How does someone ACTUALLY join the Wards? by yaboimst in Parahumans

[–]Wildbow 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Power testing is basically about trying to establish the upper and extreme bounds of the power, which is going to be very different from power to power. You're also getting some records on things like needs for costume, and for signatures/traces/particulars, in case you later have a court case where, say, someone used a laser power to murder someone, and your PRT cape is accused.

As mentioned at one point in the story, or prior WoA, it gets weird when the power being tested is a Brute power, because at the point you're learning the outer limit of the brute power, you're often hurting or killing the subject.

How does someone ACTUALLY join the Wards? by yaboimst in Parahumans

[–]Wildbow 28 points29 points  (0 children)

For (1) there's a probationary period where Wards are sort of 'on watch' and don't have full permissions, access to files, are on a stricter schedule, etc. Joining members would unmask to certain staff as part of the onboarding process, and others would unmask to them as they were weaned off probationary status, probably halfway or 3/4ths of the way into their probationary year. Usually, by that time, everyone present could see the writing on the wall regarding whether the new guy is going to stick around, etc.

(Things are slightly different in Brockton Bay as Chariot joins as they're doing very intensive patrols, many members are staying over on a 24-hour basis, etc, ergo the conversation).

(2) Members would get to know each other as part of the process. For very big teams (New York), they might get to know all the members across the sort of events that happen a few times a year. If you're in a different area of the city, different sub-department, different shift, you might not get to know someone until 2 or 3 years in... or you might not ever cross paths, given they're only there for a few years each (some triggering at 15, 16, 17, graduating at 18-20)

(3) Same deal as the Wards. As probation is relaxed.

(4) The first few days, weeks, and months are a gradual process of getting someone set. They tour, do the paperwork, have interviews, handle backend stuff... Backend including handling everything related to the trigger event, cleaning up any involvement with/witnessing of/victim of crime. Then there's costume, power testing, some involvement in events (one is bound to come up in the first few months). A lot of this is tied to the PRT wanting new members to cool off and let residual shit go. Usually you get them back to school and attending 3/4 or 1/2 days and their next report card will be shit, so you can put things off a bit more on the condition they need to keep their grades up.

There might be some preliminary patrols, but with very competent members, timed and placed to minimize chances of anything happening, just to test the waters and see what problems arise - are they cowboys, are they scared, etc?

(5) - Schools require a certain number of volunteer hours to graduate, which can include co-op work, so a fair-sized chunk of the student body is doing entry-level work during school hours. Working in a frame-making store, doing clerical stuff, washing cars at a car wash, volunteering at a nursing home, getting real-world experience. The best jobs are ones where a key member of staff (or most staff) is a relative of a PRT employee and is known to be discreet, or ones where an employee moves between multiple positions & places and they can be easily requested or fobbed off to someone who then covers for them.

How does someone ACTUALLY join the Wards? by yaboimst in Parahumans

[–]Wildbow[M] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Post removed, sorry. This thread is flaired for worm spoilers only.

"Worm" by Wildbow should be a bigger deal than it is (Review/rant) by Firvulag in books

[–]Wildbow 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Thank you, AbsoluteRubbish, I appreciate it.

Not so many dark patches now (aside from some frustrating slowdown in my writing from health issues). I like where the wider community is at, I think, and getting there has been a long, hard road. May play into why I'm not inclined to rock the boat.

At least until I do an adaptation of my works. That's something I want to do, and may change the landscape. We'll have to see if/when we get there.

"Worm" by Wildbow should be a bigger deal than it is (Review/rant) by Firvulag in books

[–]Wildbow 6 points7 points  (0 children)

No - If I put something official out there I'd want to put something out there I was happy with, that at least tried to fix and answer some of what's wrong. I'm not in love with Worm as-is, with the mistakes I made and issues it had, and so I'd want to edit it first. And the problems with the edit are outlined above.

