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Got up to date with practical guide. Had a lot of fun reading it, but definitely liked the first two books the best; I could read gritty low fantasy daddy/daughter conquest power hour forever, but as the stakes got raised and the story added more and more DBZ-esque linear power escalations via magical and Name contrivances, I found my interest lowering.
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May 4, 2018 23:36
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Omi no Kami posted:Got up to date with practical guide. Had a lot of fun reading it, but definitely liked the first two books the best; I could read gritty low fantasy daddy/daughter conquest power hour forever, but as the stakes got raised and the story added more and more DBZ-esque linear power escalations via magical and Name contrivances, I found my interest lowering. Am I in the minority in liking it when stories continually raise the stakes and do power escalations, or do other people like me just not speak up?
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May 4, 2018 23:46
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Vateke posted:Am I in the minority in liking it when stories continually raise the stakes and do power escalations, or do other people like me just not speak up? I don't mind it but in Practical Guide I did not like Mantle replacing her Name just because it's not as fun a power to see figured out over time as Aspects and transitional Names and the like.
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May 4, 2018 23:53
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Vateke posted:Am I in the minority in liking it when stories continually raise the stakes and do power escalations, or do other people like me just not speak up? I think it can work, but it has to both suit the work and have a reader who enjoys it. DBZ's plot is goofy and stupid but I enjoy it, because it's explicitly written around "Big, dumb, affable guy gets stronger to fight stronger enemies". Likewise sports underdog stories are explicitly designed around getting awesome and overcoming bigger and bigger odds, so they work. With something like Practical Guide though, that's not the story that I personally wanted to read; it was entertaining as heck, but if I wrote my own personal practical guide fanfic it would focus on the politics and on Catherine's coming of age story as told by her rise from gladiator kid to military officer to politician, and the way those transitions color and change her opinion of the very world view and ideals that motivated her to get there. There's room for fights there, and I thought the early legion battles were fantastic, but even though I can see and appreciate the Calamities/Woe parallels and stuff related to dealing with the universe's story fixation, I don't really care that she's become a one-woman wrecking crew who can jump into a city full of demons and singlehandedly fight her way through literal hell to beat up the jerk who busted the place up. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not the kind of story the first book had me anticipating.
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May 5, 2018 00:01
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Omi no Kami posted:I think it can work, but it has to both suit the work and have a reader who enjoys it. DBZ's plot is goofy and stupid but I enjoy it, because it's explicitly written around "Big, dumb, affable guy gets stronger to fight stronger enemies". Likewise sports underdog stories are explicitly designed around getting awesome and overcoming bigger and bigger odds, so they work. It's totally the story that I want to read, though. It's becoming more clear that it's not really good vs evil, it's law vs chaos, Shin Megami Tensei style, and much like SMT, the only sane thing to do is to go militant atheist, kill god, take their place, and remake the universe into a better place.
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May 5, 2018 00:29
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NinjaDebugger posted:It's totally the story that I want to read, though. It's becoming more clear that it's not really good vs evil, it's law vs chaos, Shin Megami Tensei style, and much like SMT, the only sane thing to do is to go militant atheist, kill god, take their place, and remake the universe into a better place. Hmm I dunno, given how the universe is implied to work it seems like the trick is to buy into the system and go full military theist/supervillain, but take your cues from somebody not involved in your story but capable of reading between the lines, a-la black or the bard. And yeah, I think on balance the story is pretty swell, it's just not what I personally was hoping it'd turn into. 
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May 5, 2018 01:29
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Jade Mage posted:I don't mind it but in Practical Guide I did not like Mantle replacing her Name just because it's not as fun a power to see figured out over time as Aspects and transitional Names and the like.
