#the jessies and helens and lillian are cute though

[lakesbian]

bonnie and clyde and bonnie (scary)

[greatwyrmgold]

Not my favorite, but I had to scrap a last-minute Halloween fanfic where a bunch of Wildbow characters went trick-or-treating, and you've given me an excuse to release those ideas onto the Internet somewhere.

Ashley dresses up as a dark sorceress. So like she normally dresses, except more. She's stuck at home because Kenzie wanted all her friends and the grown-ups chaperoning them to coordinate Void Opera costumes, and that is very much not her aesthetic.

Blake and Evan scraped together tree and robin costumes. Evan wore "a red hoodie, a brown coat with a feather pattern, and a crested bird mask"; Blake painted the fleshier/bonier parts of his body to match the wood, and taped sticks to his clothes (since he can't go naked). Mags accompanies them, mostly to make sure they don't get bound or something; she's not wearing a costume, but the Earth Bet characters assume she's wearing a really good Maggie Holt costume.

The Twig costumes are the weakest. Lara and Nora were given store-bought bug costumes. I had a few weak ideas for Abby, ranging from "Is a shepherd too on-the-nose?" to "This weird crossover setting probably has Pokemon games, I bet she'd like them". The only costume idea I had that I liked was Ashton's: He cut some holes in a box, drew random doodles on the sides, and called it his costume. He hasn't quite figured out how Halloween works.

These younger Lambs are accompanied by Gordon and Lillian. Helen would probably steal someone's candy; Duncan posed too high of a killjoy risk; and Jessie is busy supervising Sy and Mary, to make sure they don't egg houses or smash pumpkins or something. I should have let Emmett trick-or-treat, though.

Then there's the Kennet trio.

Lucy dressed up as some kind of horror character, probably a "final girl." Matches her vibes and her taste in movies. She's also walking an unusually intelligent dog who visibly doesn't trust Ashley, because this is a happy lighthearted AU.

Verona and Julette had a couple of ideas, and played rock-paper-scissors to decide who did which. One was basically Hello Kitty with black fur, and was basically just an excuse to wear her cat mask. The other was a classic fairy-tale witch, which wasn't just an excuse to wear her hat, but it also wasn't not that.

Avery and Snowdrop dressed up as a couple Kith from Peer of the Black Chair, because I wanted to fit a reference to my favorite post-Worm snippet in there somewhere. Snowdrop is, of course, contrarian when she's asked about what her costume is.

-

Two other fun details, both tied to Evan:

Evan compliments Ashley's costume, saying that she looks like a real witch. She asks how he's sure she isn't one; he asks what kind of witch would dress up as one for Halloween.

“One who really liked being a witch,” Ashley replied. “One who wouldn’t dress up as anything else.”

Which is of course referring to the fact that Ashley likes her sorceress aesthetic, but also Verona dressed up as a witch.

Second is just a cute moment I thought of. Evan's the first kid who shows up at the door, so Ashley asks to take his picture. The other groups trick and treat, Kenzie and the Chicken Tenders come over, and Ashley shows the cool bird costume to Aiden. A small, sweet moment from someone who pretends to be an enormous bitch.

But I slowly realized that a fic designed to show off random Halloween costumes would work a lot better if it was told from Victoria's perspective, since she's A. an infamous fashion critic and B. might actually ask kids what their costumes are. But that would lose the little throughline that makes the fic feel like slightly more than a fashion show.

I could probably think of something to replace it. But...you know the Valentine's monster episode from Miss Kuritsu from the Monster Development Department? The one where the monster runs behind schedule due to issues with the chocolate supplier, and Dr. Sadamaki points out that there's no way the monster will be ready in time for Valentine's Day, so they just prepare an apology basket for Divine Swordsman Blader instead?

It's like that, except Halloween instead of Valentine's Day, and fanfiction instead of a monster. What kind of dweeb posts a trick-or-treating fanfic in November?

Happy Halloween everyone!

What does your favorite Wildbow character dress up as to go Trick-Or-Treating?

[lakesbian]

twig faq to answer all of the asks i got regarding my liveblog

Q: holy shit twig turned out bad huh A: yeah

Q: should i read twig? A: no. it's bad

Q: what about the parts of twig that were good though? i noticed that there were parts of twig that seemed awesome before everything suddenly exploded A: okay let me elaborate. the first ~13 arcs of twig are really really endearing when they're focusing on the lambs. when they're being about the lambs, they range anywhere from "cute" to "extremely fun" to "genuinely super compelling" to "shit that made me cry (positive)." we have high points such as:

12yo sylvester lambsbridge fumbles 3 people with crushes on him harder than anyone's ever fumbled in their life in the span of like 7 hours maximum

sylvester lambsbridge does transhet biopunk brokeback mountain

wildbow writes rose thorburn but if she were a hardass trans girl (she's the one doing transhet biopunk brokeback mountain with sy)

gordon dies and lillian copes by taking some of sy's drug that gives him turbo-adhd

helen is there

sylvester lambsbridge experiences what i earnestly believe to be one of the cruelest things wildbow has ever done to any of his protagonists

lots of other stuff, i'm abbreviating here

but the reason i say the first ~13 arcs of twig are good when they're focusing on the lambs is that twig is prone to slogging, strikingly mediocre fight scenes--sy can't fight for Shit, but wildbow still insists on describing, like, sylvester trying & failing to hit someone with a wooden plank with the same gratuitous, lengthy detail as taylor inventing a spider-based saw trap for someone. and unlike the spider-based saw trap, it's not interesting to read about. the arcs take an episodic format, and what this means is that virtually every arc goes on way too long, contains at minimum 40% more tediously detailed fight scenes than are actually necessary, and then leaves you feeling jarred when wildbow inevitably timeskips to the next arc just as the prior one was really getting into the emotional swing of things. i also have a (quite possibly subjective?) sense that twig wasn't as well-developed and thought-out as, e.g., pact, and oftentimes the setting conceit (1900s biopunk frankenstein-y british empire) doesn't feel like it's hitting quite as hard as it should.