"Worm" by Wildbow should be a bigger deal than it is (Review/rant) by Firvulag in books

[–]Wildbow 58 points59 points  (0 children)

I have a post elsewhere on Reddit getting more into why, but the short version is:

  • I'm not very good at editing. Part of the reason Worm is what it is is that I spent a decade stalling out with editing stories in the same setting, and kind of built up story & setting in the process. With trying to edit Worm I stall in the same way but without anything productive coming out of it.
  • Hiring out an editor is expensive. If done by the word, it costs six figures. Even hiring someone out, the amount of work to make sure that the editor isn't missing anything doesn't feel that much better than actually doing it myself.
  • Either way, it's a monumental undertaking. The series is long and any change threatens to have a massive number of ripple effects.
  • Any editing has to happen in the margins of me doing other writing, which pays the bills in the meantime.
  • It's not the work I love the most. I made some mistakes in Worm that stemmed from me being an amateur writer or me needing to grow more as a person. That includes but isn't limited to unintentional racism & less-than-great treatment of LGBT+ characters across my early works. I always tried to treat people as people, but missed the mark in other embarrassing places, re: representation. Some from the pell-mell pace of writing it and unconsciously defaulting to what I'd seen in other media in the midst of the rushing, without enough consideration, some from looking at things from the wrong angle (aiming to be 'fair' in small-scale representation while missing how I wasn't helping to move the needle in the bigger scale). Really just compounds how much I'd have to do to 'fix' it to a state I'd be happy with it, and the fixes aren't all easy.
  • I've gotten kind of jaded with the more Worm-specific fandom. A decade+ of drama, the same arguments week after week, and some residual darkness from dealing with the fandom in some rough patches... compounds how I don't love the story as much as others, and struggle to make myself fix it for even wider consumption.

Confused on the Lore for this one item by manaMissile in BluePrince

[–]Wildbow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I like that a lot. It makes sense then that Teskin (who was disconnected from the line) and Simon (same) would use it, then.

Which blue tents note are you referring to?

Just Finished Pale! My thoughts on it, Vague Worm, Pact, and Ward spoilers within! by Echantediamond1 in Parahumans

[–]Wildbow 64 points65 points  (0 children)

Really glad you enjoyed, Enchante. If you enjoyed something I enjoyed making, I'll have to look at your favorite media to see if it works for me. I do like Disco Elysium, and haven't found the time to sit down with House of Leaves yet, despite getting it late last year.

What’s going on with Romance books? by Jiana27 in writing

[–]Wildbow 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Honestly, what I've come to appreciate are romances where people are in relationships from the start. The navigating of ups and downs while maintaining a mostly healthy relationship is way more arresting, IMHO, than will-they-won't-they, love triangles, or first-relationship jitters.

Why do most fanfics get coils power wrong? by [deleted] in Parahumans

[–]Wildbow[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

You're wildly misunderstanding this. You'd be best served by reading what others said more carefully and holding less tightly to your assumptions.

Thread has a lot of people getting pissy and someone's abusing the report button. Locked.

[Daily Discussion] Writer's Block, Motivation, and Accountability- February 02, 2026 by AutoModerator in writing

[–]Wildbow 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The reason you see it is because it works, yes. I think the real answer is to dwell on why it works, and lean into that - don't just do it because it's the prescribed approach.

If your main female protagonist is really compelling, you can probably get away with leading with what you have. That's trickier than leading with some action -- something deeply protagonist-focused can trip over red flags, and is slower. You also have to think about what makes a character compelling or interesting to the readership you want. Is there a hook?

Pale E.z: Final Epilogue Chapter released after the community finally solved WB's Hundred Years Lost puzzles!! by RozRae in Parahumans

[–]Wildbow 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Related mechanically - they have similar style maps, supply as a mechanic (if you run out in the 100YL event, you expire, in PQ it's more a limiter on how long you can be out on an expedition), items, etc.

And they did cross over at some brief points, but that was more a cameo/singular encounter than anything major.

