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GreyjoyBastard posted:anaxares is not dead The Tyrant was always the main character unrelated, from the latest chapter; quote:And so we’re at the last chapter of this book before the epilogue. There’ll be a formal announcement later on, but as a heads up this time instead of the usual month-long break between books I’ll be taking two months – in part because the last book will be as long as this one, in part because I need to begin drafts from my next project after the Guide is finished.
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Nov 1, 2019 06:06
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wait is prac guide actually over and you guys are spoiling the ending or is this just some silly poo poo? if its actually over i might actually be into starting it
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Nov 1, 2019 06:20
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A big flaming stink posted:wait is prac guide actually over and you guys are spoiling the ending or is this just some silly poo poo? 2 Month break until the last book starts basically. Which means this time next year, the story will be complete.
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Nov 1, 2019 06:24
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A big flaming stink posted:wait is prac guide actually over and you guys are spoiling the ending or is this just some silly poo poo? No, there was a major plot beat that resulted in the actual, true protagonist winning, and now there’s another book about Catherine loving around for some reason.
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Nov 1, 2019 06:27
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he didn't win its a stalemate
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Nov 1, 2019 06:38
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violent sex idiot posted:he didn't win its a stalemate which is a win for below, it's rendered completely impotent an angelic choir, that's better than calling it because the number of choirs is fixed, so if it had "died" then another choir would have been born in its place now, it's alive, but trapped in a life or death struggle with a mortal that is it's equal
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Nov 1, 2019 06:46
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GreyjoyBastard posted:anaxares is not dead That is not dead which can forever filibuster.
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Nov 1, 2019 17:43
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tithin posted:which is a win for below, it's rendered completely impotent an angelic choir, that's better than calling it because the number of choirs is fixed, so if it had "died" then another choir would have been born in its place anaraxes wants whats good for bellephron and doesnt care for below at all im sure. so its not a win for him
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Nov 1, 2019 19:11
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Wittgen posted:People think Taylor is going to show up in Ward? Dear God why would they think that? Why would they want that? Until recently, a large part of the commenting fanbase seemed to be of the opinion that, unlike Taylor (who was a hero who did pretty much nothing bad in their minds), Victoria is a bad person who is mean to her sister who she needs to forgive. Wildbow finally managed to get them to stop thinking the latter, but they've still internalized the idea that Victoria is some kind of lady-Chad or something, and thus worse than people like Taylor or Amy who they perceive as "nerds" (and thus good). Or at least that is my best interpretation of their perspective. Anias posted:Because if you really liked worm and the magic of wildbow has worn off but you are still reading hoping for redemption then Taylor must be in here somewhere. I still enjoy Ward and think it's better than the vast majority of web novels/serials, including Wandering Inn. The flaws people mention about it are definitely true, but the characters in his stuff are way better than the ones in most of these other stories and I find more than a handful of them fairly compelling and interesting. Wildbow is pretty good at writing characters, even if his broader plotting has issues.
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Nov 1, 2019 20:06
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One of the things I find really peculiar about Ward is that it doesn't feel like the story WB wanted to write- like, it's set in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of Worm's ending, but it does almost nothing to leverage that setting unless WB needs a convenient lever to get the protagonists somewhere. (Probably the weirdest one to me was the reveal that Accord's brilliant plan to survive the apocalypse was to buy all of their food from the planet of crazy extremists who hate them.) If he wanted to tell a story in the modern world it could've easily been set before or parallel to the events of Worm, or if he really wanted to keep the characters from Worm he could've just teleported them to Earth Dingo or whatever, a parallel earth just like Bet except it didn't get apocalypsed. Likewise with the framing, "Victoria and her dumbass friends turn a therapy group into a C-tier paramilitary cape team" is a perfectly fine setup for a story, but it gives them essentially no reason to get involved in a lot of the story's escalating hijinks, much less be central to those events, which in turn leaves the twists WB pulls to get them involved feeling a lot more contrived than they had to. So yeah, I don't know-it just seems like at the end of the day, a lot of the problems people point to with Ward were easily avoidable with a little planning and thought. Heck, when the story started I thought it was going to involve Victoria becoming a sort of parahuman social worker and fight with an uncaring bureaucracy to get help for the most vulnerable parts of the superhero population. That or a million other ideas would've allowed for the exact same character arcs and themes that people seem to really enjoy without any of the contrivances.
