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I'm reading Wandering Inn and I'm now at 1.19. I like it quite a bit so far, but this particular chapter is kinda cringeworthy. It's the one where she goes to the market after feeding the goblin children and demands a refund from the drake guy who cheated her. It reads like a fantasy version of those terrible "not always right" shit_that_didnt_happen.txt stories, where the narrator is all witty and awesome and the other person is a dumb rear end in a top hat and everyone starts clapping at how much they were owned by the narrator. Everyone is all laughing at on her side, despite having previous been terrible and bigoted, which I imagine is supposed to be because she killed the chieftain but I don't really see why being tough in a fight would make a bunch of non-humans who hate humans change their mind. It also feels a little out of character for her to suddenly be willing to do all this super bold poo poo given how shy she was the other day. This could have very easily gone poorly for her if the shopkeeper who cheated her wasn't already disliked by all the other shopkeepers. Anyways, it's a pretty minor gripe, I just gets kind of annoyed with scenes that are unrealistically convenient like that.
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Aug 29, 2017 02:48
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Does Ryoka in Wandering Inn ever become less obnoxious (or have her behavior portrayed as a negative thing, at least)? I think I trust the author to deal with her well, but it can be hard to tell sometimes with characters like this. I find that it's often difficult to interpret antisocial characters in media written by/for nerdy people, since behavior that is really rude in reality is interpreted by many nerdy people (who are often antisocial themselves and unwilling to view that as a negative trait) as just being a personal quirk, if not an outright positive trait. (Just to be clear, I'm not referring to the shyness itself so much as the "everyone else is terrible and obnoxious" sorta misanthropy.) edit: By the way, is Ryoka supposed to be half-Japanese or is it just a coincidence that her name could be a Japanese one? Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Sep 6, 2017 |
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Sep 6, 2017 10:21
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Okay, that's all I really need to know. I figured it would be dealt with reasonably well since this Garia person is portrayed as obviously nice/good, in contrast to Ryoka's description of her as annoying. I've read JP web novels with characters like Ryoka who are portrayed as correct, and the author's own misanthropy sort of bleeds into the work in those cases, with the character portrayed as the only sane person in a world of morons.
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Sep 6, 2017 23:41
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I am legitimately baffled by the fact that the people in the comments seem to think Ryoka is really cool and awesome. I keep wanting to return to the stuff with Erin and the potential repercussions of teaching these Antinium workers chess. edit: This Magnolia lady is cool though; I hope she continues to own Ryoka.
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Sep 13, 2017 01:51
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I get the impression that the author considers Ryoka flawed, but also generally cool/badass. It's a sort of "this person is flawed, but flawed in a way the author and many readers obviously think is totally cool" situation. Like, there's some acknowledgement that she should make friends and be more sociable, but it still seems to be preserving the general portrayal of her otherwise being a badass aloof person.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:05
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I agree with the comment speculating that Capricorn is calling a hit on themselves, possible with the intent of framing Moonsong or something. It would explain the person saying "I think you got the instructions wrong." edit: Oh wait, another comment seems to have a better idea with speculating that it's a plan to try and get the assassin folks. It would explains Cap/Moonsong seemingly getting along in the last chat and Cap mentioning contacting the professional to them.
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Oct 24, 2017 22:45
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I'm very curious about what sort of ability the protagonist is going to have in Worm 2. Taylor's ability worked fairly well in terms of giving her a lot of flexibility and potential for growth. It would be difficult to write interesting fights for someone with, say, Glory Girl's power-set. Something with a Thinker angle to it could be interesting; probably my favorite thing about Worm's particular interpretation of super powers is the way so many of them fundamentally change a person's perception of reality in order to be capable of naturally using them (for example Taylor's improved multitasking). Regardless of who it is, I hope to hell it isn't someone as lovely and boring as Taylor. It would be nice to have a protagonist who is at least entertaining. I'm optimistic on this front, since Sylvester in Twig did a great job of having a morally ambiguous character in depressing circumstances who was still really fun to read about.
