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Kinda disappointed in today's Practical Guide: If Sabah really is killed offscreen because of under-explained "story" magic, when the last we actually see of her fight is the Beast loving up the Champion's poo poo, I'll be pretty pissed. I know that it was an obvious place to end the interludes, right when the Bard and Tyrant have Black at his lowest, but still if she's gonna die I want to loving see it. My only thought is maybe she's not dead, or at least not fully - like they only could kill the Beast but she herself is still alive or something. Surely there's a meta textual reason for keeping the circumstances of her death deliberately vague when doing so is such a dick punch to the reader. I also re-read that last interlude and now I'm wondering about the Bard's finishing quip - '“This one feels like a sin, doesn’t it?” she mused. “Remember that, when the gears start turning.”' What does she mean here - that it feels like SHE'S commiting a sin, by targetting Sabah? Is she insinuating that she isn't fully on the side of Good?
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Oct 9, 2017 15:32
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Silynt posted:Kinda disappointed in today's Practical Guide: If Sabah really is killed offscreen because of under-explained "story" magic, when the last we actually see of her fight is the Beast loving up the Champion's poo poo, I'll be pretty pissed. I know that it was an obvious place to end the interludes, right when the Bard and Tyrant have Black at his lowest, but still if she's gonna die I want to loving see it. My only thought is maybe she's not dead, or at least not fully - like they only could kill the Beast but she herself is still alive or something. Surely there's a meta textual reason for keeping the circumstances of her death deliberately vague when doing so is such a dick punch to the reader. It's a reference to the Legion creed 'There is only one sin, defeat. There is only one grace, victory' and since Black lost decisively here she just burned him. I think that withholding Sabah's defeat is meant to obfuscate Black's defeat. It starts with Sabah winning against the Champion, moves on to show how Weska kills Hedge and blocks Kairos from loving with it and moves on to show how Black is currently winning against the White Knight before the curtain is pulled back and we see how Black was played every step of the way. We knew it was coming when the Tyrant revealed how Ashen Priestess was supposed to survive that if it wasn't for the Bard's meddling burrowing the Ashen Priestess death to fuel the Champion's victory against Sabah, that whole extended sequence was a to show how the Calamities fall contrasting with how the the Woes start to rise.
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Oct 9, 2017 17:31
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Mother of Learning updated, btw.
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Oct 9, 2017 18:08
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SITB posted:It's a reference to the Legion creed 'There is only one sin, defeat. There is only one grace, victory' and since Black lost decisively here she just burned him. Excellent point about the Legion motto, I totally forgot about that. That makes perfect sense. I agree with you about why it didn't seem like Sabah was going to lose when we last see her, it was definitely building dramatic tension. My point was that even after the curtain is pulled and it's revealed that she is the target, we don't even get to witness her death. It seems like a disservice to her character to just be like "Haha, your friend died" without even explaining how the fight turned around. That's why I said that TODAY'S chapter was disappointing - I wanted a Calamity IV showing her actual defeat, but instead it seems like that battle is just over and we're moving on.
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Oct 9, 2017 18:11
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Updated. I'm not going to usually spruik my own updates in here, but I think this chapter is a pretty good indication of the sort of thing I'm going for. It was one of my favorites to write, definitely.
Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Oct 10, 2017 |
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Oct 9, 2017 23:51
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Silynt posted:Excellent point about the Legion motto, I totally forgot about that. That makes perfect sense. After pondering the Calamity chapters, I actually sort of like the way the author did it. We don't actually need to see everything, and the aspect trigger is a perfectly fun climax.
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Oct 10, 2017 01:25
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The Bard is easily the most annoying char in practical. Woo woo I have the superpower of being a smug unkillable jackass who can teleport into anywhere to gently caress with people.
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Oct 10, 2017 08:34
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ugh its Troika posted:The Bard is easily the most annoying char in practical. Woo woo I have the superpower of being a smug unkillable jackass who can teleport into anywhere to gently caress with people. She is essentially heaven cheating personified if I understand properly. Makes sense she would be smug as she is.
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Oct 10, 2017 08:51
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NiknudStunod posted:I have been reading The iron teeth found over at http://www.ironteethserial.com. The story centers around a goblin slave rescued by bandits and the life he builds for himself after. The world seems to be very dark and chaotic and the characters reflect that It might be that I'm starved for reading material at work right now, but I read the entire backlog in the past 4ish days and it's real good and only gets better. Though I've skipped like every interlude but two.
