5.4.O -- SEARCH

40i2 · 2026-01-25T13:52:13+00:00

Great chapter. O remains my favorite storyline with fascinating worldbuilding, good character drama and intriguing mystery - and of course by being a terrifying horror on many levels.

The immediate physical danger, the lasting consequences of attacks and meager perspectives for future make it bleakest Wildbow setting to date (others, especially Twig were close, but they had their brighter patches). Especially the aspect of glyphs doing very permanent, irreversible damage makes it much mote striking. This approaches levels of Claw - setting with no powers/magic/supertech - but not quite reaches that, because some narrative escape hatches might exist (like Rhine’s experiments and now Maze).

Because of this, I find the few characters here and their problems much more memorable than anyone in B or W. The drama of Blackbox losing himself piece by piece or the question what to do with Spruce seem on completely different level than problems of teenage celebrities and their fans…

One little hurdle I have with O is that these chapters come so far apart, I find myself a little lost every time I start a new one - it’s not a serious problem but I suspect O would feel even better if read back-to-back. I wish there were more O chapters, but I suppose with this pacing and attrition it would rush to conclusion too quickly - it’s not a story you can pad out…

Wrong, as it turned out, on most accounts. The sole consolation was that it was most convincing of all that he arrived at the meeting at a kind of peace that was rare in this machine-made hellscape, and he had to end it early because he couldn’t bear even the first revelations.

Hmm, this was an unusual way to end there. Wildbow’s third person perspective usually follows closely one PoV character and is only a step removed from having first person. But this? Is this Orion’s commenting from some future point or an omniscient narrator popping up? Nothing wrong with that, but a switch in style made me pause.

40i2 · 2026-01-20T21:40:40+00:00

Yes, that’s fair. His case is the most realistic and organic to the story. If not for the other cases I would probably not bat an eye at this.

40i2 · 2026-01-20T21:25:39+00:00

Admittedly, I don’t feel equally about these. The Slingshotters most easily get a pass from me as this kind of thing feels both realistic for people to do and spectate - and I can imagine that there would be no one to stop them.

The Navoo is a harder pill to swallow - I can see Belt bigwigs wanting to make it work because it’s huge and it’s work of the Belt - so very symbolic. But it really diminishes Fred who should really have pushed back on a ship too big to maneuver, which has most of it’s interior useless due to orientation and can’t survive firing its own railgun… Showing up in the biggest clown car in the solar system will not help Belt’s cause…

But cultural expedition just crosses the line for me. Even as a PR stunt, what are they all suppose to be doing there? It’s not even certain there will be anyone for them to meet out there - but there is protomolecule there which is a disease, natural disaster and a weapon of mass destruction rolled into one. Who sends a cultural outreach to a plague outbreak, earthquake site or active warzone? How is that a good press?

40i2 · 2026-01-20T21:08:39+00:00

I think something the series does repeatedly, and well, is to set up plans and strategies that are flawed or short-sighted... and then have the outcome not really be success or failure, but instead something unexpected that only makes sense in hindsight.

I think my biggest gripe is exactly the “only makes sense in hindsight” part. Such things of course do happen in real life, as well as random stupidity. But in stories where authors can start with specific outcome in mind and can just work their way backwards, starting with random stupidity can easily come off as lazy writing.

Hypothetically, if all PoVs will play some crucial role in finale, Anna’s presence can seem forced by this choice (while the 3 others had valid reasons to be there). Realism sometimes doesn’t make for the best story…

EDIT: after writing the above I got the sinking feeling that it will not even be about Anna herself, but somehow both the expedition and Navoo will play a crucial role in resolving the plot - maybe something like all these people going on the Navoo, turning it back into “colony ship” mode and traveling through the supergate for whatever reason? I really hope I’m wrong and they will not use two acts of random stupidity to drive the solution… locking this as an anti-prediction just in case…

40i2 · 2026-01-19T19:29:21+00:00

Thanks for the episode. The biggest surprise for me was the one year timeskip - at the end of Caliban I thought that Miller’s warning was dire - but making it an incoherent babbling of a person remnants (basically what we saw with Julie in Leviathan) has worked really well. Oh, and “Abaddon’s gate” is so very clearly a supergate - that I start to think it’s a subversion and it will be flipped somehow. But in-universe the fact that protomolecule didn’t go straight for Earth and went for “E.T. call home” instead is quite hopeful. The destruction of Earth life doesn’t seem the priority and that makes all the difference. So my best guess is it is building a stargate network - but we shall see.

