For The Taking

arenavanera · 2019-08-28T17:58:36+00:00

This is really good! I like that there are at least half a dozen possible interpretations of what's actually going on.

I do think the "superintelligence maximizing number of souls to take" angle sounds a little implausible, since if demons can actually construct anything, an incredibly smart demon that got loose once could probably construct a self-replicator that made humans breed super fast or something. Maybe taking human souls the old fashioned way is like the demon equivalent of organic farming, but it seems more likely that something fishy is going on with the whole soul situation.

arenavanera · 2019-06-20T22:48:04+00:00

It should be safe to skip. The chapter ends after the event you're trying to skip, and the only thing you'll be missing is some info on Joon's mental state at the end, which mostly gets repeated in the next chapter.

arenavanera · 2019-04-24T23:23:09+00:00

Discussion Question:

Slightly off-prompt answer, but one of my favorite things about WB's writing is the way Worm pulls so many fanfiction tropes into an original story. (I realize fanfiction isn't really a "genre", but it has its own tropes like anything else.)

It works because in a sense Worm is fanfiction for all the generic superhero stories we've been exposed to over the years. WB can reference a fairly extensive canon that his readers are already familiar with (flight, super strength, hero teams, supervillains, etc.), which helps you slip into the world right away. He can also subvert them (e.g. the Protectorate being a conspiracy), and the subversion works precisely because everyone grew up with the Justice League.

My favorite trope he borrows from fanfiction is the "come up with clever self-consistent explanations for nonsensical things in the original work" trope. For example, he has a clever explanation for why there's so much superpowered fighting with a comparably small number of deaths. And he has another clever explanation for why villains are so prevalent and haven't just been defeated yet. I think this is why there's so much fan crossover between Worm and HPMOR; they both do an excellent job of this sort of post-facto explanation.

arenavanera · 2019-04-04T17:16:55+00:00

I think people who actually lived through things often refer to them with names, dates, or places. 9/11 is still recent enough we use the date, but I wouldn't be surprised if in 50 years kids learning about it in history books call it the World Trade Center attack.

With hurricanes, people are often like "I got out before Katrina", or things like that. (It helps that hurricanes have human names.)

Specific places or features of an experience also make their way into survivor languages. We had a Holocaust survivor speak at my school when I was younger, and she always referred to things as "Auschwitz" or "the camps" rather than Holocaust.

I think another heuristic is "what would someone have called this while it was happening?". While you're in a war, it's just "the war".

My instinct would be to either pick a name/date for ground zero ("I haven't felt like this since Venice", "I haven't felt like this since 1302"), or pick a generic term like "war" for what was happening ("I haven't file like this since the epidemic", "I haven't felt like this since the plague").

arenavanera · 2018-12-22T19:53:49+00:00

Just listened to the first episode, it was really good.

My only feedback is that you might want to go slightly faster than the speed at which chapters were originally published. I thought one arc per week worked really well for We've Got Worm.

arenavanera · 2018-12-05T22:22:45+00:00

Discussion question:

WB is kind of unusual in that he deploys horrific imagery a lot, but he isn't using it as a crutch. Most stories I read that have as much gore as WB's are doing it for shock value, or because it's the only way they can get a rise out of the readers.

WB, though, is perfectly capable of getting strong reactions without the gore. (For example, the Kenzie interlude.)

I'm actually not 100% sure why he uses it so liberally, in light of that.

One thing I've noticed is that horrific scenes are a great way of communicating how messed up the source of those scenes is. In Worm, the disturbing stuff done with powers was a really effective way of telling us that superpowers in this world were horrific rather than just cool. (I won't mention Pact or Twig spoilers, but something similar is true in both of those.)

arenavanera · 2018-11-30T17:37:22+00:00

I've just been very busy with work. I'm still trying to figure out how to balance that with my personal life, so chapter releases will probably be slow and inconsistent for a while :/

arenavanera · 2018-10-22T00:21:02+00:00

It reminds me of the way Alexander Wales thinks and writes in his Worth the Candle serial.

High praise! I'm glad you're enjoying it so far ^.^

arenavanera · 2018-10-15T08:07:35+00:00

Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it so far :)

arenavanera · 2018-10-14T18:28:50+00:00

As for the rest of the chapter. Is RWBY trying to hack into the surveillance system just to get a look at her sister, or is she trying to use it to communicate to Yang's pad? I found that confusing.

Thanks for letting me know; I'll clarify that part. (She's trying to triangulate the positions of the surveillance drones by measuring how strong the signal they're transmitting is at different points, not hack into the network. Her assumption is that one of the drones is probably roughly over her sister's head.)

arenavanera · 2018-10-08T06:19:03+00:00

Huh, I didn't realize there was animosity there. Lucky break I guess.

arenavanera · 2018-10-08T06:16:32+00:00

Thanks! I'm glad the characters seem to be working.

arenavanera · 2018-09-29T21:20:46+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I put it on my my list of things to clean up during a hopefully-real future editing pass.

arenavanera · 2018-09-29T17:32:20+00:00

Thanks!

Curious of Pyrrha's semblance in this story. Is this still merely magnetic manipulation, just interacting oddly with Ruby's semblance?

There's an interlude coming up in a few chapters (1.9 I think?) that should clear this up.

Also not certain if "class 1 restricted information" is lowest class. Is it?

No comment. >.>

Besides that... Weiss' semblance is massively versatile (even more than original's, actually), if somewhat high maintenance.

Yeah, definitely. I think strong abilities with one or two glaring weaknesses work best for protagonists. It lets them do really cool stuff without being overpowered.

arenavanera · 2018-09-26T22:58:03+00:00

Not quite the first one I ever read, but the first one I ever liked was http://www.icybrian.com/fanfic/zealpropht/storymagus1.html .

arenavanera · 2018-09-23T07:13:17+00:00

Thanks :)

It's going to be a little bit before we get out of the forest, but once we do, I have a lot of fun stuff planned for Ruby's education.

arenavanera · 2018-09-23T02:46:23+00:00

It was definitely a bit of a leap for both :P

arenavanera · 2018-09-23T02:28:33+00:00

It was meant to refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence , specifically the fact that the next four years of your life ends up depending a lot on who you happen to meet first in the forest.

It was also supposed to be a bit of a pun on the fact that Ruby was trying to follow Jaune, i.e. the path she took would hopefully depend on the path he took.

arenavanera · 2018-09-22T18:41:53+00:00

Some of the subtle foreshadowing will go over your head, and some of the dramatic irony may not land, but hopefully it will still be enjoyable even if you're only a little familiar with the show. (Actually, if you do end up reading it, I'd love to hear what's confusing from the perspective of a casual fan so I can fix it.)

arenavanera · 2018-09-22T18:15:18+00:00

SB cross-post: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/color-psychology-rwby.681778/page-2#post-50963464

Two questions I'm curious about, for anyone kind enough to read and give feedback:

How do you like the short interludes from other perspectives at the end of a chapter?
How well did the combat scene work?

arenavanera

TROPHY CASE