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Oct 30, 2017 19:12
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Blasphemeral posted:There's a danger in making an exceptionally "entertaining" character. A PoV character needs to be someone the readership at large can usually associate with themselves in some way. If they're too off-the-wall, you'll have trouble hooking your readers. My issue with Taylor wasn't so much that she was uninteresting, but more that I flat-out disliked her and felt like the story itself didn't appropriately deal with her personality flaws. Sy works well because he has more of a personality and I felt like the narrative did a better job of addressing and showing the consequences of his flaws.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:00
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It's not so much that Taylor is a bad character, but more that she's not the kind of person I want to spend time with for thousands of pages. I feel like the only sort of person who would genuinely like her is someone who fully bought into her "why is everyone restricting me~" control freak tendencies (which, to be fair, I think Wildbow intended as a flaw, though a bunch of readers totally bought into the idea of Taylor being some sort of audience self-insert who's more competent than everyone else).
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Nov 1, 2017 01:15
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Wittgen posted:I like Taylor because she's pretty much the best Batman ever. (Under-powered hero that is a major player because of intelligence and tenacity. Defined by a very relatable tragedy, but let that tragedy push them to an unrelatable level of obsessive goal focus. Reliance on tools, strategy, and using the environment in battle.) Batman's a fun character to root for (or stop rooting for when they go to far), and having Batman be lower middle class plain Jane highschooler and bug creep is an interesting twist. She isn't under-powered at all, though. In her first fight ever, before she's even come up with any creative tactics/ideas, she nearly kills Lung, a villain strong enough to fight the entire Brockton Bay Protectorate team. Her power is actually pretty ridiculous and basically an automatic win button against anyone who doesn't have some way to avoid being damaged by bug stings/bites, and that's even before she figures out how to do the more creative stuff. It's probably one of, if not the, most powerful ability in the series against regular humans as well. Taylor is only really an underdog against the strongest characters in the series, like the triumvirate or Siberian or whatever, and characters who have an ability that happens to directly counter hers (like Armsmaster/Dragon's bug-killing technology). And, of course, Wildbow tends to pit her against these sorts of characters, because she'd be able to easily defeat almost anyone else. I've always been really confused by people perceiving Taylor as some sort of underdog with a weak power. Like I said, though, Taylor isn't a bad character. She's just a pretty unpleasant person, especially later in the series. She hyper-focuses on accomplishing her goals constantly, and while this makes perfect sense given the influence of her shard, it isn't enjoyable to be stuck in the head of someone like that. The way her personality affects the people around her is interesting (and part of why she's actually a pretty good character), but it's not fun being inside her head all the time (at least during the latter 2/3 or so of the story). During the Chicago Wards stuff I remember constantly thinking "jesus christ, what an rear end in a top hat" about her interactions with and thoughts about her teammates. I feel like (or rather I know, due to reader comments) Taylor is appealing as a sort of teenage "everyone's keeping me down, but I have the best ideas and if everyone listened to me things would work out" fantasy. Honestly though, I really liked Worm despite this, and I'm talking about this mostly due to optimism about Worm 2 basically having all of the good things about Worm plus the improvements to Wildbow's writing and characters from Twig. If I had to name the biggest flaw with Worm, it would probably be that many of the characters were weak , so the prospect of a story in the same setting with that issue improved is exciting.
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Nov 1, 2017 18:19
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Stairmaster posted:Wildbow came up with a tabletop system for the worm setting and does beta games for it with irc people. I think worm might be his favorite setting to play around with because he's answered like a tomes worth of fan questions about various facets of the world. I've been following something sorta like this that was written using a Xianxia setting ("Forge of Destiny" it's called), and apparently stories where readers select actions and the writer rolls dice behind the scenes to determine the results of those actions/combat are A Thing and called "quests." It works remarkably better than I'd expect, though I think that relies pretty heavily on the writer being good. I think a key thing to making the idea work is for the writer to have a clear idea of all the characters involved, their motivations, and the major events that will occur during the course of the story. That allows them to realisticly figure out what would happen if the protagonist chooses to do various things. The randomness caused by the dice rolling actually makes for some pretty interesting fights and events. I recommend the story I mentioned, because the writer is very good at giving every single character their own unique motivations that don't revolve around the protagonist. Most of the characters have their own goals that they pursue independently of the protagonist's actions, and it's honestly pretty remarkable that the writer can keep track of everything. The writer is also really good at coming up with unique and interesting combat abilities; every single art that the various characters use has a very distinct feel to it. Due to the frequency of updates random grammar/syntax errors aren't uncommon, but the strengths greatly outweigh the weaknesses IMO.
