#aspecsyzygy

[st-just]

I finally caught up with Pale, on this chair (21.14) of all chapters. I've never read a wildbow work in as it updates before, and I gotta ask: how predictable are his updates? How long are we probably going to end up waiting after he missed yesterday's update?

Sooo the update schedule is very very loose at the moment. There's 2 updates a week, usually, but the day and time are pretty much a complete crapshoot, I'm afraid.

So like, before Friday, probably?

[literary-illuminati]

I'm so glad you read Hench! I'd love you hear your thoughts on it

So first of all, sorry for taking a month and a half to answer this. Especially since I remember approximately none of the characters’ actual names at this point. I wish I had some great excuse or explanation for why, but uh, nope. So, moving on!

I liked it, but also found it frustrating? Or I guess the better way to put it is that it was very fun and well-constructed, but I didn’t think the worldbuilding was really tight enough for it to work as the serious genre deconstruction it felt like it was trying to be?

So like first of all, excellent protagonist. Joy to read. I’m a miserable person and every time the book went on at length about how she was using the infinite resources of a villainous conspiracy to ruin people’s lives in subtle and deniable ways it made me smile. Her relationships with basically everyone except the main supervillain guy were also various degrees of charming and/or heartwrenching. (Her boss just felt too out-of-central-casting for me to care about in the slightest, same as the superman analogue and his secretly-more-powerful-than-him partner/wife)

The conceit of the whole hero damage report was really fun too but, like – if the central arc of the book is about how superheroes do more harm than good, the fact that she then goes to work for Evil Incorporated which seems to have the firepower to have a budget of infinity and a Mutually Assured Destruction situation with the US government, it raises some questions about the, like, social role and supporting infrastructure of supervillany, you know? Not a fatal weakness or anything, but insofar as it felt like the book was trying to Make A Point about the genre, felt like it was undercut a bit.

More problematically, I just didn’t think the ending really worked? Rushed and abrupt, I guess, in terms of character motivation and who wants what? The final fate-worse-than-death for the superman analogue was also a bit drawn out for how grotesque it was and how little tension there was as soon as it started, as least for my delicate tastes - though tbh that might just be because he was just such an archetype that it was hard for me to ever really hate him.

Which all sounds a bit more negative than is deserved, tbh – I did enjoy the read! I just negative and nitpicky whenever I think too much about something.

[st-just]

Hey! I started following you after noticing you in the Murderbot tag and seeing how big a fan you were of AMCE, TLT, Ann Leckie & Baru (I feel like I am forgetting one?), all of which I also really enjoy. You've got me started reading Pact. I'd read Worm earlier this year, and have very mixed feelings about it (which I'd love to talk about if you don't mind criticism of the work), so I hadn't been sure if I wanted to read more Wildbow. Anyway, just wanted to say "Hi! We love the same books!"

I mean to be fair, they're excellent books! (And you're forgetting Ninefox Gambit/Machinaries of Empire, for the record)

But yes I would love to talk about Worm/don't mind intelligent criticism of it at all. (And can you really say you love a work of fiction if you couldn't right an essay tearing apart its flaws on request?)

I would also absolutely love to hear your (or anyone's) thoughts on Pact! It's got some extreme pacing issues and it's really extremely bleak (though, like, not especially moreso than Baru, I guess?), but it has a special little place burrowed in my brain devoted to it.

(I am also obligated to read Pale, which is in the same setting but an unrelated story, currently updating, rather lighter and frankly better written on most counts).

[st-just]

Just finished Pact. I haven't really put together my thoughts on it yet, but I'm glad the ending was less saccharine (I think you found the perfect word there) than Worm.

Not sure if I want to dive right into another Wildbow work or give myself a break. But thanks for the nudge to read it.

Also, Pact barely registered as bleak to me.

I actually really adore Pact's ending - just the perfect tone of bittersweet for me. The whole third act is also great in a 'unending series of heavy metal covers' sort of way, and I really love both Johannes self-sacrifice and Rose's claiming of the estate for the Abyss as visuals/scenes/dramatic beats.

Also specifically the visual with the half-bisected dragon and the three portals to different demon-haunted worlds belongs airbrushed onto a van somewhere. I have want to spent the hundreds of dollars it would take to comission fanart worthy of it.