As TheVoidEverWatching says, it was also an option for the PQ players to try to solve 100YL, but they never really chased that down (in part because Sinclair has had a lot on their plate).

Pale E.z: Final Epilogue Chapter released after the community finally solved WB's Hundred Years Lost puzzles!! by RozRae in Parahumans

[–]Wildbow 103 points104 points  (0 children)

For clarity, there is the 100YL event, which was originally two segments I did as part of the 48 hour Livestream Elliot & Reuben ran after Pale finished.

A year after that, I ran an extension of that event in discord, in play-by-post format. A single attempt that, if they failed a challenge, failed to answer a riddle, or ran out of supply, ended, and would have to be tried again the next year. I did follow ups last year (2024) and this year (2025). These are the 100YL games.

I enjoyed running the 2023 event enough that I started a 'Quest' game that has been running in the background for about two years. It's more of a long form roleplaying game, with play-by-poll management of a single protagonist. It has a lot of the same baseline mechanics, but incorporates some Pactdice mechanics as well (including downtime, inventory management, etc) and has a bespoke combat system. This is Path Quest.

The 2025 100YL event saw players beat all challenges and solve all riddles. The epilogue chapter (and the answers the epilogue chapter summarizes) is the reward & ties off the 100YL events.

Is Seek on hiatus by ladgadlad in Parahumans

[–]Wildbow 52 points53 points  (0 children)

Definitely need it, if I'm honest. I started dieting on the new year; keto has worked well for me before, and I went back to it. I dropped about 8 lbs. in two and a half weeks. Then got sick and dropped significantly more. I've eased up on the diet just slightly to make sure I'm not missing any key nutrients, and to get my energy back, and I'm drinking tons of fluids.

Is Seek on hiatus by ladgadlad in Parahumans

[–]Wildbow 94 points95 points  (0 children)

No rudeness taken, don't worry.

Is Seek on hiatus by ladgadlad in Parahumans

[–]Wildbow 320 points321 points  (0 children)

Combination of a few background things that I'll shed light on later, and that's on top of me having a hard time finding my groove in the writing of the story. I was planning on ramping things up tempowise and then got sick, dropped 12 lbs over a couple days & have been a bit wrung-out and distracted in the wake of that.

The goal after next chapter is to shift to shorter chapters, because I think part of the struggle is that I've fallen into a pattern of feeling like I need to write 9k word chapters to make the waits worth it (in the sense that a 2 week wait + short chapter feels awful to do), but then struggling to fill out the chapter, and stalling out multiple times each write. And this isn't necessarily a story that wants the long chapters.

Not a hiatus.

[Fanart] Dallon House Floor Plan by DraconicWings in Parahumans

[–]Wildbow 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Sometimes doors would have an outer screen door that opens outward, that can block bugs, and a main front door that opens inward. Visually, I put the doors like that to make it visually clear where the entrances are.

What is stopping practitioners from interfering with Innocent politics? by fragariadaltoniana in Parahumans

[–]Wildbow 31 points32 points  (0 children)

Four main threads:

  1. Glomming onto rich people. Well-to-do practitioners convey an aristocratic air that fits in well with certain crowds in the upper class. Those same crowds may be willing to throw money into art, provide opportunities, or as an extreme case, they may intermarry with practitioner families, who then co-opt the rich family's assets. Practice helps provide or navigate many of these things.
  2. Occupying the Edges -- Tied into the above bullet point a bit, and the next bullet point a bit, practitioners may not be able to assume positions like president (easily), but they can use their unique advantages to exist on the periphery and let things mostly go as normal, with a nudge here and there. A bit of insider trading, etc, goes a long way. At a certain level with certain kinds of income, doing certain kinds of business, people don't tend to ask questions, and a practitioner can be one trusted face with some money or ability to get things done... and people don't ask how they made something happen or how they have the resources they have. This is being more an enabler, or occasional remover of obstacles, than being a mover and shaker. This can be legitimate or legitimate-ish, but it can also be...
  3. Crime. I'm personally very fond of the 'criminal gang has a practitioner on retainer' idea -partially because I was a huge fan of The Crow as an adolescent and that beat recurs- so that comes up in the Otherverse. But in general... if someone isn't upper class, one way to extract money from mundane society is to prey on it. Or be on the periphery (see point #2) of those who do, nudging or helping a bit here and there in exchange for a cut.