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Nov 28, 2017 23:29
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Absum posted:The quest stuff on SV is pretty similar to the CYOA's we have on this forum from what little I've seen from both. I think it helps that I have no interest in participating in the choice-making and am content to just read the updates in bulk every few weeks or so. The only downside is that I occasionally find myself frustrated with the choices people make about who to spend time with (it's a crime that Ling Qi has never spent time with Han Fang or Gan Guangli), but otherwise I don't really care much about the choices people make with arts, weapons, etc (though I did find myself amused at how they randomly trained Polearms for a while). Honestly, all the pill stuff seems really tedious and I'm happy to completely ignore it. And yeah, I think its biggest strength is how "alive" the world feels. You don't get the feeling that events are revolving around the protagonist and happening solely for the sake of her adventure/journey (heck, there are several characters who are unarguably more influential and important than Ling Qi is likely to be for a long time). Ling Qi's power is also kept in check; while she's definitely talented and lucky, some other character stay consistently ahead of her and even characters below her are fully capable of being a threat to her (and there's even one more character in Ji Rong who is at least as talented as Ling Qi is). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Nov 29, 2017 |
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Nov 29, 2017 00:46
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Silver2195 posted:I'm only up to page 6 or 7 in Reader mode, but I'm enjoying it too. I want them to hang out with Gan Guangli because he's the only other character we know of (aside from Su Ling*, sorta) who has a commoner background. I also trust there to be some sort of interesting background for both those characters given how things have gone with other characters, but I don't think we've even hung out with them once (we know literally nothing about Han Fang, other than the fact that I think his throat may have been injured by Xiulan or something?). Gan Guangli and Han Fang are also both swole dudes and we know Ling Qi likes her swole dudes. I like Cai as a character, but I feel like there's not a whole lot more to her than we've already seen; we know she values order and being a noble leader, and seems to spend all her time working towards the goal of becoming one. Gu Xiulan has become more interesting recently, what with her frustration over Ling Qi's progress and willingness to sacrifice her beauty - which we know she values pretty highly - in order to gain more power (one thing I really like is how understandably frustrated some of the other noble characters get with Ling Qi's progress; Han Jian is another example). (I assume it's okay to post about this since it's technically a web serial also) * Speaking of Su Ling, it's interesting how she's turned out to be probably the most decent and grounded character in the entire cast, Ling Qi included. She's the only cultivator character we've seen give a poo poo about mortals (not counting Ling Qi caring about her mother, since she's family)
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Nov 30, 2017 08:06
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Something bugs me about Yamada in Ward/Worm. Like she feels like some person from outside the story entering the story and talking to the characters or something, it's hard to describe. Or something like a layperson's idea of an ideal therapist. Just something about her interactions stands out as awkward and unnatural.
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Jan 20, 2018 01:02
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Does Earth Alpha (or whatever the one with few parahumans that Taylor went to is called) still have some communication set up with humans on other Earths? The idea that Taylor would still receive information about events post-Golden Morning via such a connection is kind of interesting. Speaking of Earth Alpha, was it ever detailed exactly what kind of parahumans they have? I remember it saying they were weaker or something, but I don't remember any actual examples of their powers or anything specifying how many there were. edit: One kind of interesting thing that never received much focus (outside of the stuff with Taylor meeting her mother on Earth Alpha) is how there are a bunch of people who effectively have copies of themselves on the other Earth in Earth Alpha/Bet. It would be really interesting to find out how a different version of yourself turned out. I wonder if Taylor's dad ever met up with himself. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Jan 25, 2018 |
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Jan 25, 2018 20:34
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I just started reading Mother of Learning and it's pretty good (I'm on chapter 8). One minor thing that bugs me is that I'm not sure what these characters are supposed to look like. I have a very, very poor visual imagination, so it helps to have clear descriptions. I've been imagining Zorian as sorta like Mishima from Persona 5 but with glasses for some reason. I have zero clue what Akoja is supposed to look like. I'm guessing Zach is basically just an attractive looking guy with black-hair. I like Zach because my name is also Zach and he seems like a cool guy who isn't a paranoid antisocial loser like Zorian.
