|
I'm more than two-thirds of the way through Worm. It's really good; I like the messed-up and morally-ambiguous characters and creative uses of powers. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about Peer, though. It feels kind of generic so far. Also surprisingly lacking in likable characters; I can feel sorry for Cynn, but the main character is a lazy and cynical goon (if I'm completely honest, I might see a little too much of myself in him), the Kith are aggressively rude "noble savages," and most of the other characters seem to be backstabbing aristocrats who don't care about anything bigger than the success of their family members. Blasphemeral posted:It could happen-- but not in the US. People in the US have this weird predisposition to assume anything hand-drawn or animated is babby-poo poo. Then, when they see an example to the contrary, they rail against it. I'm not sure how well elements like Japan being essentially a Third World country due to a giant tsunami and the Japanese villains in the first arc would go over in Japan.
|
#
¿
Nov 24, 2013 03:52
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 12, 2024 02:06 |
|
|
The third chapter made the story less generic, at least. Caspar is still pretty unlikable, though. I'm still interested in Body, Face, and Pact.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2013 05:09
|
|
|
First chapter of Face is up: http://wildbow.wordpress.com/ This one actually went somewhere pretty fast. I guess what they're doing is like playing Mafia in real life? I like the main character in this one. He kind of reminds me of Grue. Zasze posted:another thing about the timeskip is that taylor seems to be really hung up on the undersiders where as she was with golem and crew for like two years and seemed to hardly be attached to them. I thought that was intentional. She became the sort of person who doesn't make friends as easily.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2013 23:56
|
|
|
TOOT BOOT posted:I really hope this one isn't a retread of Saw or the Hunger Games. There are some somewhat unusual gimmicks here. One seems to be that they do the Battle Royale stuff every night and live their normal lives during the day. I can't think of any other Battle Royale clones with that element (although there's an obvious reason for that; it makes it too easy for the "contestants" to escape). The other is the masks, which mean they can't verify each other's identities (which strikes me as inspired by the forum game Mafia). Also, each "contestant" seems to have a group of "backers" who can intervene exactly three times (much like in Fate/Zero, I suppose). From the comments of Wildbow's site, there seem to be a fair number of people who hate Battle Royale-type stories on general (moral?) principle ("They’re too contrived, too cruel and too ridiculously evil"). I'm not sure how these people got through the Slaughterhouse Nine recruitment storyline. 
Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Dec 4, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2013 05:32
|
|
|
Tollymain posted:In media res? Actually, it's "in medias res." Your error is a strangely common one, perhaps because "media" is a word in English and "medias" isn't. 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2013 00:25
|
|
|
Face 2 is up. It seems likely that the "beasts" will be killing the "sponsors" as well as each other. Also, Heart's attempt to explain her goals makes her group seem sort of like Cauldron, but even more incompetent.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2013 09:04
|
|
|
Boil is pretty good. I like how it doesn't downplay how sexist and classist the Victorian mad scientists are. (Worm had some similar themes, although they became less important over time.) There's a bit too much technobabble, though.
Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Dec 10, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2013 23:34
|
|
|
withak posted:I like Boil better than the first two story attempts. I like it better than Peer, but I'm not sure about Face. They're different kinds of stories, I suppose: Face has an essentially closed setup, while Boil is much more conceptually open-ended, maybe too much so; Bonesaw's powers were obnoxiously do-anything at times, and this is basically a world of Bonesaws, albeit ones that work on more realistic time frames.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2013 00:56
|
|
|
Neurosis posted:One of my friends put me onto Worm a couple of weeks ago and gave me an epub with all of the chapters. It started out as something light and entertaining I read at work and after spending 50 hours on planes this week I have gotten up to 12.2 and found out it is less light and YA than I thought. It is also really awesome. I find it particularly cool how a lot of powers which in a comic format you'd think of as being very meh are pushed to their limits to make the supe in question a credible threat (although to be fair I think of the setting as being a bit low-powered compared to the types of capes you run into in the major comic settings, so in those settings the powers might in fact be meh). According to my Kindle I am only 25% in so I expect this to only get better. I think the only thing I've found weak is that I haven't found Taylor particularly interesting compared to some of the other viewpoints. She's not terrible or grating and serves a purpose as the protagonist, though, so it's not horrible. Well, other than the Brian attraction. That is odious. I don't see why Taylor's feelings toward Brian are particularly odious. He's probably the least evil of the other Undersiders.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2013 22:18
|
|
|
Thoughts on Pact so far:
It's not exactly bad, but I'm not sure where the enthusiasm is coming from. I prefer Face and Boil. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Dec 18, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2013 03:06