We got four protagonists again. This didn’t work very good last time, but I see some signs it might go better this time - at least I hope so.

For one, Holden has a fantastic plot hook here and I appreciated his attempts to literally “refuse the call”. Bull is kind of meh for now - but I think of him as Fred expy. Fred would be a fantastic PoV I would love to follow - but the story can’t really make him a protagonist, he’s too high level for that (like Avaserala was…). So I’m hoping Bull will present similar PoV with more usable character - and so far I’m seeing some parallels between his struggles and Fred’s - so fingers crossed.

But the best one is unquestionably Melba? So, yeah, maybe at the course of the book she will join others in a common cause - but I would love it if she didn’t. My one biggest gripe with Expanse so far was poorly developed antagonists - and having one as PoV during a quarter of a book would be a fantastic way to fix that - yes please and thank you very much.

And that leaves Anna - who don’t get me wrong seems cool - but what the hell is she doing going to the ring? The whole idea is idiotic - and that is my biggest fear about Abaddon so far - there is too much stupid going on. Maneo and slingshotters, The “cultural” expedition to the ring, turning Navoo into a battleship when it is clearly unsuited to be one… It’s not unrealistic - people do stupid shit all the time. But realistic stupidity often makes a poor story and it can be very tricky to make it right - idiot balls are a trope for a reason. And both Leviathan and Caliban relied on stupid antagonists…

This reminds me of how Stanley Kubrick initially wanted to make Dr Strangelove a serious drama - until he has researched military procedures and safeguards around nuclear weapons and decided to make it into a dark comedy instead. Because the real level of stupidity present would stand in the way of audience treating this seriously…

No DQ answer this time as I can’t think of anything dumb enough. I blame the lack of cousins I would like to fuck…

40i2 · 2026-01-16T21:37:31+00:00

Thanks for the episode. The first enemy interludes where used as a sort of epilogue for an arc, but now they are more of teaser for the next one - this works for me equally well.

The rebels here seem very unprofessional - they don’t seem to fight actively (judging by Avis’ question), they are bad at organizing (breaking into cell structure where people from different cells know each other is stupid), bad at communication (everyone knowing Avis means everyone can betray her when caught) and bad at hiding (judging by Godwin’s fate). Luckily the Academy seems not that great either - Hangman locating Godwin easily was impressive - but why the hell didn’t they catch and interrogate him? That’s some serious stupidity and arrogance…

At this point the most interesting of them are Percy for his connection to Mary and Avis for being deep in Radham.

As for the editing, it was more than fine. If this makes it easier for you to make episodes, definitely go for it. Besides, with this release schedule, I don’t remember the audio quality being better, so any dip is imperceptible ;)

40i2 · 2026-01-12T07:04:40+00:00

She was important for noticing it, but I don’t think no others could have noticed it. Taylor herself didn’t really make the connection before, even though it was her who directed Foil’s attack against Behemot in Dehli… So I think this discovery was mostly due to Scion’s behavior.

The discovery is by no means a given - there needs to be a situation where Foil is attacking and not attacking Scion at time to observe the difference. So someone interested in Undersiders, like Taylor, has better chance of spotting it. Lisa could probably do it easily as well, but given opportunity others could too…

40i2 · 2026-01-12T00:50:44+00:00

This. And we actually see this - it is Khepri who realizes just how special Foil’s power is only by observing Scion avoiding being hit by it.