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Nov 1, 2019 20:21
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Ytlaya posted:I still enjoy Ward and think it's better than the vast majority of web novels/serials, including Wandering Inn. The flaws people mention about it are definitely true, but the characters in his stuff are way better than the ones in most of these other stories and I find more than a handful of them fairly compelling and interesting. Wildbow is pretty good at writing characters, even if his broader plotting has issues. Wow, that is like the total opposite of what I believe. Ward is the only web novel I put down in disgust, as it was repetitive and painfully poorly written.
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Nov 2, 2019 00:46
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violent sex idiot posted:anaraxes wants whats good for bellephron and doesnt care for below at all im sure. so its not a win for him Which is why it was a win for the main character, the tyrant
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Nov 2, 2019 00:47
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Peachfart posted:Wow, that is like the total opposite of what I believe. Ward is the only web novel I put down in disgust, as it was repetitive and painfully poorly written.
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Nov 2, 2019 00:59
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Peachfart posted:Wow, that is like the total opposite of what I believe. Ward is the only web novel I put down in disgust, as it was repetitive and painfully poorly written.
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Nov 2, 2019 03:21
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blastron posted:The writing’s solid, moreso than I was expecting from a random web serial, and I really like the character interactions. I especially like how the act of thinking about things is being handled. Quick reactions to things are done inline as italicized words interjected into sentences. Longer thoughts are done in descriptive paragraphs, but the author is careful to do reasonable amounts of thinking between beats. (Unlike, say, PGtE, where Catherine plays an entire game of 5D chess in her head between sentences.) I found the italics thing annoying to the point of unreadable and I couldn't make it through the first chapter
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Nov 2, 2019 03:34
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Peachfart posted:Wow, that is like the total opposite of what I believe. Ward is the only web novel I put down in disgust, as it was repetitive and painfully poorly written. Not the only one but yeah. I slogged through it for a while, had a vacation without internet for a couple weeks, and decided I didn't want to pick it up again. I'm not going to call Wandering Inn great or anything, but at least it's enjoyable. Lone Goat posted:I found the italics thing annoying to the point of unreadable and I couldn't make it through the first chapter Me too.
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Nov 2, 2019 03:55
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Ytlaya posted:Until recently, a large part of the commenting fanbase seemed to be of the opinion that, unlike Taylor (who was a hero who did pretty much nothing bad in their minds), Victoria is a bad person who is mean to her sister who she needs to forgive. Wildbow finally managed to get them to stop thinking the latter, but they've still internalized the idea that Victoria is some kind of lady-Chad or something, and thus worse than people like Taylor or Amy who they perceive as "nerds" (and thus good). I've seen more than one person complaining about how Wildbow "retconned" Amy into being a bad person in Ward so I think they still don't get it.
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Nov 2, 2019 04:03
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Lone Goat posted:I found the italics thing annoying to the point of unreadable and I couldn't make it through the first chapter
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Nov 2, 2019 04:05
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Plorkyeran posted:I've seen more than one person complaining about how Wildbow "retconned" Amy into being a bad person in Ward so I think they still don't get it. What's truly amazing is that you could see Wildbow getting visibly frustrated in the actual body text when the Amy thing was going on- there was a string of chapters where basically every week she would do something bad, fans would go "Amy did nothing wrong," she'd do something even worse the next week, and so forth. What I actually found surprising was the way the prose feels like it regressed- Pact and Twig each showed pretty dramatic improvements in basic writing skills (although they were both still rife with Wildbowisms), but if you told me that Ward was written at the same time as Worm I wouldn't have trouble believing it. Like, look at this gem from last week, and ask yourself- is this Victoria in post-coital bliss, or a robot desperately trying to convince you that it knows how to human? quote:Parts of my body ached in a bruised sort of way, but it wasn’t a bad ache. Credit for that. My heart and body core and my lower belly didn’t feel so cold as they might have, earlier. Human contact did nourish. We needed it as a species, and I was a member of the species. I would have been lying if I said I didn’t feel nourished.
