basically 'so how many of them are gonna die?' In my opinion it's either that or setting them up as direct antagonists alongside Lisa. And while the latter sounds fun I don't feel like it'll necessarily A: make much sense for them to give a poo poo about the team at all, and B: I'm not sure Wildbow would want to rest so much of the plot on the same core group of characters as Worm, especially with Lisa and Amy already doing that job more than well enough. E: I mean I really am biased in favor of them, more so the others than Tattletale herself, so I hope they make it out fine, but I'm just having a hard time imagining a scenario where they pop in for the big opening climax of the series and then just nicely head off to do their own thing again afterwards.
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Mar 11, 2018 03:28
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Lone Goat posted:This is my favourite name since Scrub. I like that she's a girl in a very small shirt but then also she literally throws ribs at you
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Mar 11, 2018 05:29
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I can't shake the feeling that Victoria is going to kill Lisa or get her killed.
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Mar 11, 2018 09:45
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Ward is really picking up. Was honestly a bit boring there for a few chapters. So what exactly is sidepiece’s power? What do the ribs do? So tattletale is using vickys group to put pressure on Prancer so that she can eventually fold his organisation into hers. I believe Team therapy will get a consolation price when they provoke conflict between prancer and his brutesquad and take down beast of burden. After the fallen have been dealt with of course!
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Mar 11, 2018 10:04
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Sidepice's body appears to be explosive, or at least it's explosive when she pulls pieces off and throws them. Probably has some sort of regeneration to go with that.
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Mar 11, 2018 10:06
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NecroMonster posted:Sidepice's body appears to be explosive, or at least it's explosive when she pulls pieces off and throws them. Probably has some sort of regeneration to go with that. Worlds shittiest power unless it comes with regeneration.
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Mar 11, 2018 11:03
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