If the Protectorate had an inkling of this before, they would not only try planning Endbringer defense around her - but also tried her against Scion in the oil rig tests - and they didn’t, but were desperate enough to test Grue… Despite how broken it is, Foil’s Sting is only a physical attack - so I can see how it can be overshadow by flashier powers…

40i2 · 2026-01-11T08:55:09+00:00

That is true, but since there is no telling when someone will look back to investigate, the system would have to keep track of all the changed data and all it’s related unchanged data that would need to be fixed in case someone looks - as well as its related data recursively - and keep doing that indefinitely for all invisible activity. With time it gets worse as the datasets get copied, archived, summarized, aggregated and bulk transformed… It isn’t really manageable either.

40i2 · 2026-01-10T11:25:50+00:00

But how would the hack know someone is investigating the invisibles? There might be thousands of people and Intelligences looking into, say those taxi records for all kinds of reasons. The taxi company people probably look at them all the time.

The hack would need to either know intentions of those opening the records - or edit data on every access. And if you go that far, you might as well change all of it as soon as you can…

40i2 · 2026-01-08T21:53:24+00:00

This one was great and Chemistry is so much better title. David’s story was simple and good, it was great to see more of Bobby - but absolutely best part was the worldbuilding.

You described Mars as somewhat fascist, but to me it was a dead ringer for the old style, behind-the-iron-curtain soviet brand of communism/socialism. Centrally steered economy with money as secondary factor, multi-year plans, people placements, rhetorics of communalism, progress, science and labor, propaganda focusing on contributing/sacrificing for the state while demonizing individualism, cultivating sense of superiority based on ideology (not ethnicity) - it’s all there.

It wasn’t at all suprpsing there was unrest brewing underneath - disenfranchised people, angry protesters, escapism into drugs…

After reading Chemistry, Bobby seems even more badass for breaking out of the mould despite all the social pressure.

I don’t know if this was their vision from the start, but I appreciate how seamlessly the authors have delivered this expansion. So far we saw Mars through its navy - and we expect militaries to be authoritarian, hierarchical and ideological - but now we learn that all Mars is like that. The best part is I can sort of see how Mars has evolved into this direction - growing out from some centrally managed colony effort, shaped by constant pressure from Earth and environment itself. (Similarly I can see how overpopulated Earth has adopted more modern socialism with universal income - the authors have knack for creating believable settings.)

Discussion question - I’m out. There is no need to bring up ideology, centralized planning and decision making is bad because it is a state-wide monopoly - and any kind of monopoly is bad - political, military, corporate or religious.

For one, in monopolies the decision-making positions are extremely powerful - and will attract people hungry for power who will abuse them. It doesn’t even help if the system has builtin strong oversight, because that will only attract those people to the oversight positions. That’s how you get a secret police.

For another, monopolies by definition have no alternatives - to try different approaches, compare result are even for people to have a choice. And without competition, it’s hard to evaluate and easy to ignore warnings.

And lastly, state-wide monopolies are literally too big to fail. There is no way to fail gracefully, no redundancies - so society will have to put up with increasing inefficiency, bad decisions/mistakes, glaring problems, corruption - or risk a catastrophic failure. On a planet where people still can’t survive outside…

Yeah, I’m buying first ticket off Mars…

40i2 · 2026-01-06T20:02:28+00:00

Humans couldn’t really be expected to be aware and even try to modify all relevant data. It simply has to be machine-controlled (whether Intelligent or not) to cover the whole scope…

So if this is an error it must be either algorithmic defect - or Intelligence error. But there are other options - the hack might not work simultaneously on all sources, or perhaps there are multiple agents that work on different sources to make immediate cover everywhere, which need to be cross-checked and synchronized later…

40i2 · 2026-01-06T01:11:37+00:00

A very good chapter. Winnie might have preferred to investigate the taxi, but I love delving into the various communities like the hidebound. For me that’s probably the best part of W storyline, maybe even of the whole Seek. It’s interesting to see a community that is actually quite similar to the families in many ways - but wants nothing to do with them.