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Nov 2, 2019 04:13
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Omi no Kami posted:What I actually found surprising was the way the prose feels like it regressed- Pact and Twig each showed pretty dramatic improvements in basic writing skills (although they were both still rife with Wildbowisms), but if you told me that Ward was written at the same time as Worm I wouldn't have trouble believing it. Like, look at this gem from last week, and ask yourself- is this Victoria in post-coital bliss, or a robot desperately trying to convince you that it knows how to human? Definitely the latter. That quote has to be from a robot. ...Maybe it is? Did WB replace himself with a storybot?
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Nov 2, 2019 04:56
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LLSix posted:Definitely the latter. That quote has to be from a robot. Somebody fed Worm through a neural network and uploaded a thing where you can have it write you new Worm stories at https://iforcedabot.com/scenes-that-never-happened-in-the-the-web-serial-worm#269 , and it's scarily good at imitating Wildbow's odder writing habits. quote:I didn’t say that last part.
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Nov 2, 2019 05:21
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Omi no Kami posted:Somebody fed Worm through a neural network and uploaded a thing where you can have it write you new Worm stories at https://iforcedabot.com/scenes-that-never-happened-in-the-the-web-serial-worm#269 , and it's scarily good at imitating Wildbow's odder writing habits. Oh God, I'm getting flashbacks of trying to push past this garbage.
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Nov 2, 2019 08:37
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violent sex idiot posted:he didn't win its a stalemate It was established beforehand that according to the Will Of The People enough draws count as a win. EDIT: Book 3 interlude - quote:It had been determined by the Will Of The People that enough draws counted as a victory, and therefore proof of the superiority of the Republic in all things. SITB fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Nov 2, 2019 |
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Nov 2, 2019 09:02
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TWI: rip elephants 
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Nov 3, 2019 01:51
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Omi no Kami posted:Heck, when the story started I thought it was going to involve Victoria becoming a sort of parahuman social worker and fight with an uncaring bureaucracy to get help for the most vulnerable parts of the superhero population. while I enjoy Ward at is it is pretty well, this would have been delightful
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Nov 3, 2019 08:54
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Maaaan, I picked up an arc of Ward to see if it finally went somewhere interesting and dear Lord does it seem like a mess. There are a lot of problems, but I think the most marked is that everyone talks like they're in a therapy session, all the time. In a dramatic conversation with a villain, our hero's demand is that she go to a therapy session, for gently caress's sake! Normal people - even those with issues and under stress - do not spend 90% of their time talking about feelings and boundaries. And they especially don't do it in robotic, uncomfortable dialogue you might have in a group therapy session with a bunch of strangers. I know this has been there since the start of Ward, but I was thinking since it all began in therapy it'd grow out of it. Nope. There are some interesting bits going on hearkening back to the better aspects of Worm, but getting to them can only be done via a lot of teeth-grinding irritation and boredom.
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Nov 4, 2019 03:48
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Latest Prac guide, Epilogue Not a name, Cat, you've escaped that trap, please do not adopt it 
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Nov 4, 2019 09:32
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PracGuide: So this epilogue makes it clear Malicia is super, duper hosed. She's at that point in a villain's story where they're ready to begin cackling about their victory. The likely point this will all come to a head is when she meets Amadeus. Of course, she won't be expecting Ranger. And just because Scribe was dismissed from Amadeus' service, that doesn't mean Scribe won't be doing what she can to gently caress over Malicia and support Black in secret. Catherine totally knows what Black is up to as well, and also has Grey Pilgrim getting the Army of Callow moving ASAP. Also, pretty clear the Dead King doesn't think he actually needs her, no matter what Malicia may believe. At this point, I'm wondering how the Goblin Matron is inevitably going to betray her. It'd be pretty fun if she uses the fact that she's a High Lady to press a claim as Dread Empress. With the support of all the Orc Chieftains that would be newly named Lords of Praes.