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May 5, 2018 09:03
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Cicero posted:I thought the general consensus was that Cat has transitioned to a new Name, which will probably be revealed at a pivotal moment. That's not how I read it, but I hope it is. Considering she can still do Fall but it's not capitalized and is just part of her Mantle and as easy as pie
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May 5, 2018 15:34
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Surely if she does have a new Name, it's Black Queen, right? I feel like, in universe, if you have a Name you can't just walk around with everyone calling you by some other title. In my mind the only way that isn't her Name is if she doesn't have one anymore. Edit: although I did just think of Carrion Lord as a counter-example, so maybe I'm wrong about that. Silynt fucked around with this message at 16:33 on May 5, 2018 |
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May 5, 2018 16:30
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Silynt posted:Surely if she does have a new Name, it's Black Queen, right? I feel like, in universe, if you have a Name you can't just walk around with everyone calling you by some other title. In my mind the only way that isn't her Name is if she doesn't have one anymore. Yeah all the Calamities have titles like that. Lady of the Lake, that thing about red skies Warlock has
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May 5, 2018 16:38
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Silynt posted:Surely if she does have a new Name, it's Black Queen, right? I feel like, in universe, if you have a Name you can't just walk around with everyone calling you by some other title. In my mind the only way that isn't her Name is if she doesn't have one anymore. I was under the impression that she was GOING to become 'Black Queen' but Black's sabotage broke the name from being a true one, but it was close enough that people think it's what she has. I feel like she's still in some sort of weird transition and is mostly running on Fae juice now.
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May 5, 2018 16:39
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Wolpertinger posted:I was under the impression that she was GOING to become 'Black Queen' but Black's sabotage broke the name from being a true one, but it was close enough that people think it's what she has. I feel like she's still in some sort of weird transition and is mostly running on Fae juice now. That's my impression too. Since she was forced to offer up her body and soul to Arcadia she couldn't transition in to the Name they expected
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May 5, 2018 16:46
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Wolpertinger posted:I was under the impression that she was GOING to become 'Black Queen' but Black's sabotage broke the name from being a true one, but it was close enough that people think it's what she has. I feel like she's still in some sort of weird transition and is mostly running on Fae juice now. Oh, I totally agree. My point was supposed to be that I think she doesn't have a Name at the moment, not that I think it is Black Queen. But I think that if there is a Name at the moment, that's probably it, not some unknown to be revealed.
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May 5, 2018 17:07
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Can she even take a Name anymore? I was super-duper unclear on how the whole Mantle thing worked, and my impression is that she's now basically just a soul attached to an frost elf golem that looks and sounds surprisingly human, which seems like a bit of a dealbreaker.
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May 5, 2018 21:47
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Whatever it is I hope it hurries the gently caress up because this transition has been drawn out far too long
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May 5, 2018 22:04
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Wolpertinger posted:I was under the impression that she was GOING to become 'Black Queen' but Black's sabotage broke the name from being a true one, but it was close enough that people think it's what she has. I feel like she's still in some sort of weird transition and is mostly running on Fae juice now. Yeah this is the case. Right now, Cat's name is Squire still and maybe not even that. The most recent mention of the Name had it hanging by a thread though, and it was absolutely supposed to Transition after Liesse. An interesting way of looking at the current Woe, is that "villain" might be a bad characterization because Thief was a Hero until she joined them, all the other Names in the group are new or of a more neutral alignment, and Catherine may not even have a Name right now and therefore technically not even be a villain. Which has all kinds of things to say about the Tenth Crusade, especially considering Amadis' stated and obvious goals. Callow throwing out foreign invaders is literally the story of Callow. Omi no Kami posted:Can she even take a Name anymore? I was super-duper unclear on how the whole Mantle thing worked, and my impression is that she's now basically just a soul attached to an frost elf golem that looks and sounds surprisingly human, which seems like a bit of a dealbreaker. She totally can because she was going to be taking on a new Name, even with the Mantle, after Liesse. Until that went tits up.
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May 6, 2018 04:07
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SerSpook posted:She totally can because she was going to be taking on a new Name, even with the Mantle, after Liesse. Until that went tits up. Huh, I totally misread that then... my takeaway from the Liesse arc was that it wasn't the way the empress's absurdly screwed-up plan ticked her off so much as the way her mantle usurped/chewed up her Squire name that made it literally impossible for her to transition.