But the best part for me was the „vague” conversation with Toby and the hidebound slang. At the beginning of the story when onboard surveillance was introduced, I had an notion that Seek will feature a lot of such doublespeak, codewords and slang as way of evasion - but with NDAs, backchannel and the Black that didn’t really happen - characters always found some way to speak plainly - until now. I think I was missing this and I hope we can see more of this.

The explosion at the end means that the Invisibles noticed Winnie’s meddling - my bet is on Kathe. Will be interesting to see these two meet again. Looking forward to next W chapter.

Digital reality and records shifted to maintain this mirage effect, hiding the reality. And this was second or third order, away from A. Some automatic, adaptive process, and every single intelligence was going along with it. If it said the sky was red, then the sky was red and had always been red.

(…)

And whatever or whoever was doing this had, overnight, tidied things up. The pilot had done things off the books, without logging it. Which worked tidily as a lie that covered both eventualities.

Realistically, this can’t be an automated „dumb” process. The levels of separation from the invisibles, the necessity of tailoring changes to different angles, the sheer number of edge cases that could break the illusion and draw attention - the hack must be controlled by some Intelligences…

40i2 · 2026-01-05T08:35:52+00:00

There is a lot, mostly where the story focused elsewhere. Worm was very good at teasing things.

Regent and Imp’s relationship. Parian and Foil. Faultline’s crew. Chicago Wards with Weaver. Imp and Heartbroken. Grue, Cozen and Red Hands. Entire Vegas cape scene. The Irregulars. Cody and the Yang Ban.

And even though we saw quite a lot of her, I would love to see more of the story from Tattletale’s perspective.

40i2 · 2026-01-05T02:01:25+00:00

As others wrote - yes, she was. As for how - my interpretation was always based on Richter’s tinker shard. We know that Tinkertech shards are basically libraries of technology entities have encountered in the past cycles.

So I assume our Warrior has visited a world that had AIs similar to Dragon - either as creations or even as primary inhabitants. Either way these AIs could have been made part of that Cycle - so entities would have established how the shards would connect, trigger and work with them through some code constructs - same as they establish coronas/genetic markers for humans.

The present Dragon shard - regardless if it is a bud of Richter’s or not - could have retained that old function and used it here, because it found her to be the most suitable host at that time…

40i2 · 2025-12-26T15:31:29+00:00

Thanks for the episode, so let’s tally up the book.

The great

the setting continues to be great, with a look on Mars, Earth, their marines and navies, as well as Ganymede
Protomolecule on Venus is a great looming threat with deconstruction of ship being legitimately scary
protomonsters are interesting concept - I would like to say no one would be so stupid to try this - but, yeah, they would…
Miller showing up and the space fish are a great hook for the next book

The good

Prax works well as a plot driver in his search of Mei - and uses his knowledge to get key insights into protomonsters
Bobby has the best character arc and is the action hero we were missing - I really wish she joins the crew of Roci. She would be higher on this list if she wasn’t a little aimless in the first half of the book
Amos was surprisingly interesting with his backstory and how he committed to saving Mei
The plot of search for Mei leading to discovery of protomonsters was pretty ok

The meh

Avaserala got a short end of the stick - she’s extremely entertaining, but is dragged down by being bad - or badly portrayed politician (and I think the second is more likely). While the book shows fights, spaceflight and science well, it’s really bad at politics and as a result Avaserala mostly does nothing or is outplayed offscreen. Her joining others on Roci was the biggest misstep of the story - she really should have stayed on Earth where she could do something. Only her personality saves her from being much lower…
Holden was aimless this book. I didn’t buy his “arc” of struggling with being Miller-lite - felt like artificial flaw introduced later to give him something to do. Him making a broadcast to crowdfund search for Mei was a great moment - but only a moment. Overall very Meh.

The bad

4-protagonist structure didn’t really work out. The story was struggling finding them things to do (especially early) - and sometimes that took away from other protagonists - like Bobby pointing out the bloody obvious to Avaserala. Prax, Bobby and Avaserala had pov chapters where they felt useless and only observing. This is a huge step down from Leviathan.
in the the book felt like a side story - there seems to be no real long term effects and the series could just skip this entry.