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Jan 31, 2018 19:01
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Cicero posted:Yeah Zorian was annoying in early Mother of Learning, but I started reading Wandering Inn (at 1.12 R right now) and wow Ryoka is a far more unlikeable jackass. I don't understand the point of writing a main character who's such an rear end in a top hat. And not, like a glorious bastard or funny rear end in a top hat or something like that, she just loving sucks. Is it some kind of Mary Sue wish fulfillment thing where she gets to be successful and surrounded by friends and praised even though she's a huge douche to everyone around her? And honestly the main character seems only marginally better for this, but at least Erin seems like she's trying to be a decent person. I hope this poo poo gets better over time. I'm optimistic about Zorian because, relatively soon after I made that post, he started to finally think "wait a sec, maybe I've kinda been an rear end in a top hat to people?" edit: This story is written well. I would actually say that the prose/dialogue are overall better than, say, Wildbow's. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Feb 1, 2018 |
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Feb 1, 2018 02:34
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So, in Mother of Learning (chapter 20-something spoilers) all the aranea were just killed and red robe was revealed as third time traveler. Zorian has decided to travel around. I like this story quite a bit. It is written pretty well and Zorian has ended up becoming a much better character than I expected (I like the gradual progression from being a nerdling to engaging with other human beings, and it was nice to see him admit that he formed an emotional connection with Novelty), though I'm not sure what to make of his general skill/competence. Logically speaking, he shouldn't be much better than your average newly-graduated mage at this point, since he's only been in the loop 2-3 years, but he seems dramatically better than most of the other characters we've seen in action except Zach and the big antagonists. I'm not sure how much sense it makes for him to be wrecking these mook mages during the invasion, since presumably those mages should at least be at the level of a magic school graduate or something. It seems like he has the advantage of being a mage who is willing to "think outside the box" and deal with things like spell formulas, though I'm not sure how plausible it is that so few other mages seem to have that level of common sense. My one gripe is the lack of visual character descriptions. I think I mentioned this before, but I have no idea what any of these characters are supposed to look like, aside from maybe Zach (who I think was described as having raven black hair and being generally good-looking).
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Feb 13, 2018 19:39
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Regarding Ward, I'm not caught up yet but one thing that's been bugging me a little is that I feel like Wildbow is trying too hard to create "unique" powers. Like half of the powers that have been introduced so far have been pretty convoluted. In Worm, even the grab-bag capes generally had a set of powers that worked together in some coherent way. An example of one of the newly introduced characters with a power that is both unique and easy to understand is the guy who you can't look or aim at from Arc 1. But a lot of these other characters have powers that are just overly complex in my opinion. I wouldn't mind if just a couple characters had powers like this, but they're so frequent it feels noticeable in comparison with Worm.Affi posted:I agree. It's like he's been studying 100% towards a goal for 3 years with unlimited resources and connections. On top of being not only a generally smart dude but probably just as smart and talented as his famous older brother. Most people take breaks and have hobbies. He dedicates his entire life to learning poo poo. Eh, he makes it pretty clear he's not as talented as Daimen, and his experience prior to the time loops basically supports this. If it were just him having low self-esteem, his talent would still be reflected in the way his teachers and classmates view him. Daimen was apparently a prodigy throughout his entire life, and it was clear before he reached Zorian's age. Also I'm not sure where you're getting the "infinite resources" stuff. He can spend his savings over the course of month, but he's still limited in the info he can acquire from the library (and certainly doesn't have access to more than any decent graduated mage, or a mage from a wealthy family, in that regard). His situation (so far) completely explains him leaving other students in the dust, but not so much a decent adult mage. As far as I can tell, there are two things that reasonably set him apart: 1. The mind magic is really the big thing that could reasonably make him truly stand out, because he's not only an empath, but likely one of only a handful ever taught to use the ability correctly. Granted, this isn't really relevant to his other mage skills, but it's relevant to his overall ability. 2. I get the impression mages are generally not very creative. They mentioned them being taken completely off-guard by widespread use of guns, and it's possible that mages generally aren't willing to make use of basic spell formulas for combat items in the way Zorian does. It's not that hard for me to believe that Zorian would at least stand out above his fellow non-Zach classmates, and the one combat oriented teacher we've seen (Kyron) still leaves him in the dust. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 15, 2018 22:32
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The Shortest Path posted:Victoria is a very, very different person from Taylor, and that's gonna take a lot of adjustment for people. And thank god for that. I strongly disliked Taylor (she's a good character, but not a likable one and not one I want as a protagonist/narrator) and like Victoria a lot more.