|
|
|
wiegieman posted:I have a feeling that Pact is going to be a lot of rear end in a top hat Wizards doing stuff via handwave. My problems with it are that Ra already does that and I like a story about engineering your way to success better than one about magic-ing your way to success, even if it's story fueled mad science. For me, Boil has a base of relatability that Pact lacks, however shaky it may be. Worm managed to handle non-science-based abilities without resorting to handwaves, though. The only people whose powers really felt handwavey were Bonesaw and maybe Panacea, and their powers were biology based. The potential problems with Pact are more the lack of anything that particularly stands out about the characters or setting so far. Also, is it just me or does Wildbow really like the idea of conspiracies with seemingly limitless resources? It's enough to make me wonder if he's a conspiracy theorist in real life. (Of course, because he's an actually good writer, he eventually showed us where Cauldron gets their stuff from and the things they can't do.) Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Dec 18, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2013 05:51
|
|
|
Pact 2 is up. My thoughts:
I still prefer Face. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Dec 21, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2013 07:36
|
|
|
The latest chapter of Pact was actually good. The main character isn't going to be in the dark about everything and there are clear directions for the plot to go in.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2013 05:44
|
|
|
Skippy McPants posted:I've always thought of them as a slightly greasier incarnation of Pratchett's Auditors. I think Tollymain is thinking of Mayhem from the Pact 3 comments, who is perhaps the opposite of an Auditor.  There were a bunch of people, at least one of whom was a troper, who were the same about Skitter/Tattletale when Worm was running. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Dec 26, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Dec 26, 2013 01:26
|
|
|
Grundulum posted:What am I missing by not reading the comments sections? Apparently there was Worm fanfiction being posted in the Worm comments; have things degenerated so quickly with these new stories? To be clear, the creepy posters are a minority. They're just fun to make fun of.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 26, 2013 04:46
|
|
|
A bunch of proto-Worm stuff is up.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2013 06:23
|
|
|
The bit about Others being gradually killed off by "a process of elimination two thousand and six hundred years in the making" has potentially interesting implications. Zoroastrianism became popular around that time (though it's hard to fix a date for Zoroaster himself) and Pliny the Elder claims Zoroaster invented magic.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2013 22:13
|
|
|
Neurosis posted:I really loathed the Dresden Files. They were easy to read and went by fast but had absolutely no substance. I read a few on plane trips but nothing in them carried any weight. The world felt insubstantial because it felt like there were no characters to care about or even a particularly well thought out world to pit the high stakes against. Dresden Files gets better around Book 4. Jim Butcher definitely has some weaknesses with characterization, though, which are even worse in his Codex Alera books (at least Harry Dresden himself is a pretty good character). He's fond of the trick of creating a character by combining a character archetype/trope from one genre with a character archetype/trope from another genre, which sometimes works but is often disastrous. For example, Tavi, the protagonist of Codex Alera, is simultaneously the competent-man hero of a straight-faced military/spy story and the main character of a Shonen Jump manga. (In other words, he's a Mary Sue.)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2014 05:04
|
|
|
Pact 1.7 is up. It seems the person who began the "process of elimination two thousand and six hundred years in the making" was Solomon, not Zoroaster. Apparently Wildbow made a mistake; Solomon lived almost 3000 years ago.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2014 06:22
|
|
|
Wow, no wonder Grandma Rose was so messed-up. 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2014 03:54
|
|
|
Neurosis posted:Just finished Worm. Quite good. Took me about a month. Maybe felt a little overlong but that's probably just mental fatigue from reading such a large quantity of words in the one work of fiction in a relatively short space of time. I may write something more about my thoughts later but with the way it ended you have to wonder how much time Earth Bet has before all pretence of normal society breaks down it's a post apocalyptic Age of Apocalypse type wasteland, even with the abundance of resources they have now. S class threats being in such abundance. Actually, despite half the world population dying, they're in much better shape S class threat wise. The only ones who haven't died, reformed, or gone into long-term hibernation at this point are Sleeper, the Three Blasphemies, Blue Woman, and the Simurgh. That's a lot less of a problem than five Endbringers, the Slaughterhouse Nine, Sleeper, the Three Blasphemies, and the potential threat of Nilbog were. I guess you can also argue for Teacher as an S class threat, but he's clearly about to be taken down at the end of the story. On the other hand, Glaistig Uaine, Bonesaw, Nilbog, and probably Contessa are good guys now, and there's still Dragon, Foil, and Legend.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2014 02:41
|
|
|