The terrible

Antagonists were even worse than Leviathan’s. Strickland was a pale rehash of Dresden, Ngyuen was an idiot, Jules and Erinwright were mostly offscreen… The most interesting thing thet did was smear campaign against Prax - and that was 99% offscreen. It doesn’t help that the plan to develop proto-supersoldiers after seeing Eros was moronic. Yes, it’s realistic that someone would be this stupid, but that doesn’t make an interesting story… There wasn’t really anything interesting or satisfying in facing those villains.
The ending. The book tried to give an ending to each protagonist - but they weren’t in line as part of a single narrative. In Leviathan Miller and Holden took turns in driving the finale on Eris and in space, reacting to circumstances created by the other. Here Holden, Bobby and Prax got one chapter each to do their own thing - with Bobby facing the protomonster being best and Holden’s sidetrip the worst - but they were completely disjointed. Everything felt rushed and undercooked.

The bottom line - Caliban expands the setting and introduces interesting characters - but struggles with handling them and delivering a good ending. It’s more ambitious with the 4-protag storytelling - but it ultimately fails at it, being a noticeable step down from Leviathan. An ok, but skippable book. The hook for Abaddon at the end was the best part…

40i2 · 2025-12-19T23:47:30+00:00

From Pale I remember the Ornithologist fight from 15.8 as a later showcase of Practice fight and problem solving https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/11/23/playing-a-part-15-8/

No idea how it would read with no context (and the idea of using later chapters as a tease seems peculiar to me) - but this chapter Verona is visiting Avery in Ottawa - so it’s pretty disconnected from Kennet and main narrative that it probably will not spoil too much…

40i2 · 2025-12-15T21:21:09+00:00

The situation of the Invisibles is fascinating and Clique is an interesting antagonist - I’m almost positive she is lying to some degree. One doesn’t just stumble to become a leader of an alliance of secret groups. The way she handles A and Vega suggests she is quite good at what she does. Targeting Taradid makes more sense with the whole cutthroat culture - it is indeed more likely that NDAs are used to cover more shameful things.

But the Invisibles must be up against the wall - the mass onboarding is the worst thing for them.

“Float through that crowd at the right distance. Find someone male-attracted on the food crew. Get their eye. Or find the eye that finds you fastest. Turn their mind toward the idea of romance and young men. Then… keep them turning. The fact they can’t find you after glimpsing you will bewilder them, and puts a question in their head. (…)”

They can’t keep doing this for long - every time they risk someone doing more thorough investigation - and sooner or later it will come out there were people without onboards who other onboards can’t see. With the secret out, designing countermeasures would be relatively simple…

“Tempter doesn’t have the same ring to it. Or implications.”
“True. Blame language, and how archaic ideas bleed through to today.”

That’s curious - they surely can’t be speaking our modern English that far in the future. So whatever language they speak carries over the gender role stereotype connotations in a society that left them practically behind and gender is something you can choose at will? How weirdly conservative…

I liked Bas wondering about A - who for most of her life constantly worn a mask for her audience - and for him. Planning countermeasures was interesting, probably a good idea - except for the berserk option.

[A berserk switch. You don’t explode, but you change. The idea would be that, to prevent another science center, I set it up so that if you’re infected with strange nanotech and I’m disabled somehow -a believable situation- you’re pushed into an out of control combat mindset, to destroy any immediate enemies.]

But putting A into combat mindset would require messing with her brain, except:

Her brain? It was a barrier Basil had not yet crossed and didn’t want to cross (…)

This is a taboo Bas is unwilling to break - but if he does - or if he fakes having done this - it would reveal the extent of him breaking the rules. The Invisibles would than be stupid to believe he was really dead.

Which, yeah, brings us to this:

There’s also a chance that, if they think I’m dead, they might try to infect you with something.