But okay, so in terms of what I mean by Pact's bleakness, three main things.

-The 'solving the Fermi Paradox with demons' thesis. That the world is only the smallest shattered fragment of something so much grander - that we're so far gone with we've lost even the ability to comprehend that we've lost something. Idk maybe just the frame of mind I was in when I first read it, but that really hit me.

-Again, just as a personal thing that got to me, the 'Echoes that exist as literally moments of suffering, with just as much self-awareness and feeling as necessary to feel and understand the suffering as fully as possibly in each recitation" thing.

-The broader themes about oppression and inheritance. There is a cosmic Right, a judgement form the heavans and the spirits that ensures in the end everyone more or less gets what they deserve. It is horrifying, and incredibly unjust - except that it is, in fact, Objective Justice. Hierarchy and oppression and suffering are encoded into the structure of the world, and talent and drive matter but your place in those hierarchies matters so much more.

Rose and Blake are good examples of this - over the course of the story, they escape the inherited debt to the literal demons, the worst and most evil beings in the setting. And what does it cost? Well, in Blake's case, he does escape, at the low, low price of all humanity and also all power and ability to effect the world. He gets to be a cool bird hermit in the wilderness, outside of all civilization but with his killer mermaid gf and adopted 12-year-old ghost. Rose stays enmeshed in civilization, and escapes the shadow of her family by making herself a devoted and useful agent of an entirely different and marginally less horrific (but still very horrific) brutalizing and hellish supernatural force. Also an entirely loveless political marriage and slowly being corrupted by the literal incarnation of Imperialism.

Again not, like, uniquely bleak or anything. And probably wouldn't be quite so affecting if I read it now. But the implicit binary isn't exactly uplifting.

Anyway, in terms of other Wildbow works - like, absolutely take a break and read someone else first. But I really would recommend Pale. Same setting as Pact but unrelated stories and casts. His writing improved noticeably in the years between, and the characterization is just leagues better.

[st-just]

What is the correct meme for how utterly and innocuously dog angel screwed himself by bringing Green Eyes up from the Abyss?

Like, he basically threw that favour in as a freebie, pretext of "for what you lost to Ur" aside, yet how many times in the next 24 hours was she completely clutch in running his plans?

That's some Hamlet grade self-inflicted tragic downfall there.

(This is a Green Eyes appreciation Ask)

The one and only time anyone, anywhere ever did something good for Blake just to be nice, and it blows up in their face constantly for the rest of the story.

But yes, Green Eyes is amazing. Even if I had to stop myself from making Cabin in the Woods jokes whenever she showed up when I was reading update by update. Also, the humor around 'I think she's just joking about wanting to kill and eat [x non-Blake supporting character]" never got old.

(But really, I do love it as a characterization beat for Faysal. Like, his role in 99% of the story aside, I like the idea that he's not actually a dick normally).

[st-just]

So I got another "Space Lesbians Vs Empire" book to recommend to you! It's _The Outside _ by Ada Hoffman. It's a space opera interrogation of the mental health/neurdivergent related ableism in Lovecraft/cosmic horror stories with an lesbian lead character. I think you said you liked Winter Tide, and it has that kind of vibe as well.

If you want an elevator pitch, I can give it, but it aligns closely with a lot of the other books you (and I) are obsessed with. I personally hate spoilers, so I am always reluctant to give any kind of concrete pitch.

So I very much did like Winter Tide. Or, well, call it a 3/5 on my extremely harsh mental grading scale (where 0 is 'didn't finish' and 5 is 'will write an essay about on request'). Though honestly it's mostly just the prose and pacing imo weren't the best and the characterization was slightly clunky - the ideas were all interesting enough I have written at least a couple longish posts about them.

I don't particularly mind spoilers honestly, at least in terms of broad conceit and thematic arc as opposed to specific plot beats and resolutions. but that does sound like it could be really interesting. So space opera that's an examination of cosmic horror but not trying to be cosmic horror itself? Does it, like, directly use Lovecraft's setting/entities/terminology, or is that just an obvious inspiration?