for all of these reasons, i wouldn't have rated the first ~13 arcs of twig any more generously than in the 3.5-4 star range while i was reading them, but that's still an overall rating of good. i wouldn't still be thinking about some of the things from the first ~13 arcs of twig if they weren't overall good. if all of twig was the same quality as the first ~13 arcs, i would recommend it to people who i feel like could tolerate the pacing issues & would feel reading about the lambs was worth it.

but. BUT. BUT-

Q: so, twig turns out really bad, huh? what went wrong? A:

it is not all the same quality as the first 13 arcs. it turns out really bad the last 7 arcs are actually atrocious

the first thing that comes to mind if you ask me "what went wrong with twig" is that wildbow tries to write a trans woman as one of the main characters, and he does it badly. miss jessie ewesmont, my new favorite girl whom we need to get the fuck out of a wildbow novel. i think she was written extremely well--and in fact one of the top 2 characters in the book--prior to wildbow trying to handle her coming out. i'd even say the foreshadowing for it was perfectly well done and enjoyable. but after she comes out, during the last 7 arcs of the book?

you know how trans women are often victims of being treated as undervalued, disposable girlfriends, who are expected to coddle & cater to their partner's every whim while receiving effectively nothing in return? and you know how trans women are often treated as if they should be grateful for receiving (what is often less than) the literal bare minimum? and you know how trans women are frequently treated as if it's completely implausible for anyone to find them genuinely attracted or desirable, let alone worth pursuing or putting effort into?

yeah, the last 7 arcs of twig contain untold tens of thousands of words of wildbow reinventing all of that from first principles. this is a subjective experience, but it genuinely felt worse to read than amy dallon. at one point, the Disposable Trans Girlfriend in question literally says "i appreciate you not killing me" after she gets stabbed in her sleep by her boyfriend, sylvester. it's beyond parody. i've never said "WE HAVE TO HIT WILDBOW WITH HAMMERS" more in my goddamned life than while reading the last 7 arcs of twig. Transmisogyny Fucking City. it's a completely unforgivable and miserable reading experience.

and speaking of unforgivable and miserable reading experiences involving bigoted handling of a main character...onto Item No. 2 on the list of writing decisions that ruin twig! the ableism.

wildbow wants all of the lambs to--due to being ill-fated human experiments--have set expiration dates. one of the Main Points hanging over the entire narrative of twig is that every single lamb is, in all likelihood, going to die of complications from the way they've been experimented on before they're even twenty. two of them do die from those complications before the story is even halfway over: jamie's entire mind & sense of being is regularly taken out of his body, and one day, the doctors can't get it back in. gordon is a ~15yo with the heart problems of an elderly man, and they kill him while he's still young enough to make one of his last acts begging to see his dog one last time. it's good. it's tragic, it's interesting.

the problem is that wildbow's decision for how to depict sylvester starting to experience end-stage complications is to...turn sy into an ableist horror movie trope villain. sy hears The Devil telling him to kill his friends, and he just fuckin' blacks out and then comes to like "oh no...what's all this blood on my hands." i'm talking "mental illness is a Demon that can Possess You and make you an Evil Serial Killer" levels of ableist writing. like wildbow straight up turns sy into the joker from the movie joker. it's like that one "insaaaaynenene....assyyylum..... cray-ay-zeee...Insaayne" tiktok, you know the one. it's why he stabs his disposable trans girlfriend.

and it's baffling because: 1. wildbow wrote worm. you'd expect better from him when it comes to writing mental illness. but his skills apparently stop short of being able to depict a character with psychosis without making it cartoonishly ableist. but also, 2., sy doesn't only start becoming mentally ill at the end of arc 13! the previous arcs do very clearly establish that he's extremely codependent with the other lambs and needs continuous support to avoid experiencing life-threatening mental health episodes. he experiences dissociation, he struggles with severe memory loss, he acts erratically, he has self-injurious tendencies, he hallucinates, he talks to himself in public. prior to the start of arc 14, all of that is written with perfectly amenable levels of nuance and empathy towards sy. i wouldn't describe it as glowing representation, or anything, but it's by no means egregious.

but after arc 13? change of plans. now he's the joker from the movie joker, and we have to watch while his friends chain him to an armchair so he doesn't go around randomly cutting peoples hands off in a murderous fugue state.

it's bad. it's extremely bad to read.

the third item regarding how/why twig becomes terrible is a lot more simple to summarize: it becomes almost entirely about the previously mentioned sloggy fight scenes as opposed to about the lambs. and when it is about the lambs, it's often terrible to read anyway, due to the aforementioned issues with the handling of protagonist sylvester lambsbridge and his disposable trans gf. the plot becomes incoherent and uninteresting to the point where it's not even worth the effort of attempting to summarize how or why. everything that made twig good more or less entirely disappears from the story, and things that make it fucking awful are added.

Q: okay but lets say i have something unfixably wrong with me and i want to read twig anyway. wheres the best stopping point? arc 13? A: yeah it's arc 13. it's not a satisfying stopping point at all though. nor is the rest of twig prior to it really worth it. just don't waste your time. go read a good book, like pact, instead

Q: what the fuck is up with helen? A: :)