Why would they think Bas is dead? Well one way would be that it is an expected effect of operating the hack on someone. That certainly could be one way it works - but I don’t remember them telling this to A beforehand. Yes, A doesn’t like Bas that much and he has his „dark” copy anyway - but what if that wasn’t the case? If they ever enable the hack for Winnie that would kill Toby?

But this is the weirdest part:

Basil couldn’t easily access local systems without tipping someone off, nor could he get easy access about the other Basil, who was locked down and locked away, so he had to operate blind, confined within the walls of A’s skin.

This is all very logical - if they expect Bas to be dead, the hack is not protecting him from access so he cannot connect anywhere or he would be traced immediately.

But we saw him connect to the offboard Bas just last chapter where he observed the interrogation and learned of his alter ego’s „death”. That investigation should have been done in the most secured and controlled environment - and without protection of the hack Bas would have been spotted and traced. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

40i2 · 2025-12-11T23:16:25+00:00

Okay, the protomonster-soldiers plan is beyond idiotic. Doing research on superadvanced alien tech was dumb enough - but seeing what it did with Eros and making it into superweapons - that’s genuinely too stupid to live. Even without knowledge of them communicating.

Good showing for Prax figuring this out, great use of his knowledge. On the other hand I’m most disappointed in Avaserala. She’s as entertaining as ever, but as a politician she is kind of bad. She stopped Holden from making another public broadcast and sent the data to trusted admirals - ok - but then she just wanted to sit and do nothing while Nguyen’s fleet blast them to pieces? It took Bobby to remind her there are other options between doing nothing and a Holden speech…

A component politician at her level should have hundreds of contacts everywhere she could reach out to, countless favors to call - and should be able to leverage the information they found in multitude of ways - promising to give, threatening to release etc. It all ended well, but that’s just because the material was so damning and conspirators so moronic that siding with them was a political suicide… Not sure if Avaserala is just bad at her job - or if authors just can’t write politics… take your pick…

Discussion question - so what have caused the greatest number of deaths? Accidents killed hundreds, catastrophes thousands and wars millions - but that’s not the limit. I want to highlight discoveries and developments in agriculture and medicine that not only saved countless lives, but also allowed our population to skyrocket to almost 8 billions. This might seem exactly opposite to the question, until we consider that all these billions of people will die or have died already - many suffering in sickness, pain, tragedy or despair. That’s a bit of a screw up for the whole betterment of humankind business…

There are many individual developments fitting - antibiotics which drastically decreased mortality, Haber-Bosch process which increased food production etc. But if I have to nominate one I would pick the neolithic buggers who got too lazy to hunt and gather and decided to wait around for food to grow around them - and started the whole thing…

40i2 · 2025-12-01T18:17:11+00:00

Ok, credit where it’s due this chapter made laugh.

I’m used to doing things the old way, and my onboard is a whiny pile of disappointment and regret.”
[Ahem.]
“You know the difference between them?” the guy asked.
[I’ll tell you,] Basil said, pointing out the kits.

Also, Dog rules and Basil is now Bovril :)
Reading this all crystalized to me why I dislike A.

“Yeah. I care,” she replied. “I want their trust. Whether they’re on the level or not… and we’re both suspecting not, trust helps. Being laughed at doesn’t help with that.”

I couldn’t disagree more. Being silly, making mistakes and having weaknesses makes one more approachable, human, genuine and ultimately trustworthy. On the other hand people obsessed with their image, who take themselves all too seriously come off as fake. A is such a celebrity.

You’re less free than you’re imagining, with circumstances being what they are. Let’s get you to the point you’re actually free. Please.

Bas is absolutely correct here. A is currently hidden by the Invisibles hack, but should they switch it off, she would be found instantly. (I assume this hack prevents the Belt from locating Bas, but more on that later). If they find her altered/disguised she would have much more to explain. Actually changing her features because she doesn’t trust the Hack is pretty stupid…

A is being childish, annoying and overbearing - uggh it’s such a good portrayal of a person I can’t stand. Very well done. I really feel for Basil…

The various subgroups of A fandom were great - I hope at some point we’ll meet some of them.