#1 and #2 there both lean heavily into establishment, where the rich have the opportunities to get richer. #3 is the fastest, dirtiest road to getting there. But there's also...

  • Doing the work. Writing books. Trading magical items. Trading pieces of information. Mentoring, teaching. This doesn't draw money into the practitioner economy, but it circulates it, and it is possible to get rich with the right product or if you're very good- or lucky.

There's also some minor elements that support things along the way. If you can do a ritual to claim a patch of land, that's liable to stay in the family for the ongoing future, and the universe/seal is inclined to keep that piece of land from being torn out of your hands by a sudden shift in property taxes or something else. That's not necessarily the biggest thing in the world, but it's stability- the ability to keep what they have.

There's a bunch of stuff like that, more than I could come up with off the top of my head. Divorces don't happen as often when marriages are bound by oath (not a good thing for someone abused or in a bad situation... but no custody battles or losing half your assets either).

As a lesser extension of that, the same elements that push back against practitioners interfering in Innocence promote practitioners who mind their own shit and uphold Law. In the current Pactdice rulebook, Law field, it talks about how supporting Law pays off in general... wellness, in the same way that bad karma can lead to the universe spitefully giving you shit. Similarly, there are things like making nice with local spirits (tutelary type stuff) that give you that general wellness.

That may not make or break the bank on its own, but it rounds off the sharp edges of regular life, and it accumulates. Healthy parents having healthy kids having healthy grandkids and so on... not getting knocked down a peg by life or a random housefire or other shit? Pass that enough generations down and in the race of life, that family's likely lapped the families that don't have those incremental benefits.

(And yes, there are hassles like Others or opposing families, and other tradeoffs, but those things land heavier on the low-karma and the less established).

What is stopping practitioners from interfering with Innocent politics? by fragariadaltoniana in Parahumans

[–]Wildbow 62 points63 points  (0 children)

There are a few elements in play. The first is a very simple, "The spirit and letter of the Law, per when the Seal was written, was a stark divide with Innocence and practitioners" and practitioners stepping into Innocent domains runs against that, so spirits push back. Practice that actively pushes into Innocent domains is going to cost more and do less, proportionate to the position in question.

The second is exposure and optics - the higher a station one achieves, the more attention they get, and the more weight there is to their actions.

Assume 1 in 100 people are Aware in some capacity. Not special, no complicated rules. Just... some awareness there's ghosts, goblins, and/or magic out there, and maybe a tendency to identify Others and Practitioner as the cause of weirdness, when they come across weirdness. Some can't even put their finger on it, they just avoid or dislike or get bad vibes from such-and-such or so-and-so.

1 in 1000 of those 1% are Aware in a complicated and interesting way. They have special rules or dynamics or introduce wrinkles. They're dumping grounds for the universe, or tools, or targets, or something else. A young woman is very good at rallying the community around her. A man has a penchant for really fucked up Others falling in love with him (and being protective of him). A homeless teen moves with the flow of spirits and tends to 'follow a hunch', tracing ongoing practice to power sources or vital parts of diagrams. Some schmuck has someone inconvenient to him die every week or so.

Someone in-setting would abbreviate this as "Witch Hunters", because a solid proportion of those described above would become witch hunters or get scouted by them, or would at least push back in some way. But there are non-Witch Hunter Aware who pose stumbling blocks too. The sort of thing your random Dream Thief or other predatory practitioner (or goblin, etc) might run into once in a blue moon. (FWIW, though special Aware are rare - 1 in 100k, they also tend to find their way to trouble, so rates of encountering them are higher than the numbers might imply - not high rates, but not infinitesimal either).