[st-just]

So starting The Outside now (and thanks to @aspecsyzygy​, it’s great so far!). And with the inevitably of the dawn, my favorite character so far is the mass-murdering mad scientist/eldritch cultist/protagonist’s asshole former mentor.

(Second favorite character is the shapeshifting angel of Nemesis who kidnapped our heroine to help track down said mentor and has an eternity of torture to look forward to if he doesn’t get results. Because I’m really very predictable.)

[st-just]

I had also read Erfworld as a teen/early twenties, and maybe a year or two ago I decided to see what ever happened to it. Basically I feel like the first book really was the peak. A lot of it turned into a duel between Charlie and Parson, with hints at larger world building up come. Then the day after I caught up, literally, they announced they would be no more updates ever.

I can send you some spoilers if you want, but I found it rather disappointing, tbh.

Ah webcomics, even worse than fanfic for laying out potential and then suddenly ending forever.

Appreciate the offer, but no need. I honestly only barely remember anything beyond the general premise and, like, three names. Still, sad to see it just went nowhere.

[st-just]

Also, if you are cool with supervillains, you might want to try Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots, which has a bi or pan woman as the protagonist. It's the story of her journey from data entry clerk for a C list villain to the right hand of one of the nation's most feared villains.

She crushes hard on a few women, never has a canon relationship, but if it gets a sequel I feel like the endgame might be a dude, if that matters to you.

Strong woman vs society/the establishment themes.

Despite some absolutely awful stuff happening, it is weirdly enough a comfort read for me.

Oh lol I have posted waaay too much about Worm (and to a lesser degree The Boys, Invincible, I'm pretty sure Young Justice, probably other stuff I'm forgetting...) to pretend supervillains are a problem.

Though I suppose it does kind of matter how seriously the genre is taken? Like, tongue-in-cheek schlocky fun? Unexamined and straightfaced? Cool-eyed deconstruction?

(Honestly the specifics of what sort of romance the man character gets tied up in doesn't really matter too much, as long as it's well done and either a minor subplot or intertwined with the rest of the story and themes.)

[st-just]

I am so sorry for the flurry of recommendations, but I just remembered The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt. It is basically just a couple of WLW ladies leading a crew of lovable misfits to fight alien space Nazis for three books. That's it. That's the series. I won't promise more, it won't deliver less.

Oh I absolutely promise I don't mind!

And see now that sounds like pulpy fun (or possible a harrowing look at the costs of war and a seemingly hopeless struggle against genocidal imperialism. But assuming the former).

I mean, probably not something I'm going to be reading anytime soon, but sounds perfect for when it's theoretically possible to travel again and I have a train ride or airport layover to kill.

[st-just]

Another "lesbian space opera" book with less Empire is Barbary station by R.E. Stearns. Basically after graduating from their respective S.T.E.M. university programs, a lesbian couple realize they will never get out from underneath their student debt, so decide to become space pirates.

While capitalism is an evil empire in a way, their conflict is less directly with capitalism and more with the perils of trying to establish themselves as space pirates.

It is an established, healthy, loving relationship from the getgo, so if you're looking for enemies to lovers, you won't find that here.

(For more Sci-Fi enemies to lovers try The Luminous Dead).

Oh that does sound interesting!

Though, like, is it more 'fun pulpy sci fi romp' or 'charming protagonists gradually sliding into atrocity as material necessity, greed and the brutalizing effects of precarity and violence wear away their moral compass"? Because I can kind of see either from the description.

[st-just]

When I drop meta on Wildbow works or Lesbians vs Empire works, do you want me to @ you? I'm about to post some thoughts on what didn't work for me in Worm.

Please, absolutely do!

[st-just]

Did you finish Princess Tutu by any chance? I have some thoughts to post on Pact, but I'll leave the Tutu intersection for another day if you haven't.

Sorry! I honestly got entirely distracted by Mass Effect didn't have a chance to start watching it again until the weekend. Only up to episode 11 now. Should be done soon, though!

[st-just]

Quick question: Have you seen Princess Tutu and if not do you care about full on spoilers for it?

There is a specific comparisons I could draw between it and Pact, but I will hold off on doing so if it will ruin something you intend to watch.

...you know, I was like halfway through when my old laptop broke, and completely forgot? I need to finish watching it actually. Give me until the end of the week.