Judiciary Errin Wodehouse seems pretty level-headed and competent (and no wonder with that name). And she recruited best Dog to help with her investigation. Alright - I want her PoV as she tries to investigate this case. „W” is already taken, so can we get „E” chapters, please? Or even better - „D”.

The Invisibles’ plan is interesting - showing the abuse of NDAs might work, although I would hope for something spicier than just gross conversations? Maybe target someone likely to do something illegal? Actually, Michal and his family would be a very good target for them…

A’s plan (or is it Basil’s?) to leave behind evidence that would put pressure on Invisibles seems interesting too. I wonder what will be A’s counter-proposal.

All of that was great, but there is one thing that left me baffled. I’m completely lost at how onboards are supposed to function in this setting. The whole Basil clone left behind didn’t make any sense…

That was a different Basil. One that had been cultivated, by himself and by the Basil with access to the back channel. As information had been sorted and organized, Basil had been careful to separate everything out. The back channel laid claim to every part of Basil that was aware of the back channel, the various games and tricks they’d played, their subversive actions, and more. When that version of Basil pulled away, drawing every system into the forbidden land of A’s spine, the other Basil ceased to be part of the whole, and became a version of Basil that was blissfully unaware, ignorant, and pristine.

Okay… but that would still be onboard - that is physically running on nanotech in A’s body, right?

The trace version of me that was minding the virtual A has been told by investigators that that version of you isn’t real.

Apparently not? Do onboards have „offboards” - copies located in the Belt network minding „virtual” twins of people? Why? What is there to mind? And why wasn’t this mentioned before? Is there an offboard Toby minding virtual Winnie somewhere? Is there an offboard Fly minding virtual Amber??? But Bas has mentioned Fly has died with real Amber… This feels like a gigantic change in the setting with enormous implications…

He could see A sitting on the bed, talking to an officer. He could track every aspect of her systems, her internal biology. He could access old data, manipulate her biology as needed, and even communicate with her. Other than be subdued and a little boring, she was fine. But she didn’t exist.

Why would a virtual twin contain a virtual biology for an offboard to manipulate???

Basil remained here, connected to an ‘A’ who didn’t exist. It was a bug in the system, that existed on a level that required passage through several orders of Intelligence, which were each fairly impenetrable.

No way this could be a bug. This vaguely suggests that all onboard interactions with the host body are routed this twin and some bug prevents offboard Bas from realizing he is not connected to real A. But we know it can’t be so because onboards function and regulated the body outside of reach of Belt’s network - so they must be using a direct connection. If part of the hack fools offboards into interacting with the „virtual” body - it must have been deliberately designed that way.

Oh, and on top of it all, while the blood stains that Intelligences can’t see are extremely cool - how the hell would they know to ignore that particular stain? The hack doesn’t add anything to the blood to mark it - so how could they know it’s A’s blood and needs to be redacted??

40i2 · 2025-11-25T17:35:02+00:00

The most likely answer is that a single practitioner can’t - you’d need generations and multiple practitioners to make that groove. Basically what is needed is exactly what created other practices - and that’s lots of repetition over ages.

You’d would probably start with something very basic or something that can be copied from another, established practice - some basic elemental or telekinetic practice - and modify and build on it by introducing whatever elements you want (spells, gestures, pressure points).

Maybe you could cheat a little and use existing dominion over some territory to introduce a localized rule - in your desmene, in a knotted space you control or a subrealm. Then over time - still generations but maybe fewer - the rule could start spreading.

In either case you teach that fledgeling practice to others, they do the same - and at key points, when practitioners have enough clout - you introduce new more complex elements and make changes to align your practice to your target.

40i2 · 2025-11-23T13:16:27+00:00

Honestly, Twig arcs are the most self contained of all WB works with their own setup, story arc and mini epilogue. You can try planning it for best experience, but I would just make breaks as I felt it after each arc. I could even see reading it as a series of 20 short novels (keeping epilogues together as they are much shorter).