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May 6, 2018 09:31
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Omi no Kami posted:Huh, I totally misread that then... my takeaway from the Liesse arc was that it wasn't the way the empress's absurdly screwed-up plan ticked her off so much as the way her mantle usurped/chewed up her Squire name that made it literally impossible for her to transition. Nah it wasn't that either. She was going along with the plan, remember? She wasn't pleased, and was basically going to act as an independent entity in Callow in an agreement with the Dread Empress. With a magical superweapon to hang over everyone's head. That was going to be the Transition, but Black messed that up when he destroyed the weapon, fundamentally changing the story and the narrative. Which is cool and good, because he was completely right and that entire end sequence otherwise would have just been Evil being Evil and becoming less practical and more stupid. The Winter power stuff isn't so much that she can't get a Name, but that her Aspects may not be able to take and shape her power (meaning she gets no Aspects). But then again, Squire was never meant to be a powerful Name, so who knows whether a more powerful Name can actually shape that power into Aspects? Seems a possible workaround to the negatives of Winter's power. I don't know if that'll ever be something done though, Catherine can get wins in story but she always ends up paying badly for them, and the Winter situation is just a continuation of that theme. She's trying to break free from that though, so it might happen? Or that's my take on it. I just read most of the previous book over a week or so to get caught back up. edit: also she's still human, if not biologically, but as she uses Winter more often she becomes more defined by the mindset she's using Winter in, making her less and less human and less likely to get a Name
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May 6, 2018 09:44
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New PracGuide (Allegro): Sounds like the Absence demon took its toll (heroes down to twelve).
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May 7, 2018 11:39
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Cicero posted:New PracGuide (Allegro): Sounds like the Absence demon took its toll (heroes down to twelve). isnt that just one of the two/now split army camps?
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May 7, 2018 15:52
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The latest TGAB chapter is my favorite in the past several books. The author really did a 180 with their writing after that break, goddamn.
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May 7, 2018 21:42
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The Shortest Path posted:The latest TGAB chapter is my favorite in the past several books. The author really did a 180 with their writing after that break, goddamn. hopefully it stays as just one story and not like, 7.
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May 7, 2018 21:47
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Lone Goat posted:hopefully it stays as just one story and not like, 7. I generally like the 3-4 story arcs. Weaving narratives together is and having characters meet in the midst of it is fun. Last arc was definitely too much, though.
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May 7, 2018 23:15
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Wandering Inn Patreon chapter 4.33 That better be a loving fake out.
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May 8, 2018 12:09
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I don't like that Pirateaba is going full GRRM so I really hope you're right.
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May 8, 2018 16:20
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Ward 6.8 Wow, a lot to unpack here. Probably gonna have to do a reread when I'm not distracted by waiting for PoE2 to unlock, but for now I'm mostly limiting myself to thinking about that ending. My theory:The Fallen have hooked up with the Fundamentalist-world Death Cult. That would explain why Tattletale has been working to take the Fallen down (and why she's convinced they'll be at war with Fundie-world within a week): they're planning a huge attack, and all she can do about it is take their local collaborators off the board. I could definitely be wrong, it could be something crazier (the Fallen figured out how to get the actual Endbringers on their side?), but that seems to make the most sense to me.
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May 8, 2018 17:42
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The Shortest Path posted:I don't like that Pirateaba is going full GRRM so I really hope you're right. 4.33 woops i wrote too many characters how do i remedy this 1.04/5c ok this makes up for the previous two C chapters being duds
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May 8, 2018 18:44
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Yeah the finale to the Clown chapters was really fuckin good and made the previous bits of leadup pay off well.
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May 8, 2018 19:08
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Random rear end in a top hat posted:Ward 6.8 I just figured it was a bunch of parahuman-assisted mass shootings but I was probably thinking too small. 