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Nov 4, 2019 09:59
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SerSpook posted:PracGuide: So this epilogue makes it clear Malicia is super, duper hosed. She's at that point in a villain's story where they're ready to begin cackling about their victory. The likely point this will all come to a head is when she meets Amadeus. Of course, she won't be expecting Ranger. And just because Scribe was dismissed from Amadeus' service, that doesn't mean Scribe won't be doing what she can to gently caress over Malicia and support Black in secret. Catherine totally knows what Black is up to as well, and also has Grey Pilgrim getting the Army of Callow moving ASAP. Also, pretty clear the Dead King doesn't think he actually needs her, no matter what Malicia may believe. Honestly wouldn't be surprised if the entire goblin thing is a scheme from the Matrons and they just killed a bunch of their own people to lend it credence. As for Catherine's Name, I figure that's just a sign Dread Empress is coming up for grabs rather than anything more personal.
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Nov 4, 2019 13:08
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TWI Patreon: Fullly-Automated Luxury Gay Undead Communism  edit: this is such a good chapter. and it's a -K chapter! A big flaming stink fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Nov 5, 2019 |
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Nov 5, 2019 22:27
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Reading PracGuide has become part of my routine. Two month hiatus until the next book starts is gonna be harsh.
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Nov 6, 2019 13:02
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A big flaming stink posted:TWI Patreon: Fullly-Automated Luxury Gay Undead Communism Other than him the K chapters have been better recently for sure.
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Nov 7, 2019 13:38
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Cicero posted:I loving hate Trey. It's like he's a frightened rabbit whose eyes are constantly bulging out at each new fantasy world thing he sees. No matter what the current topic is, it sounds like he's always a half step away from pissing his pants. lollin at this tuff guy on the internet just about every person he's met could snuff him out in the blink of an eye, of course he's terrified
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Nov 7, 2019 15:02
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Character can have perfectly rational, reasonable reactions that are true to their character and be obnoxious to read.
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Nov 7, 2019 15:48
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7c Nickel posted:Reading PracGuide has become part of my routine. Two month hiatus until the next book starts is gonna be harsh. pracguide is on hiatus, Unsounded is coming up on one 
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Nov 7, 2019 22:49
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Plorkyeran posted:I've seen more than one person complaining about how Wildbow "retconned" Amy into being a bad person in Ward so I think they still don't get it. I don't really see what's so hard to get about "Amy is a self-centered rapist piece of poo poo", especially since the fan theory of "Amy was affected by Victoria's aura" was specifically nixed in-story.
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Nov 8, 2019 08:04
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AGGGGH BEES posted:I don't really see what's so hard to get about "Amy is a self-centered rapist piece of poo poo", especially since the fan theory of "Amy was affected by Victoria's aura" was specifically nixed in-story. I've read all of one or two chapters of Ward, but isn't it explicitly mentioned that after being around Victoria for so long, Amy was immune to the aura? Like I have very specific memory of that being said in story at one point. e: to be clear, the above was in Worm. tithin fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Nov 8, 2019 |
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Nov 8, 2019 09:38
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I don't remember that in Worm but the aura thing came up just in the past few chapters.
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Nov 8, 2019 11:46
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tithin posted:I've read all of one or two chapters of Ward, but isn't it explicitly mentioned that after being around Victoria for so long, Amy was immune to the aura? Like I have very specific memory of that being said in story at one point. There's a fanon theory that she wasn't immune to it; she just got so used to it that she stopped noticing it and so thought she was. There's nothing in the text to support this and Ward has explicitly rejected it.
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Nov 8, 2019 19:56
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Iirc Victoria's aura wasn't even explicitly mentioned in the text of Worm anyway, just inferred. It's been a hella long time since I read it though so I might have missed something and forgotten about it?
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Nov 8, 2019 20:50
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