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[RT][HF] Twig, Arc 4: Stitch In Time
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Author: u/AmeteurOpinions Finally, everyone was working together.*
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URL: https://twigserial.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/stitch-in-time-4-1/
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Score: 8
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Created: 2015-06-20T16:41:11
Post:
Comments:
u/AmeteurOpinions [+4] Finally, everyone was working together. (21 minutes later)
A stitch in time saves nine. The Lambs make six. Will something complex happen with the villains this arc? Is the big bad plot beginning? Find out, next time on Twig!
Wildbow is playing around with time limits again. There was a tiny amount of it in Pact, but nothing compared to the Damocles-class drama nukes of the expiration dates or this new pill mechanic. Add the faltering team dynamic, Sy's appreciation for crises, a powder keg town, extremely dangerous antagonist, Welps, and who-knows-what-else...
This will be interesting.
Also, some things like this passage from arc one:
“You can ask,” I said, and I left the statement hanging.
She turned her head, looking out the window I’d been staring out of a moment ago. Apparently she wasn’t too surprised at the non-answer.
“Every day for the last week, you knocked on the door, you tried to talk to me, to reassure, to offer food, sheets or clothes.”
“And you wanted to be left alone?” she asked.
“I did, but that wasn’t it. Give a man a gun, tell him to shoot his neighbor or he gets shot. The first man we put in this situation does it without a care. He pulls the trigger. The second man cries and moans, he begs his neighbor for forgiveness, then he pulls the trigger. The third man cries and moans, begs for forgiveness, and pulls the trigger, and the fourth man takes a bullet because he won’t bring himself to do that.”
“The second and third men are the same?”
“Oh. Right. The first and second man went home and went to sleep and rested easy,” I said.
She worked through it aloud, summing up, “First shoots without a word, sleeps easy. Second man asks for forgiveness, shoots, sleeps easy. Third man asks for forgiveness, shoots, but doesn’t sleep. The fourth dies because he won’t shoot. You’re going to tell me the first man is the best of the four?” Lacey asked me.
I gave her a disgusted look. “No.”
“The third, then. You’re implying I’m the second? It’s a pretty massive, incorrect assumption on your part, Sylvester, if you think I sleep easy,” she said, and there was a touch of heat in her voice. I’d upset her a little.
“No,” I said, calm. “I didn’t say anything about someone being better or worse. They can face the situation any way they want to. They’ve got a gun to their head, it’s their choice. You? Maybe you’re like the second man, maybe you’re like the third, but you definitely don’t have a gun to your head. If you’re being nice to me, it’s for your benefit, not mine.”
I leaned back, turning away from her, my attention returning to the window.
Human nature. If I’d simply said it, one line, one sentence, she wouldn’t have listened. But I’d gotten her thinking, pulled her in, and then forced her to face it.
and the six-player sextuple-blind life-or-death game of Prisoner's Dilemma make me want to push the story into Rationalist labeling.
u/Sparkwitch [+3] (3 hours later)
I'd rather not see readers apply most of these rationalist techniques.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+1] Finally, everyone was working together. (10 hours later)
Very true. I'll leave it as is for now.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+3] Concent of Saunt Edhar (13 hours later)
There were also meat trees, in the natural-growing-meat sense and the ‘gibbets and meathook’ sense. Not too unusual, except they were ubiquitous.
WTF. Wildbow's prose is so tight and creepy. He is able to describe the picture of the header so nicely in one sentence and then go on and do an incredible amount of world-building in the second sentence. Not to mention that it's all from the casual internal commentary of a character who is embedded in this abominably unethical world of Franken-meat GMO taken to its freakish extreme. If those meat-trees vocalize and scream during thunderstorms, the bio-nightmare is complete.