3.7 KiB
[RT][HF] Twig, Arc 8: Bleeding Edge
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Author: u/AmeteurOpinions Finally, everyone was working together.*
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URL: https://twigserial.wordpress.com/2015/12/08/bleeding-edge-8-1/
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Score: 11
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Created: 2015-12-08T13:19:17
Post:
Comments:
u/elevul [+3] Cyoria Observer (6 hours later)
How is it? I didn't bother continuing Pact because of the continuous escalation (and the lack of an .epub, I hate reading on the blog) and never started Twig.
u/KarlitoHomes [+5] (8 hours later)
Arcs in Twig are more self-contained, so it doesn't suffer from Pact's ever-rising tension problem.
u/Schuano [+3] (a day later)
I posted this the last time Twig came up, but I'll put it here again.
It's a great story. That said, I don't think the world is quite as organic as Worm's was. In Worm, Everything the same, except people got superpowers in the 1970's (ish) and that changed things. However, the limits of that world and the way that world expanded in the story was very organic since it was "real world" + "X" = story situation. Pact tried to do something similar but the magic system felt a bit made up as he went along. He managed it well and the initial chapters of weirdness worked well too but the amount of Others and how they interacted became a bit large and the threat matrix was always sky high. It got fatiguing and because the Blake's methods were "magic" instead of "cool shit with bugs" they were a bit harder to relate to. Twig has a better world and better characters, though it's still not as organically self constructing as Worm was. (It's why Worm is so good for fanfics, the world builds itself.) Twig is also casually horrific in a way that Worm never was. The world's mad biological science steampunk setting means that even finishing schools for the daughters of the English elite look like the hell scenes from "Event Horizon." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuJnIJHgQ44 (NSFW) Part of the fun is that the main characters are totally inured to this and that this is the normal of the world, but it kind of hampers the "What if I was there and had super powers" feeling that worm had because within the first arc of Twig you'd know you never ever want to live in that world.
For example, rather than controlling bugs through mind powers, you'd control bugs through specially adapted pheremone sacks that bulged from all over your torso and glistened in the torchlight. The special powers are sometimes cool, but it's very clear that all of them make people substantially less human.
On that point though, it does a good job of showing how the absolutely horrific status quo came from gradual adoption of all these innovations.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+3] Concent of Saunt Edhar (a day later)
The main characters are all mad-scientist experiments made a few generations after Dr Frankenstein "cracked the code" so to speak, although Wildbow refers to this as the "Wollstonecraft Ratios of Life."
The team of children are gang pressed to do their evil Academy's bidding. Each Arc is a new mission that the Lambs are sent on, with anywhere from 0-9 months passing in the time jumps.
Without giving too much away, they all have very unique takes on rational thinking. The most recent interlude does a SPECTACULAR job revealing their internal thought processes, some of which are downright alien and others that are very Professor Quirrell and HPMOR.
I do think it has a slow start into the world and the characters, but the story has finally hit its stride by Arc 8.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+0] Finally, everyone was working together. (a day later)
Wrong person.