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Feb 16, 2018 19:10
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Honestly Worm (and wildbow's writing in general) has always been very obviously flawed, so I don't see much of a point in getting defensive about it in most cases. I've seen a couple criticisms I think are wrong (like people who claim there's authorial intent to portray Taylor in a positive light), but most are usually pretty accurate. I still enjoy the heck out of his stuff (it's very well suited to the "compel the reader to keep reading" model that works well for web serials), but there are definite problems. I was discussing the general topic of web serials/novels with someone trying to write their own, and I ended up coming to the conclusion that, in many ways, the medium is not well suited to truly good writing (or at least it's difficult to be commercially successful that way). I think that, in order to be commercially successful, you need to either 1. have a story that involves some topic that is compelling to a young, mostly-nerdy audience (like superheroes, fantasy, etc) or 2. have a story that involves a bunch of cliffhangers and escalation. And realistically you probably usually need both of those things.
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Feb 24, 2018 04:13
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, I think my core comment/criticism about Worm's structure is that the origin story/S9 arcs felt tightly-paced and well-organized, but the sections from Echidna onward feel, hmm, not quite bloated, but they feel like a bit more of a chore to get through, with less of a payoff. There's actually one part - when Dragon sends the multiple suits at the Undersiders - where I just flat-out skipped several chapters. I knew she was going to end up figuring out some way to defeat those robots, and I just wanted to get on with the story.
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Feb 24, 2018 20:01
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So I just got to the part of Mother of Learning where the nature of the time loop was revealed, and I find it a little strange that (probably not necessary since this is from chapter 50-something, but spoilers just in case) Zorian doesn't seem particularly bothered by the fact that all the non-Zach people he's interacting with, like Kirielle, Kael, etc, are all totally doomed and definitely gonna die.
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Mar 1, 2018 21:30
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M. Night Skymall posted:Pretty sure there's nothing in this that isn't covered by chapter 50 something. I think that previously he had been operating under the assumption that he might get to "keep" a loop at some point in the future, and that even if the people in the loop lost a month of memories they still existed in some real sense (and they basically do exist, since they're actual copies and not a simulation). Of course, you could argue that losing their memories is indistinguishable from death (which is basically what Taiven realized when she first learned of the loop), but from Zorian's perspective the possibility of "taking them with him" out of the loop would still seem to lead to more emotional investment. Then again, Zorian also reacted fairly well to the revelation that he isn't even the original Zorian. I guess he's just looking at things philosophically.
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Mar 2, 2018 00:41
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ZypherIM posted:I don't really like Spright, but he isn't anything like Assault? Sure he starts with flirting, and Victoria responds in kind, and then when she turns him down he stops. Yeah, my feeling is that while you could totally validly interpret his actions with the original flirting as rude/unacceptable, the story/Wildbow didn't intend for that interaction to come off that way. Victoria basically plays along and shows no offense, and as you mentioned he stops when she mentions not being interested. Omi no Kami posted:Yeah... I've been trying not to let my inner conspiracy theorist run rampant, since a lot of Kenzie's development in 4 felt like WB directly responding to all of the hilarious paranoid theorycrafting by going "...no, she's not bonesaw or the simurgh, please enjoy this relatable and grounded mental illness backstory," but parts of Kenzie's schtick still don't add up for me. I'm kind of willing to believe her when she says she isn't using a projection to hide her real appearance, but from her and Yamada's past discussions I got the impression that she had no friends at school and suffered from severe isolation for most of her life. I find it really hard to believe that a nearly literal anime character with great fashion sense and straight As would have so much trouble making friends, even if she's as annoying as Houndstooth described her. Yeah; it could be that Wildbow is just mistaken about her behavior being quite as universally off-putting for a young teenager as it would be for someone older. While her general clinginess/insecurity would probably cause some social problems, teenagers who act that way tend to be able to still find social groups among other awkward outcast types. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Mar 7, 2018 |
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Mar 7, 2018 04:39
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, plus I just really have trouble buying her as an outcast. Maybe it's as you say, and Wildbow is writing her too much like an adult (spoiler: writing child characters is really hard), but the way she talks and acts comes off to me like a pretty decently socially aware person who's being goofy and purposely eccentric for fun, not as someone who genuinely doesn't know how to function with other people. And I think anyone who simultaneously has an even basic grasp of social skills and does cool Geek Stuff wouldn't have too much trouble finding a group of other kids they identify with in school. Nah, she definitely does not act in a way that is just "cute/eccentric," unless you include the opinions of awkward/nerdy 13 year olds. There's this sense of insecurity and desperation that makes her behavior distinct from that of someone who is just acting that way because they find it fun. It reminds me of a more manic version of the way I sometimes chatted online with people as a teenager.