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May 8, 2018 19:41
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Random rear end in a top hat posted:Ward 6.8 I've been thinking that for a while, I posted a bit back about how there are collaborating bits of evidence from earlier chapters. Really enjoyed the chapter, as you said a lot to unpack for all the people involved. edit: I have a bad habit of actually reading comments on the reddit thread post, I'm not sure why. Saw an actual idea that had some sense behind it: Tattletale seems to be more willing than expected to pivot away from getting Cradle as her sort of "giant hammer" card to throw at these problems she has been trying to deal with, and the reason may be that she sees a way to leverage the therapy group at some of these problems. The way she completely stops talking and both sides come to a point she immediately agrees to feels like she expected that outcome from the start. The group's problem in general is reining in lethality not a lack of power. For example they'd be in a pretty good spot against the machine army, with Kenzie able to spot ambushes and people like Ashley/Sveta not having to worry about harming people with their power. Even if she needs to dump the power of the cluster to Rain, him being more predictable/stable than Cradle and willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good (as she might be able to get him to see it) is a pretty good fallback plan. ZypherIM fucked around with this message at 01:32 on May 9, 2018 |
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May 9, 2018 00:09
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Ward 6.8 The bit about cluster members getting completely OP when you focus all the power into them makes sense. Presumably Goddess is also completely broken because her cluster had an unusually large amount of people, a 6 parahuman cluster seems pretty big when we've mostly seen duos, trios, and the occasional quartet. Just knowing that it's possible to drain and focus a cluster like that might factor into whatever March is researching. I was under the impression Taylor-as-Khepri tried to control Goddess and failed so put her down, I didn't realize Taylor had dropped her on a different Earth than she'd started in.
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May 9, 2018 02:27
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PetraCore posted:I was under the impression Taylor-as-Khepri tried to control Goddess and failed so put her down, I didn't realize Taylor had dropped her on a different Earth than she'd started in. She resisted for a second, but Taylor got around the trump power by roping in Canary and forcing Goddess to deal with two different mind control threats at once. Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 03:28 on May 9, 2018 |
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May 9, 2018 03:14
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New Practical Guide (Ballon): Great chapter, very exciting. First time we've gotten to see the full extent of Winter Queen Cat's power, and it's enough to hang with the heavy hitters on the other team so Good News! Well, she arguably lost to Saint of Swords, but fighting 1 on 1 against a top tier threat in their own camp is pretty much a worst case scenario for Cat, so I'll give her a pass. Interesting how it ended, too - I wonder why she started to become human at the end. It has only been 3 chapters, but I already want another Crusaders interlude to see their reaction to this opening salvo from team Callow. Edit: Reading through the chapter again, I was really impressed by how the internal monologue changes once she draws deeply in Winter - the heroes become "human" or "it", the Saint becomes "hound". The level of arrogance really reaches the heights that we see in the other powerful Fae. A good job by the author of "showing not telling" regarding her diminishing humanity. Silynt fucked around with this message at 21:15 on May 9, 2018 |
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May 9, 2018 13:21
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Skippy McPants posted:She resisted for a second, but Taylor got around the trump power by roping in Canary and forcing Goddess to deal with two different mind control threats at once.
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May 10, 2018 00:23
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So I'm getting kinda close to caught up with Ward, and Cradle's power actually bugs me because it seems a bit too strong. Like, a giant mech-ish thing so strong that it can tank Victoria's super strength (plus Vista and Capricorn - two very strong capes in their own right - on the side) is frankly kind of ridiculous, and that's even before you add the weird invisible cables of explosive force to the equation. It seems like Victoria should be able to flat-out rip through the hands/arms, rather than just sorta denting them with a full-force hit (as was described). Everything we've seen previously has indicated that pretty much anything will yield to her forcefield (stuff like her effortlessly crumpling up cars or smashing rock). From the description, he sounds stronger than even a Dragon mech once you take into account those cables. I feel like either him having the big arms OR having a regular-sized suit with the invisible cables would have worked, but a giant suit with giant cables is just too much. When you think about it, most of the other ridiculously strong parahumans we've encountered have been Cauldron capes, particularly early Cauldron capes that benefited from the "high risk high reward" early formula. Which makes sense, given they're receiving their powers in a way unintended by the the space-worms. A cape as strong as Cradle who isn't a Cauldron cape is pretty unusual, though I doubt there's any meaning to that other than wildbow arbitrarily making this dude ridiculous strong compared with all his cluster-mates. Something else I wondered about during this segment was how exactly a fight between two combat thinkers would work. Like, this Operator Red guy apparently knows the optimal place to put his bladed weapons. How would a fight between two people who both have "automatically know the best place to move things" skills work? I imagine it would be the sort of thing where it would depend upon the starting conditions of the fight, after which things would just play out until one side or the other inevitable ran out of options their power could provide them. I'm also curious just how "robust" that sort of power is. Like, can Operator Red think "I wanna use these knives to draw a replica of the Mona Lisa" and then start dipping them in paint and doing so? Or "I want to use these knives to solve this mathematical problem" and then he carves the solution onto a wall. Like, it can clearly give him somewhat abstract information like "where to use the knives to optimally torture someone," which is a kind of indirect thing that isn't just "I want to stab this location" or whatever. Sort of like Contessa has to ask her power questions, it seems like you'd also have to define to goal with Operator Red's power, and I wonder how abstract that goal can be.