Tollymain posted:For a given nonstandard value of good I think Bonesaw and Glaistig Uaine are genuine forces for good now. Nilbog and Contessa are probably not so trustworthy, though.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2014 04:00
|
|
|
Neurosis posted:That's still pretty significant. The class S threats we have seen have death tolls in the tens of thousands at least, it seems. Maybe not Nilbog. And class S threats are capable of emerging at any time with the right trigger - although something's apparently wrong with trigger events since Scion's death so who knows how that will go. Not to mention the hordes of capes Cauldron was making with no vetting at the end of the Scion affair. Blue Woman is the parahuman ruler of an entire parallel Earth, brought over to Bet by Khephi!Taylor to fight Scion. Speck 30.4 posted:I found another Earth with a mixture of capes, all incredibly beautiful people, all in what was obviously a global position of power. Every flag that flew in their world was the same flag, and the gauntlet emblem on that flag matched the icon on a particular woman’s costume. A blue costume, with white fur at the collar, and a heavy cape that would have done Alexandria proud. She's referred to as Blue Woman in the next chapter: Speck 30.5 posted:One of the capes who had served under the Blue Woman in that cape-ruled alternate Earth. He had a power not unlike Gavel’s.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2014 03:27
|
|
|
Neurosis posted:I thought they were just keeping it quiet and they had a different motivation. I mean, Tattletale can be vindictive, but it seems a bit far just to make someone feel poo poo. Agreed. I think they wanted to keep people from opening a portal to Earth Aleph and bothering Taylor. Cryophage posted:I think it's just that they know she's alive and safe, but that they want as few people as possible to know, so that no one comes after her for revenge or her power. Did Cauldron shards reproduce? I don't remember it being stated either way. If not, then soon there won't be any more new parahumans. On a somewhat related note, did anyone else think Satyrical was lying/wrong when he claimed that Cauldron powers don't affect your mind, only your body? Transforming into Echidna clearly seemed to affect Noelle's personality, although I suppose you could attribute that to the Simurgh or rationalize that Satyrical was only referring to Cauldron powers limited by the Balance formula. I also have trouble believing Gray Boy was really that crazy/evil before he got his powers. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Jan 25, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2014 06:47
|
|
|
Cryophage posted:Although to be fair, Flechette/Foil's "Sting" shard was from a natural trigger. That is to say, the only projectile that he thought it worth the effort to dodge. Wasn't Glaistig Uaine also a natural trigger? Not to mention Panacea and Skitter. A new Pact chapter is up. I wonder if we'll get to see Ornias by the end of the story? Come to think of it, if Joanna just asks Letita, she'll be able to summon Ornias too.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2014 08:33
|
|
|
Dietrich posted:I'm pretty excited about the way wildbow handled Fae in this update. It's a take I haven't seen before. It kind of reminds me of raksha from Exalted, but the implication that they're humans who have convinced themselves and the universe that they're something else is something I haven't seen before.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2014 19:42
|
|
|
Tunicate posted:Hey, Wildbow is actually GMing a PRT game over here. Too bad the forum's so unreliable. Set in Alaska about a year and a half before the apocalypse, seems to be a public voting style game. I'm reading it now. It has some pretty interesting details, like more in-depth explanations of PRT power classifications.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2014 05:08
|
|
|
SerSpook posted:Some interesting stuff there. Class A threats don't seem that uncommon if I'm reading the villain dossiers for the game correctly. Kind of confirms that Skitter was probably considered an A class threat. Another interesting point to consider: Khun Sa could probably have pulled off the Khephri thing if he'd gotten access to Doormaker and Clairvoyant. Then again, it's possible that only someone with Taylor's multitasking power could have done it. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Feb 6, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2014 19:03
|
|
|
http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/prt-department-sixty-four-worm-quest.283888/page-26 We finally get an explanation for the overuse of the word copacetic.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2014 04:11
|
|
|
Pavlov posted:I've been noticing that Pact has been a lot more Monomyth-y than Worm was. It actually seems to be holding pretty close to the formula. In that vein, do you guys think the meeting with Ms. Lewis would count more as a Meeting With The Goddess or as a Woman As Temptress? His basic character traits are being nice under normal circumstances and bluntly angry when he's face to face with someone he feels has wronged him or someone he cares about. Taylor shows explicit emotion (including anger) much less, even when she's being violent, but the way she bottles her feelings up makes her quicker to resort to violence. Rose tends to bottle up her feelings too, but she can't use violence because she's trapped in the mirror world, so when she snaps it manifests as fear.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2014 18:41
|
|
|