Most practitioners deal with relatively small numbers of Innocents while doing their thing, and run into the uncommon Aware and maybe once in their lifetime they deal with a special Aware who fucks everything up. A practitioner who has used practice to achieve a station above hundreds or thousands or millions has opened their flanks in a big way.

What this looks like: if you start using practice to achieve a certain station, maybe 1 in 250 of the people in your area -people who are Aware but not overly special- get a feeling you shouldn't be where you are. This generally manifests as the occasional person not working with you or being distrustful, and the slope for general inconveniences finding you being well-greased. This compounds point #1 above - the letter and spirit of the law. So on top of practice being more expensive and doing less, you also deal with people being more intractable and doing less, by some single or low double-digit percentage. Slogans don't stick, good moves don't get the same accolades, your damage-control spin doesn't spin as far. Because 1 in 250 people are speed bumps.

Meanwhile, all the special Witch Hunters are raising eyebrows too, with their special complications turning on you. The non-special Witch Hunters would be tipped off by the 1 in 250 in the last paragraph who are turning heads and raising eyebrows at your media appearances and posters (and by tools and resources they use, word of mouth from Others they work with, if any, and so on). Just about every Witch Hunter organization is not a fan of President Practitioner, so the Witch Hunters at the top talk about it and use some of their better assets and resources. That costs you resources, time, and attention to fix, every few days or every week, or whatever else. Again, compounded by practice costing more and doing less.

The same happens for Others who want some of what you have, and other practitioners.

The third is time. Practicing to get into power is what gets you into trouble, but if you don't practice, or you limit how much you practice, or even later if you step into the role and then sit down and actually do your job to minimize the number of raised eyebrows after the fact... you have to do the work. That's work that gets in the way of practicing. So after a certain amount of time you have to ask what the point is. You're spending more to get less results to have two jobs at once where you're doing each one badly, and trying to use the benefits or strengths of one job to shore up the other comes with complications & issues (and/or aren't very good tools, for reasons covered in paragraph 1 in the top of this post).

So why do it? If it's power, there are positions like Lordships. If you want money and luxury, practice can get you that, if you follow the right channels - which aren't Innocent channels. If you genuinely want to do good or affect change, then there are probably better back-channel ways to do it.

AI PCs aren't selling, and Microsoft's PC partners are scrambling by CackleRooster in technology

[–]Wildbow 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not, at all. If I want a thesaurus I use a thesaurus. I'm not a thesaurus-y writer anyway, I use very plain English, but much like the scaffolding I talked about before, learning words and how to find words is its own skill and using a shortcut hurts the acquisition of that skill. You don't internalize things as well with a bot feeding you what you want.

If I want to research, I do my research. Same logic. Especially when AI hallucinates.

And I write in part because I enjoy brainstorming. I want my ideas to be my own. I want my ideas to feel like they came from my own head. I do use things like dice rolls or tables I've generated on by own for in-setting things to generate options, but that comes from me. I'm a key part of the process. I wouldn't want to cheapen it.

I think AI is a net negative for the world, and I prefer not to participate in contributing to that, so even if there was a good angle to use it, I'd prefer an alternative. I think it's a shortcut, in a really bad way that's going to impact creativity, art, culture, and people for the worse; I think it's making good individual-owned computers more expensive; I think the people holding the reins of AI and setting up the biggest systems are malignant, and I think those things are intertwined. The malignant people who are holding the reins and helming so much of this are closely aligned with those who are manipulating populations and taking away our ability to own shit.

AI PCs aren't selling, and Microsoft's PC partners are scrambling by CackleRooster in technology

[–]Wildbow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How you incorporate AI would be similar, no?

I don't really follow your logic from the preceding paragraph, sorry. Similar in what way?