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May 10, 2018 01:22
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I think it has to do with whatever aspects of the cluster's mover power and cutting/breaking power he has. If you're able to diffuse blows or have "immovable object" type properties it become a lot harder to destroy with just normal brute force physics, which is what Victoria has (compare to Rain or Ashley, whose power alters the way things work to achieve their effects). Add in the whole "tinker preparing for a year+ with multiple collaborations" aspect and it didn't feel too crazy to me, they could have probably straight killed him several ways if that was their aim. Given how pre-cogs have been shown to basically cancel each other out, I'd guess each combat thinker would be short-circuiting the other's power whenever they're thinking about acting, so sort of moving blind-spots.
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May 10, 2018 01:36
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This is purely head canon, but in worm I always thought that Jack's actual shard being the broadcast one, and his power technically being to broadcast knives across long distances was kind of bizarre. As a result, I really like the idea that powers in worm work like karma in pact, where the godlike alien beings that determine whether or not what you're trying to do is allowed within the rules of how your power works are actually kind of stupid, and can be easily fooled if you figure out what kind of BS they respond to. Like, you remember how Kenzie couldn't really make a teleportation platform in a timely fashion because that wasn't her specialty? I'll bet it would've gone a lot faster if she'd tried to make a teleportation camera. (And then she can make a murder camera, and a precognitive camera, and just keep going until she ends up with a path to victory camera.)
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May 10, 2018 02:07
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Omi no Kami posted:This is purely head canon, but in worm I always thought that Jack's actual shard being the broadcast one, and his power technically being to broadcast knives across long distances was kind of bizarre. As a result, I really like the idea that powers in worm work like karma in pact, where the godlike alien beings that determine whether or not what you're trying to do is allowed within the rules of how your power works are actually kind of stupid, and can be easily fooled if you figure out what kind of BS they respond to. Like, you remember how Kenzie couldn't really make a teleportation platform in a timely fashion because that wasn't her specialty? I'll bet it would've gone a lot faster if she'd tried to make a teleportation camera. (And then she can make a murder camera, and a precognitive camera, and just keep going until she ends up with a path to victory camera.) Maybe if Taylor had just stoked her own ego enough and decided that humans really were lowly small-brained creatures like bugs, she wouldn't even have needed Panacea to become Khepri?
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May 10, 2018 02:35
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21 Muns posted:Maybe if Taylor had just stoked her own ego enough and decided that humans really were lowly small-brained creatures like bugs, she wouldn't even have needed Panacea to become Khepri? Scion: *dies*
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May 10, 2018 07:32
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Speaking of shards in worm/ward, I'm genuinely curious if their long-term ramifications are on the docket to be addressed. I'm enjoying Ward's emphasis on street-level stuff, and I don't think I'd enjoy another escalation hike up to saving the world, but regardless of what anyone does right now, the shards seem like a big loving problem-I believe something in Worm mentioned that the parahumans were supposed to grow in number as the cycle continued until at the end of the 300 years, 50% of all humans had a power, and that seems like a recipe for super-duper bad things. Worm pretty thoroughly established that you can't really fight a shard with your powers, but I"m wondering if part of Tattletale's endgame isn't finding a way to hack the system and use capes with weird, edge-case powers to try and pre-emptively drain a whole bunch of shards.
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May 10, 2018 07:41
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