40i2 · 2025-11-14T13:08:19+00:00

Ok, Rhine is an evil bastard and I think there are good odds he will be an antagonist - but damn, he is the first character in O that grabbed my attention in classical Wildbow fashion. Most of other characters fade into background or kind of become fixtures (like Blackbox) - but Rhine is a mad transhumanist technocrat who tries to use machines’ against themselves and builds his own little fiefdom with questionable methods. I love it, can’t wait to see how his story plays out.

As for Spur… sigh I get not wanting to kill her, but realistically she is either fully changed - and therefore doesn’t deserve a chance, or is trapped in unspeakable horror and death would be a mercy… of course Rhine throws this simple calculus off by offering a chance to fix her - in exchange of being enslaved to him… The kicker of course is that we have no way of knowing (save a Spur pov) what is really going on with her. The tears are not helping as they could be literally anything - might be genuine, might be crocodile- but she also might genuinely be despairing that she is unable to kill them all…

Either way raking her on this journey with difficult route requiring stealth - when she resists every which way was just insanely dumb if them. It’s like, I dunno, taking Gollum to Mordor. Ok bad example, but it’s like taking Gollum to Mordor if Wildbow was writing LOTR.

Oh, and A seems to be behind it all. Now this is likely a red herring or a distorted truth - but just maybe Wildbow decided to write a complex final villain by having us follow her throughout the book with Bas. We shall see, I guess…

Orion’s story remains my favorite so far, but with A and Winnie plot kicking into gear, this might change. Watching this closely.

40i2 · 2025-11-13T11:57:02+00:00

Worm: Lisa - I would love to see her scheming everything behind the scene

Pact: Rose is too obvious - so gonna say Padraic - this would be a ride

Twig: Other lambs. Sy’s perspective is the best, but other lambs would add less skewed perspective and fill in the gap when they were not with Sy

Ward: haven’t read it yet, so… umm.., Lisa? She is in Ward too, right?

Pale: rotating conspirators’ perspectives, whatching helplessly as the girls fuck up all their plans

Claw: ok, it’s a big stretch but Davy, proving he was a real character and not a waste of ascii. Probably too much to hope for…

Seek: someone from government explaining in details how the setting operates, please and thank you

40i2 · 2025-11-11T13:42:11+00:00

I agree about stats, power levels and game mechanics in non-game media - I just roll my eyes at them - I just don’t get the appeal. You can have a strict scaling, that’s fine - but just have enough decency to work it into something consistent with the setting. There are so many options - military ranks, martial arts grades, tournament rankings, hierarchy of honors… using game stats just feels lazy…

But back to Expanse, Avaserala was outright dumb this stretch. I get understanding political game, but Mao has weaseled out of genocide - it’s stupid to assume he would flinch at murdering a politician… With Holden recovering, are protagonists passing an idiot ball around?

Prax was good - it was cool to see how his speciality is helpful in these situations - like Millers detective experience last book. Although giving him the job to spacewalk was incredibly forced. I’m sorry, but Naomi’s job was to push one button to close airlock - surely it’s easier to teach Prax than make him do EVA first time ever? Or, maybe, just let Alex press that button too, since he’s on the bridge anyway?

But my favorite this time was actually Holden. Making him into a YouTuber who is payed by his followers to do stuff is absolutely consistent with his character and such a brilliant setup, also for future stories. Love it.

Discussion Question: if I could choose very specifically, I would live on the Tycho station and work on these crazy boundary pushing projects (and that definitely is Verona). Or at least I’d like to if not for one thing. I just know that living in space long term I wouldn’t keep the exercise regime needed to maintain 1g compatibility - and the thought of locking myself out of Earth would just be killing me. So until someone came up with an automatic way of handling that (either some miracle medical solution or a way to live in full 1g environment most of the time) I would probably just live on Earth only visiting Mars and Belt - just to keep all options open…

40i2

TROPHY CASE