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Mar 10, 2018 01:00
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The thing about Vista is that she's capable of causing a hell of a lot of damage (mainly by collapsing a bunch of buildings), but she's also super vulnerable and probably wouldn't last long by herself. Her ability is mostly useful for supporting others.
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Mar 21, 2018 07:16
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Dzhay posted:I think we should be less eager to take Contessa's description of her powers at face value: she's a precog, and probably a better one than the spaceworms had any intention of letting a human be, but there's no reason to assume she's perfect. The rear end in a top hat aliens' rear end in a top hat plan was to start super-wars on Earth so that they could gather more data on how to do power stuff; if they really had perfect future-predicting powers, why would they need to bother? I've always been under the impression Contessa's power has some limitations in terms of being able to "give information." Otherwise it makes no sense that Cauldron had to experiment to improve the vials in the first place*, since Contessa should have been able to produce them perfectly from the get-go and know who would respond positively to them. *The one possible explanation that comes to mind is Contessa's power not working correctly with anything related to spaceworms, even if they're dead, though it seems like she should have still been able to "phrase" her requests like "give this vial to a person who it won't kill/mutate" or something.
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Mar 24, 2018 19:59
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You know, I feel like having Taylor's multitasking ability and then not having it must be sorta like suffering brain damage or something. Must really suck getting used to having such an inferior mind. The same probably applies to most thinkers with some sort of "always on" thinker ability, if they lost their ability. By the way, regarding the general setting of Ward, how are you guys imagining the settlements, City, etc? I have a really terrible visual imagination and have trouble thinking of how things would be laid out, what the buildings/streets would look like, etc. The same was even true for Worm, with me always imagining the city as being a lot "smaller" than it should have been. One big issue I have is that I tend to imagine any scene involving a building as the building having just a bunch of mostly empty land surrounding it, even when this doesn't make much sense. Like, the scene early on where Victoria is interviewing for hero jobs and has the interview near the portal where the Fallen show up, I just imagined it as the portal with a crowd of people around it and literally no other buildings nearby. Another good example is the scene before the S9 arc in Worm, where the Wards discover the "stylized" corpses and fight the Travellers. My mental image of that scene was a sort of a random bare-bones structure with like half of it removed so that you could see a cross-section of it (with the corpses hanging inside), and surrounded by just a bunch of dirt with the city skyline in the very distant background. Basically what I'm trying to say is that I have an abysmal imagination and tend to benefit dramatically from stuff like concept art of characters and locations when reading a story. I don't understand how people manage to hold an even remotely detailed mental image of a scene in their minds.
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Mar 25, 2018 08:08
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Huh, how about that. I've always known I had some issue with that sort of thing, since I scored abysmally low (like bottom 4% or something) on some "look at this picture and then tell me what you remember from it" test when doing some cognitive/IQ test thing when I was younger. In my case I can sorta imagine a specific tiny attribute of an image for a split second, but the instant I try to imagine something else it disappears. It's certainly annoying when trying to read things without visual aids! edit: I hope it's revealed at some point that Jessica Yamada is some sort of supervillain who has been using her powers to implant various suggestions in the minds of her countless parahuman psych patients. Something about that woman weirds me out. edit2: So, I've been reading more Ward since I was like 2 and a half arcs behind, and I think I actually like this new cast more than the one in Worm, which seems like an unpopular opinion. The people in Worm were more fun, but they were also a lot less interesting and felt more like YA fiction characters, for lack of a better description. Post-trauma Grue and Bitch were pretty unique, but also not exactly fun to read. With these new characters, I find myself a lot curious about how they'll progress and fit into things. I also definitely like Victoria waaaaay more than Taylor, but I always strongly disliked Taylor as a protagonist (she would have been okay as a supporting character, but I didn't like living in her head). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 25, 2018 19:05
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So that "Big Picture" guy mentioned in one of the interludes has a pretty loving ridiculous power. The ability to not only have cloned minds focusing on different things at the same time, but to also be able to slow down perception to the point where you can spend days/weeks focusing on a thing during a short period of time is absolutely absurd. It's even more absurd if he can control his movements normally while doing this (which I imagine he can) since that would, in practice, make him capable of being a sort of Contessa-lite in combat (because it would basically be completely impossible to surprise such a person and it would be easy for them to dodge pretty much anything that can physically be dodged). I feel like if the "slow down perception" part was removed it would be a more "balanced" power, but as is it's just nuts.