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Oct 10, 2017 10:12
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Jade Mage posted:It might be that I'm starved for reading material at work right now, but I read the entire backlog in the past 4ish days and it's real good and only gets better. Though I've skipped like every interlude but two. I love character development and the author has done a great job with the main character. I will say the side characters could use some work but since they are not the focus of the story I can live with that.
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Oct 10, 2017 17:40
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Jade Mage posted:It might be that I'm starved for reading material at work right now, but I read the entire backlog in the past 4ish days and it's real good and only gets better. Though I've skipped like every interlude but two. It's light-weight, but fun, and eminently readable.
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Oct 10, 2017 19:54
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q_k posted:She is essentially heaven cheating personified if I understand properly. Makes sense she would be smug as she is. That's why I wonder how she'll interact with Catherine once the calamities are gone. Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but I feel like Catherine is the fantasy equivalent of WWII carpet bombing/atomic bombs. She believes she's doing good (as opposed to black who still thinks he's a villain), even though she often does bad things. She's like the incarnation of bad things for the right reasons, and I'm curious of the showdown that will eventually result. Catherine has become more 'good' over time, though her means have become more violent and destructive as well. It's like the opposite of the normal graph in which peacefulness and 'goodness' are correlated.
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Oct 11, 2017 10:15
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Meanwhile the Wandering Inn continues to manage to be surprisingly good at being heart warming. It's a rare thing that a series with a cast this large doesn't really have any characters I don't want to read about. My only concern is that (spoilers for latest Patreon chapter) Lyonette might turn into Erin #2, based on following similar character notes in the latest chapter. I'm pretty sure the author is good enough to avoid it, and it's consistent with everyone who interacts with Erin becoming more good, for lack of a better word. Hopefully it isn't a precursor to Lyonette being murdered in place of Erin. For a story that's so cheerful at times it also hits surprisingly dark and disturbing places (the corpse worm still creeps me out in a way few stories have recently). Anyway Wandering Inn is the only series I've starter patreoning and I'm consistently happy with it. Practical Guide is great too, but it suffers a bit like Worm in that there's little outside of the constant struggle.
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Oct 11, 2017 12:29
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I liked the juxtaposition between (3.22 spoilers) how Toren and Pawn handled their new found soldiers
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Oct 11, 2017 18:18
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Velius posted:Meanwhile the Wandering Inn continues to manage to be surprisingly good at being heart warming. I had a big dumb grin on my face the entire time reading that chapter. It was predictable, but after the last few chapters a nice change of mood.
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Oct 11, 2017 19:06
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I started the Wandering Inn a few days ago based on everyone's positive feedback, just finished book 1. It's really good. Miles different from the typical litrpg/isekai power fantasy stuff.
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Oct 12, 2017 17:46
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Milky Moor posted:Updated. I'm not going to usually spruik my own updates in here, but I think this chapter is a pretty good indication of the sort of thing I'm going for. It was one of my favorites to write, definitely. I haven’t read your serial yet, but I noticed you’ve already hit #18 on top web fiction. Good job man!
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Oct 15, 2017 13:55
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jon joe posted:I haven’t read your serial yet, but I noticed you’ve already hit #18 on top web fiction. Good job man! #17 now. That's pretty crazy! And it's #5 in the superhero category!
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Oct 15, 2017 22:22
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Twig is done now. Wildbow posted:Sorry this took a while to get out. My frame of mind was a little mixed in tackling it, with some considerable rewriting, and I struggled with it structurally for a good while. Hopefully it doesn’t show too severely.
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Oct 17, 2017 17:20
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The post on Pig's Pen makes some interesting points about where he thinks he dropped the ball a little in Twig. I think he's right that he waited too long to explain some things about the setting (in particular, if you don't read the About page first, it takes a long time to realize it's supposed to be the 1920s and not still the 19th century), and that a few bits dragged out too long (Sy and Jamie/Jessie visiting random towns and negotiating with two-bit gangsters).
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Oct 17, 2017 19:42
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The ending of Twig raises more questions than answers, but we do learn a few important things. Jessie and Helen are OK, at least. It's less clear how stable Sy's brain is now, and what exactly the Lord King just agreed to. Also, does his name being Adam mean that he was Wollstone's first experiment? Does the Lord King's "true body" look like the slug thing, or is it more human-looking?
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Oct 17, 2017 21:55
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Worm 2 incoming in 2.5-3 weeks. via IRC
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Oct 20, 2017 07:32
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I dunno if I'm ready for this. As an aside, I started reading Star Child and it's pretty good. About a kid with space warping powers that has to keep them secret because he lives in an orwellian state. Not really sure where it's going, though.
