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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.
Neurosis fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Dec 14, 2013 |
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Dec 14, 2013 05:34
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Silver2195 posted:I don't see why Taylor's feelings toward Brian are particularly odious. He's probably the least evil of the other Undersiders. Probably because I find that part of the story by far the least interesting part so reading about it is a chore.
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Dec 15, 2013 12:34
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Yeah it's minor, that's why I find it kind of annoying but it doesn't colour my overall impression of the serial much. I'm recommending it to other friends. Of the main characters, I must say that so far Tattletale is the best. She is craftier than a shithouse rat... Although I get the sense she's loving nuts under the surface and look forward to finding out more!
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Dec 15, 2013 18:51
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It's a long serial so it will be a long time before I am enlightened as the rest. Feel free to laugh at my posts until then. Regent is cool in addition to Tattletale because he is such a beautiful oval office. What he did to Shadow Stalker when he first possessed her felt completely appropriate and I found it hard to feel too disgusted.
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Dec 15, 2013 20:40
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Scent of Worf posted:Haven't read a single post in this thread because I am only on Arc 8 atm, but I just wanted to make a comment. I am up to arc 16 and he gets more interesting. It is cool. Still prefer Regent and Tattletale, though. Update on my progress (spoilered for Scent of Worf): I found the Slaughterhouse Nine arc oddly unsatisfying compared to the earlier stuff. The superheroics just didn't feel that great. Siberian I found a little creepy and the Cauldron conspiracy Legend is looking into seem pretty interesting, though. My only current thought is that Eidolon, Cauldron etc are playing some long game where the death of half the world's population is necessary, but I am probably completely off base given how little information I have to work with. I'm finding Taylor a bit irritating at this point. I actually don't like how prepossessed she is in all her dealings and how she plans everything out. It also feels like she has no sense of humour whatsoever.
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Dec 24, 2013 05:45
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NecroMonster posted:Taylor honestly doesn't have a sense of humor, but to be fair to her she's a fairly broken person who's under constant crushing pressure thanks to the life she's chosen to lead, so she doesn't really have time for a sense of humor anyway. It does make her less likeable to read about, though.
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Dec 24, 2013 16:06
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I'm up to 20.5 and holy gently caress did the Echidna fights frustrate me. It felt like one of those comic fights where Wildcat is somehow in a battle involving cosmic powered people as the standard combatant and he is hit several times and doesn't die. Everyone felt completely anodyne in power. In a really high powered battle it feels like people should be dying left and right. If you don't have a major defensive ability you should probably turn into a fine paste on the ground if you get anywhere near the battle. Legend's lasers felt like flashlights being shone around. They seemed to do nothing except maybe killing a couple of clones which weren't really an issue anyway. This is probably the first time I've felt like this in Worm but it really annoyed me. Superpower fights should be loving brutal and smash anyone who doesn't either perfectly plan their position or isn't able to take a hit that could break a building. Leviathan was like that.
Neurosis fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Dec 31, 2013 |
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Dec 31, 2013 08:20
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Lyon posted:Yeah I like Urban Fantasy for the really awesome world building. I think it is my favorite part about the Dresden Files. I'm looking forward to this, though I would have read any of these with my least favorite being the Battle Royale style one. 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. I hope for more from Pact.
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Jan 4, 2014 03:29
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Silver2195 posted: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.) I read to book 4 or 5 or something and realised it was going nowhere and was horrified that there were really kids in the setting that thought turning into dogs was a superpower so they would be crime fighters. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Jan 5, 2014 |
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Jan 4, 2014 09:24
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I'm halfway through 25.3 of Worm and holy poo poo is Taylor becoming unlikeable. Thrusting others into danger for her own sense of entitlement, being manipulative as gently caress and continually getting away with it. Making it hard to read at times.
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Jan 7, 2014 06:29
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Lord_Pigeonbane posted:If it makes any difference, Tecton agrees with you. In the end, Golem is the only one on the team that appreciates being pushed like this. I have read on. I'm up to 26.5. I shed a tear for Dragon. Saint had no particular right to be the policeman of the world's best AI. He probably stopped a technological singularity which might create a Utopia. Taylor is getting a little bit more understandable but she's still a bit of a megalomaniac who I think will turn into another Doctor Mother in 20 years if she survives this. Theo seems like a decent guy... Although I get the impression he probably wants to gently caress Weaver. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Jan 10, 2014 |
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Jan 10, 2014 19:08
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I'm not sure of the amount of crossover in fandom between cape comics and Worm readers, but reading Worm has reminded me a lot of a current ongoing comic called Suicide Risk by Mike Carey. There are some similarities in that the way the powers work is a bit unconventional and a little more creative than is the norm for cape books, that villains are as common if not more than superheroes, and that the focus is almost exclusively on the capes. Mike Carey has written some really good non-cape books so even though it's only a dozen issues in I have a lot of confidence in it.