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Mar 28, 2018 05:49
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Chris's whole situation in Ward is really interesting. Heck, so is Tristan's/Byron's. And Ashley's. And I don't even know what the heck is going on with Kenzie. This is a good cast IMO. Regarding Chris's power, it seems sorta like Genesis's from Worm, except with some pretty awful drawbacks. I'm guessing that his limited number of forms are probably overall stronger than the custom ones Genesis could put out, in exchange for having to deal with all the bullshit limitations.
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Mar 30, 2018 04:40
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One other comment I have that may have already been covered since I'm still behind the current chapters/arc is that I'm pretty sure something weird is going on with Kenzie's dad, though it appears her teammates know what's going on so I guess it's not some "she's literally controlling him somehow or he's a solid projection or some poo poo" situation like I was suspecting (from the fact he pretty much never says anything on his own without Kenzie nearby or prompting him).Omi no Kami posted:This is pure conjecture until the story actually clues us in to what his deal is, but given the absurd number of forms he appears to have, and the heavy emotional effect of each form, I was thinking that the limitations might be almost entirely self-imposed: it's possible he can cycle through all of his forms in a rapidfire fashion, replacing injured body parts and otherwise responding dynamically to the situation, but every single time he shifts he gets the full impact of that particular emotion, so going through more than one or two at a time makes him super-duper unstable and uncontrollable until he's had days or weeks to let everything run its course and water his mind down with extended doses of one or two happy parts of the emotional spectrum. That's a good point I didn't consider, particularly the "he can likely change during combat to some degree, even if it requires going to his "original" form between shifts." While Genesis could sorta do that, it took a while unless her real body was located right next to the combat area for whatever reason (which is generally a bad idea). PetraCore posted:On the other hand, an unexpected upside is that I'm pretty sure he's quite resistant to emotion-affecting powers, if not immune. Because his emotions don't shift dynamically and fluidly in the first place, I think even when not transformed there'd be a resistance, and when he's transformed, he's embodying one emotional and his experience of the rest of the spectrum seems to be extremely blunted, so there's not much someone can do to him. Love Lost was just making Mad Anxiety, well, mad anxious, and I'm pretty sure the same thing would have happened if she had just been screaming at him in an un-powered way. Wasn't he staggered by Victoria's aura during capture the flag? I could be confusing him with someone else, but I'm pretty sure he's one of the people she's done that to. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Mar 30, 2018 |
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Mar 30, 2018 18:41
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ZypherIM posted:My going theory is that Victoria was correct in her assessment of Kenzie's mom, meaning that she is her biological mom and had Kenzie when she was a teenager. The description of her just fits really well with her being Kenzie's biological mom, and [teenager not raising kid well] -> [trigger] -> [ward foster system] -> [gold morning] or [mom old enough and foster system had enough of that poo poo] just seems like it fits really well with what we know. I feel like Kenzie's power is one of the ones that could most clearly imply the likely cause of her trigger (in this case probably being something related to wanting to see/monitor something that she was either intentionally or unintentionally kept out of the loop about). edit: Heck, this has even come up explicitly, with her being upset about being "kept out of the loop" when it comes to group activities, etc.