Pavlov posted:The thing is, "nice normally but angry at assholes" isn't really that distinguishing of a character feature. I mean, he does kind of do it in a distinctive way, but not that much. Thats why I say he at least has potential. That kind of personality can be interesting, but it needs to be a little more distinctive if it's going to stand out. Fair point, yeah. He's not completely without personality, but he's less distinctive than Taylor (or the main characters from Face or Peer, for that matter, but the one from Peer has too much personality). Vateke posted:Maggie mentioned books about superheroes. I choose to believe this means there's a book series in Pactverse that take place in Wormverse. Agreed.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2014 15:50
|
|
|
InequalityGodzilla posted:Whelp, I'm about to go into Worm completely blind since I've listened to people gush about it on all sorts of sites. Anything I should know before diving into it, aside from the obvious "avoid this thread because spoilers?" How long is it, by the way? Obviously it's been going for a few years so is this some multi-million word epic or what? Main things you should know:
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2014 06:12
|
|
|
7c Nickel posted:The fact that Maggie Holt is the star of a YA fiction series in the Wormverse has kind of biased me into thinking she'll be a long term ally. Of course that could be intentional to throw off the direction Wildblow actually wants to take the story, or it could have just been a neat easter egg he decided to throw in when naming a character. Maggie is pretty dark for a YA heroine. We probably shouldn't think of her and the character from the books in Wormverse as quite the same person. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Feb 22, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2014 04:01
|
|
|
http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/prt-department-sixty-four-worm-quest.283888/page-50 Director Seneca is pretty cool.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2014 06:29
|
|
|
The chapter was pretty good. Wildbow does a great job of creating tension in Pact without any Worm-style fight scenes; it's all about trickery and negotiation.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2014 07:51
|
|
|
Re: guns, the obvious answer is that most capes have costumes that are more or less bulletproof. Which is, in fact, what we're shown (e.g., when Taylor fights Coil's soldiers).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2017 23:17
|
|
|
Calef posted:Oh no, I agree that Taylor's actions can be mostly explained without resorting to Passenger shenanigans (which is why Worm is good)--but the in-story existence of the Passengers masterminding some components of the story is narratively unsatisfying, and potentially immersion ruining. Wildbow's WoG explanation for why Jack Slash isnt just straight up killed is "his passenger subtly interferes with other passengers to prevent that from happening, to the extent he could actually defeat Contessa. Wildbow has also stated that passengers have almost no direct influence on the personalities of parahumans, however (barring a few exceptional cases like Burnscar). Instead, they pick hosts with some inclination towards conflict already, and sometimes reward them for conflict by making powers slightly more effective.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2017 03:45
|
|
|
Namarrgon posted:Twig is exceptionally good and has remained that way until at least arc 18 (where I am now). I'm on arc 19. I'd say it's been good except for some of the arcs in the middle with Sy and Jamie/Jessie visiting random small towns and getting into conflicts with two-bit gangsters. I kept wanting to get back to what Lillian and the Duke of Francis were up to.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2017 12:25
|
|
|
I just caught up with Twig. It feels like Sy doesn't have much longer to live, and I think Wildbow has said Twig will be ending soon, but there's a lot unresolved; we haven't even met the Lord King yet. Maybe it will end with them killing the Infante and taking over the Crown States, and the epilogue will set up a conflict between the newly independent America (led by the surviving Lambs) and the Lord King that won't be returned to until a few years later when Wildbow writes a sequel. A tangent: "Lord King" is a kind of silly title, but a lot of the high-ranking Nobles have silly titles. I guess the idea is that titles like "Infante" and "Archduke" reflect the Crown's claim to Spain and Austria as well as Britain, but "First Augustus" is just odd. Especially because in Diocletian's Tetrarchy, the Augusti were the senior Emperors, but he seems to be slightly below the Infante. I suspect WIldbow came up with weird titles in part to distance them from the real-world British royalty and nobility; if he made, say, the Earl of Pembroke a villain, the real one might take offense. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Jul 26, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2017 01:07
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 12, 2024 02:06 |
|
|
I've read the first few chapters of Mother of Learning, and I'm a bit underwhelmed. The setting feels bland, especially in comparison to Twig's; the school is just an American university with a couple elements of a Japanese high school, and the magical elements are ripped straight from Dungeons and Dragons (there's even a spell called magic missile). To be fair, I think the author deliberately made the setting somewhat generic to make the ground rules reasonably clear without too much exposition. The protagonist seems rather dense at times, and I don't think he's intended to be. It was super obvious that Zach was the original time traveler and Zorian started time travelling because the lich's spell created a link between their souls somehow, but it took Zorian months to figure that out. Also, the prose style isn't great. There's some misuse of tenses, which I suspect is the result of reading too many stories translated overly-literally from other languages. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Aug 3, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2017 20:50
|
|