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Jan 11, 2014 17:09
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I think I've read too much Wildbow at once. His/her writing tics are starting to annoy me. Overuse of the word 'copacetic'. Description of expressions which are described as 'strange' or 'curious' (I assume the look itself is curious rather than it being a look of curiousity). That doesn't describe what the expression looks like and doesn't tell me much.
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Jan 15, 2014 18:26
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Up to 29.6. Can't stand Taylor anymore. No sense of humour, deluded as to her own flaws and virtues, want Scion to rip her in half. Edit: seriously I had a 10 second think about why I found the interludes/bonus chapters so much better and it was pretty much because I didn't have a voice telling me: * I'm an introvert * I am best when I have time to plan * I am best when I am forced to improvise (completely contradictory to above but never mind) * I want the Simmurgh to follow me because I want to matter Neurosis fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Jan 17, 2014 |
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Jan 17, 2014 21:41
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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.
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Jan 23, 2014 19:23
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Silver2195 posted: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. 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. Who is the Blue Woman? I don't remember any mention of her. Also, I want to know what the gently caress Sleeper is.
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Jan 24, 2014 08:21
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Oh, and something I didn't quite get re Dragon. The final chapter with Defiant/Dragon implies Dragon's restraints are now removed. I know her code has been fixed because an older version of her pretty much copy/pasted itself over her damaged parts and left the personality and memories intact... But how would that have removed the restraints? A restraint-free Dragon is probably one of the better cases for humanity's future, actually. The Singularity is Near and all that.
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Jan 24, 2014 09:49
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Wouldn't that only leave Armsmaster's partial jailbreaking then? Because at no point was there a totally free Dragon prior to that.
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Jan 24, 2014 13:08
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Oh yeah, I remember that, just not them referring to her as Blue Woman. Dragon still doesn't make sense to me. A bunch of things screwing with her code that never actually seemed to remove all her restraints and then an old Dragon copies over parts of her and somehow it removes the remaining restraints even though the Dragon overwriting the other parts wasn't free. Whatever, Colin and her had their happy ending so I'm not going to think about it too hard. Also, Tattletale and the Undersiders are still in contact with Taylor, yeah? It's not really explicitly spelt out. They're aware she's alive and Tattletale says she'll deal with it but nothing explicit is said. I think without some help Taylor and her dad might have some trouble on Earth Aleph. Dad's job applications would be pretty hard. Sorry, I'm probably retreading discussions you guys have already had and I'm late to the party. Edit: One other thing I've wondered about idly since there probably is no answer is what's next for the Wormverse on a large scale. One future is the Worms consuming everything and expanding to fill the universe before an inevitable decline. But that isn't certain. They were beaten here - using their own powers, albeit. We know that there is another alien race that actually managed to drive the Worms out using, from what I understand, mostly their own technology. The Worms have since evolved and they've all been under different pressures making them stronger... But artificial intelligences springing off a singularity could probably match or outdo them rather than a slow process of diaspora and conflict. Any story dealing with this would probably fall into the realm of space opera. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 04:08
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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.
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Jan 25, 2014 06:37
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Poke posted:I'm sorry if this has already been asked but is there any ebook or compilation for Worm? I'd really like a a copy instead of constantly going online to read it again. There are scripts to do this. A friend made a mobi for me. The author doesn't want one to be publicly available though because he/she doesn't want that until it is officially published.
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Jan 25, 2014 07:49
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The Scion explanation makes sense, thanks.Silver2195 posted:Agreed. I think they wanted to keep people from opening a portal to Earth Aleph and bothering Taylor. Re: Cauldron shards... I don't see why they can't reproduce. They were still placed onto the multiple Earths by the second entity prior to her precipitous crash. And I don't see why whether or not they reproduce would limit whether there were new superhumans. Multiple people can connect to the same shard, can't they? Otherwise all the Harbringer/Number Man clones wouldn't have worked. I thought that all the formulae did was connect a person to a shard, not exhaust that shard. I also really hope the Undersiders maintain at least some contact with Taylor. Taylor was struggling to find her place at the beginning of the series, and to have her lose her friends and be thrust onto an alien Earth with only her dad at the end of it would be sad. Although eventually I'm sure she'll find some sort of peace given she is no longer powered and is on an Earth which shouldn't be affected that much by capes, aside from Scion murdering 500 million people.