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Apr 1, 2018 04:16
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I'm curious about how things are going to go with Tristan. I'm doubting he's actually an outright sociopath (since Byron seems to doubt it's the case*, and there isn't really anywhere to go with his character if that were true), but it's obvious that the situation mentioned by Moonsong is going to happen to some degree later, and she probably isn't wrong that he's going to try to use Rain or Sveta or something at some point. Also, after reading the Dot interlude, I'm a little confused by what the gently caress is going on with Riley/Bonesaw. In general I've always found her post-S9 character kind of confusing. Like, I understand that she did all this horrific stuff while under the heavy influence of her shard/Jack, but I don't really understand how a remotely sane human being could continue to exist with the memories of having done the sort of stuff Bonesaw has done. I also don't really understand why it seems we're supposed to perceive Nilbog as really wise? Like, the guy was a pretty bad person who just used his ridiculously powerful ability to take over a city and kill anyone who tried to take it back (or were rude to him or whatever). I don't know how "ruling over a bunch of life forms that seemingly worship you by default" gives a person great wisdom. * Though he didn't rule out the possibility
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Apr 2, 2018 20:22
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Atropha posted:And I don't think Nilbog was supposed to actually be wise, just come across that way. Some of that is probably because we're seeing things from Dot's perspective in that Interlude. Riley does seem to agree with him, but I think that's because they both seem to buy into their connection to their shard to a crazy extent. That's pretty much what he's getting at (in his own crazy way) when he tells Amy that she's supposed to act like the Red Queen. He's telling her to indulge her shard and you can almost see how that could be reasonable because Amy does tend to make herself miserable by keeping the lid on her powers. Of course we've also seen what happens when she does let loose, so this whole scene felt very much like establishing that Amy is hanging out with these people who think going hog-wild with their bio-bullshit powers is awesome and see it as art or kind of a mythological philosophy. I think framing Nilbog as being seen as this Great King from Dot's point of view serves to make us nervous about Amy talking to him and 'adopting' Dot at the end. That's a good point; I think part of why I didn't think of things from that perspective is that I had just assumed we were supposed to consider Amy's character arc mostly complete with the whole "she seemingly chilled out and got tattoos and poo poo" stuff (and the same to some extent with Bonesaw/Riley), though it obviously doesn't make sense logically for that to fix her issues. Speaking of which, she mentioned working with Marquis, right? How does that work, since I'm pretty sure Marquis is still a villain? The idea of Amy suffering from her interaction with Riley is an interesting direction for things to go. There are a bunch of potential vectors for future conflict; off the top of my head, the following come to mind: - Aforementioned "something bad with Amy" (our protagonist being Victoria contributes to this possibility to some degree) - Whatever is going on with the living machines - Whatever Teacher is up to - Conflict with other worlds (folks like Goddess, etc)
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Apr 2, 2018 21:20
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By the way, what is up with the machine plague anyways? I guess it makes sense for there to be some sci-fi "humans have been around a few thousand years longer" Earth variant, though such an earth could easily crush the others, parahumans or not. Speaking of humans fighting Parahumas, was the reason they never just rolled tanks/Apaches into Nilbog's domain related to Cauldron? Because I have trouble understanding why it would be so insurmountable to defeat him. A bunch of big monsters are strong, but not "could gently caress up a modern military" strong*. * The most dangerous parahumans when it comes to being a threat to greater society have always been folks like Strangers, certain Masters (like Valefor or something), and Tinkers capable of creating things like dimensional portals or plagues, rather than people like Alexandria. Or stuff like Regent's sister's ability (is that a Master ability?), which was frankly ridiculous and almost impossible to defeat unless you're immune to emotion powers or have Bonesaw's bullshit abilities. She could literally make people remotely kill themselves, lol.
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Apr 2, 2018 23:14
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By the way, the reason I thought Nilbog was portrayed as wise wasn't Dot's reaction to him, but rather the fact that Amy didn't seem to think what Riley's opinion was ridiculous. The main issue with my reading is that I overlooked the fact that Amy is still probably a very troubled person. edit: You know, I was just thinking - is there any reason Amy can't just replicate Nilbog's power? She can create life, after all (like the big beetle Taylor used was technically alive, even though she didn't give it much of a mind). Maybe it's just too hard for her to create a sapient mind or something? I can obviously understand why she wouldn't want to, but it seems like it should technically be possible. Omi no Kami posted:I remember reading a WoG about this (I think the poster had asked WB why they didn't firebomb Nilbog's kingdom), and at least in pre-GM world he said that the PRT had an entire army of high-level Thinkers running analysis for them, and every day they'd have each thinker run through a battery of questions along the lines of "For each S-class threat currently being monitored, what if we: blow it up, burn it, kick it, spit on it, leave it alone," and so forth. For a lot of threats, thinker analysis regularly indicated that leaving it alone was dramatically safer than any of their casual options for destruction. The main reasoning I can think of for not dropping bombs on Nilbog is that it's very possible he could just send a bunch of things out to wreak havoc if it seems like he was doomed (and I think his organisms probably survive even if he dies). So as long as he's not attacking anyone, it's the easiest option to leave him be. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 3, 2018 17:12
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Isn't Valefor's "updated" ability basically an objectively superior version of Canary's that doesn't require singing?
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Apr 3, 2018 20:58
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 04:17 |
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I feel like in practice it's a form of marketing, but not necessarily consciously so. Like it isn't exactly difficult for me to believe that wildbow just enjoys thinking up this setting and all its details.
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Apr 4, 2018 05:51
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