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Oct 20, 2017 07:39
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The Shortest Path posted:I dunno if I'm ready for this. It's...meh. The premise on which the thing was written is incredibly hard to take seriously in the first place. (Star Child spoiler)Mom had an affair, gave birth, and returned planetside _with the infant_ without any kind of detection whatsoever? Kind of hard to get past.
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Oct 20, 2017 08:20
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Did we ever find out anything more about Wildbow? I remember hearing he was a deaf man living in Canada but then saw a quote implying that wasn't true. I don't want to be all stalkerish or anything but when you've read a bazillion words by someone it's weird not have a basic, accurate bio.
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Oct 21, 2017 04:22
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TOOT BOOT posted:Did we ever find out anything more about Wildbow? I remember hearing he was a deaf man living in Canada but then saw a quote implying that wasn't true. I don't want to be all stalkerish or anything but when you've read a bazillion words by someone it's weird not have a basic, accurate bio. We know he's from Ontario, at least. http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/thinking-of-adopting-a-pen-name-thoughts Wildbow posted:I have the same problem - there's actually a fairly famous Canadian poet with my name, who was born in the same province (only 5-6 hours away from where I live). John McCrae - the author of 'In Flanders Fields'. Not sure if that has any traction in the states, but it's something you hear several times during every Remembrance Day in Canada (inspiring the poppy pin, which many will wear). Will people mistake me for him? No. But it does muddy the water some. We also now know he's male, which for a long time we didn't; I suspect more people assumed Wildbow was female than male for a while. Edit: Wildbow is "deaf but not Deaf," as explained here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/18yphm/what_is_a_common_problem_in_your_subculture_that/c8jfv3t/ Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Oct 21, 2017 |
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Oct 21, 2017 04:30
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Silver2195 posted:We know he's from Ontario, at least. I sort of assumed from the setting of Pact that he was in southern Ontario. The description of the town Blake lives in reminded me a lot of Hamilton, both from the geography and the proximity to Toronto.
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Oct 21, 2017 04:42
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NiknudStunod posted:I have been reading The iron teeth found over at http://www.ironteethserial.com. The story centers around a goblin slave rescued by bandits and the life he builds for himself after. The world seems to be very dark and chaotic and the characters reflect that I've read this and all the way caught up and it's a lot of fun. Thanks for the recommendation!
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Oct 21, 2017 04:46
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Another thing I just remembered: IIRC, when somehow in the comments complained about the high school parts of early Worm and suggested that writers include such things as a lazy way to draw on personal experiences, Wildbow mentioned that he himself did not attend a traditional public high school.
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Oct 21, 2017 04:47
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I can certainly appreciate writing under a pseudonym and trying to keep things close to your chest. It's pretty popular to determine whether something is bad or good based on the person behind it and not so much the craft of the work. I know a guy who was certain that WB was a woman because "they write the female characters so well", for example.
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Oct 21, 2017 05:03
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Milky Moor posted:I can certainly appreciate writing under a pseudonym and trying to keep things close to your chest. It's pretty popular to determine whether something is bad or good based on the person behind it and not so much the craft of the work. I know a guy who was certain that WB was a woman because "they write the female characters so well", for example. More than that, I think the assumption that Wildbow was female came from 1) the cuteness of his avatar and 2) his not correcting people who referred to him as female.
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Oct 21, 2017 05:07
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new worm chapter
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Oct 21, 2017 05:44
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That was enjoyable. Definitely much better than the last time skip.
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Oct 21, 2017 06:00
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Hot drat, I didn't realize Worm 2 was even a thing until an update showed up in my email.
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Oct 21, 2017 06:01
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Now that it's finished, does anyone have a complete epub/mobi of twig? I've tried to use the scraper on github and I really don't understand how to use it.
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Oct 21, 2017 06:09
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Nobody respond to that openly, please
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Oct 21, 2017 06:22
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Was there ever an audiobook version of Twig or Pact like there was for Worm?
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Oct 21, 2017 07:20
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Nope. I don't think Rein did Pact or Twig.
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Oct 21, 2017 09:14
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Huh, I didn't know Wildbow was deaf like me. (I haven't finished Worm yet by the way. I probably should.)
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Oct 21, 2017 13:50
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He should have just stopped writing for a few months and edited Worm full-time. I doubt it'd even be a problem with the Patreon people, especially if they got sent re-edited poo poo depending on their contributions.
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Oct 21, 2017 13:59
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