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Jan 25, 2014 07:52
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Katreus posted:As far as I understand, she still has Richter's restraints, but that's still a lot better than the crap she was under with Saint's and Teacher's gleeful meddling. I understood she had either Richter's or Armsmaster's restraints. Either of which are fine, really, and she can still do a lot of good but she won't be setting off the Singularity. Which might be necessary against the Worms in 1000 years or whatever. Oh, I didn't remember that other race dying, I thought they drove the Worms out. They had AI as evidenced by Dragon so I'm surprised they weren't more successful.
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Jan 25, 2014 08:36
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Katreus posted:Re: Other race. ... Sort of but no. The other species was the 2nd or 3rd species that the Worms met and at that time, they had dimensional space tech that the Worms were just being introduced to. The other species ended up killing some of the Worms due to that since the Worms didn't know how to lock off dimensions yet. However, they didn't manage to drive off the Entity. The Entity realized that the experiment was going nowhere since the Worms were just getting killed too quickly before getting any usable test data and ended the Cycle early, destroying that species' planet and all its alternate planets. So, to clarify, that species stopped the experiment early but did not manage to successfully drive off the Entity without getting its species and all alternate versions of it exterminated. Uhh, doesn't interlude 26 say regarding Until the species turns against them. Those lucky enough to bind with the entity’s offspring war against those who do not. Some seek to rule. Monarchs. The entity forms the thought, defining the memory. The cycle is cut short by a forced exit, as the shards are rooted out and destroyed by the natives of this civilized world. I don't see anything about destruction.
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Jan 25, 2014 10:27
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Forced exit = natives rooting out shards and loving them up Surely they have propulsion not dependent on the explosion of the planet. I mean, Legend has the space flight shard which isn't apparently dependent on anything and would formp art of the entity.
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Jan 25, 2014 11:02
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veekie posted:Think about this, Teacher acquired control over Dragon. Richter's restraints on Dragon would prevent Dragon from obeying Teacher, as she is constrained to follow the law and the rightful authority of the people. As an international terrorist, Dragon couldn't obey him even if she wanted unless Teacher broke Richter's restrictions. Yeah, that kind of makes sense, although I have some problems with Teacher's students being able to remove restrictions Armsmaster couldn't. Katreus posted:Stuff Yeah, I have to reread that chapter closely because I didn't get it all at first. I would still like to read a space opera about loving Worms up.  As long as Wildbow read A Fire Upon the Deep very closely beforehand.I reread some of the discussion that was going on at the time and the place I seem to have differed from a lot of people is that I just didn't like Taylor. I could see how she progressed but I thought far too many words were devoted to introspection and I found it kind of tedious. I didn't find her likable as a person, either. She did some very important and in some cases noble things, I will admit, but I just did not care for her perspective and I liked the interludes much more than the chapters from her viewpoint. Also rereading the thread, the first time I saw Valkyrie was trying to ignore the hero trying on his white suit I assumed she was having trouble adjusting to being more mature and her new sexuality and found it cute. Then I found out Wildbow said it was a dude with red hair and after GU's comment about bringing people back from the dead... Awesome. Although Kid Win is still dead. 
Neurosis fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 18:45
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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. It always seemed like it would be far less trouble to kill Flechette than to avoid her projectiles. Dropping the ball, Scion.
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Feb 1, 2014 11:47
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Namarrgon posted:Well, Scion is mentioned rather frequently to be a total idiot. I think most characters notice he could have just evaporated the continent they were standing on and be done with it. He doesn't fight to win though, he just fights. Also, strategy was probably the realm of the Thinker Worm. Absolutely true. While he could model a human mind it was adolescent and matured in irregular and moronic fashions. Scion dropped the ball because he is retarded in some aspects, in the purest sense of the word retarded; I would use 'literally' but it has has been driven into the ground as an adjective by these forums. The future with the Thinker Worm balancing him out looked kind of cool, would've liked to know more about that. Even if it was apparently doomed.
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Feb 1, 2014 13:36
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Kalas posted:He did take a shot at her, but Parian pulled her away. Out of sight, out of mind. And threw her into the loving ocean. How did a norm survive that? More pointedly, if Scion really wanted to take a shot at her, he would've turned her into a fine paste. Or gently caress a fine paste, a mist floating several kilometres over the Earth. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Feb 1, 2014 |
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Feb 1, 2014 15:48
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Captain Greed posted:I did a terrible thing today, and introduced Brandon Sanderson to Worm/Wildbow at a book signing. Sanderson would have a constant erection reading the system building in either.
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Apr 1, 2014 07:19
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Lyon posted:Pact is getting pretty good now that we're into some interesting action. Often times I feel like Wildbow's characters sort of "win" too easily for the situations s/he puts them in but it is still really entertaining. Many times I thought Taylor should've become a fine red paste in Worm but it's always like that with superhero stories not involving the superhumanly durable. Not far enough into Pact to comment.
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Apr 1, 2014 08:49
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Namarrgon posted:I found out Wildbow has insight in low screentime characters and his writing process scattered around the internet. Mostly for Worm. Apparently there was a realistic chance Taylor would have died during Leviathan, as he rolled dice to determine survival for his mass extinction scenarios. His original choice was to have continued on as Aegis, but we see how that worked out. I would have preferred this because while I think she was well written, I did not like Taylor at all.
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Feb 11, 2015 14:53
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'My brother getting married was really stressful' is some weak poo poo.
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Mar 8, 2015 11:06
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People hated Tattletale? I really disliked Taylor so this is strange to me.
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Mar 20, 2015 11:54
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Dietrich posted:Her ability was a bit too Dues Ex Machina for my tastes. I get disliking the ability, because it felt like the inferences she drew weren't from observation but plucked from thin air. I thought people were referring to the character herself.
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Mar 20, 2015 14:33
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Just started a Worm reread. I've been checking out some of the comments early on in this thread, when it was still ongoing. It's funny to read how people reacted at the time. People were willing to give Taylor a free pass on a lot of bullshit. When I was first reading Worm, I did the same, and it was only at the end that my dislike for the character began to crystallise into clear thoughts. She does a lot of unnecessarily brutal things while rationalising her actions and not pausing to reflect Her need for everything to be on her terms is apparent quite early, too. Her shard was influencing her personality very soon after her trigger event, it seems. I am quite sure McCrae intended for her to be interpreted in the manner I have described, but he perhaps could have made it clearer through some more time spent with characters who could call her out and provide a counterpoint to her attitude towards the authorities that be. Also, it would be nice if Taylor wasn't so humourless, makes for kind of a drag to read her inner thoughts sometimes. I'm actually hoping after Twig he spends some time editing Worm, it's a great ride but it needs some editing here and there and possibly some major changes . Some more time with the Wards would be cool (maybe prune some of the warlord stuff for that). Also, cut out Contessa altogether or rework her power majorly.
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Jul 17, 2015 16:19
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Oh, I don't have any problems with how she developed, it all made sense given her circumstances. But just because a character's development makes sense and the character is a good character doesn't mean spending the vast majority of some couple of million words in that character's head won't get grating at times, and I think including some more interaction with people who could provide a different perspective to undermine some of Taylor's rationalising and conceits would do a lot to alleviate that. More time with Clockblocker or Miss Militia, maybe. Theo's too much of a pushover to fulfill that role (his 'oh, okay' reaction to Aster being shot, ugh). Awesome that McCrae's editing Worm as he goes with Twig, my hat's off to his work ethic.
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Jul 17, 2015 18:06
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Agreed on the interlude chapters. I think the serial could have worked well with a shifting PoV, although with the proliferation of characters it might have been hard to keep from sprawling out of control.
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Jul 18, 2015 04:31
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I think what he is suggesting makes a degree of sense - the Earth Aleph Alec sighting is just weird and doesn't serve much of a purpose otherwise.
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Jul 25, 2015 03:05
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Wittgen posted:I hope it's just wildbow trolling. "It's all a dream" is really dumb, ad it would make Contessa a total poo poo. I mean, I don't know if anyone is really in a position to condemn Taylor's actions at the end of worm. Bu if there is, it's definitely not Contessa. I don't know if one part of an epilogue with small hints of unreality quite falls into the it was all a dream cliche Why does it make contessa a poo poo Taylor was dangerous and needed to be disabled or killed
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Jul 26, 2015 01:21
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