Quarter-baked theory I thought of while writing up the Arc Thoughts:

What if Noelle’s situation has something to do with Taylor’s occasionally heightened abilities? I mean, if Leviathan could detect it from afar, that implies there’s something to detect, such as an energy of some kind. Maybe that energy, when it peaks, interacts with Taylor’s power somehow?

I don’t know, I guess I’m just throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks.

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Alright, time for some asks!

Apparently Sharks decided to make a condensed version of the asks this time, so there aren’t as many as I had expected (I know for a fact that he had gotten like 20 asks right after the end of the last blogging session), but the important non-spoilery stuff should still be covered. So if you don’t see your specific formulation here despite it being non-spoilery, that’s presumably why.

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You missed something, Krixy. Coil wasn’t talking about his own kids, they were his neighbours.

Ohhh…

Let’s look at that again (emphasis mine):

He prepared and ate his breakfast, then stepped outside in his bathrobe to pick up the paper and the mail, pausing to wave to the neighbors as they led their two girls out of the house.The flooding hadn’t affected their neighborhood as much as others, but the schools weren’t yet up and running, so the mother and father would be taking their girls to work with them for a short while.

Yeah, I guess I totally misunderstood who “their” was referring to.

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Extermination is the arc where Worm changes as a whole. It goes from being about a conflict between superheroes and villians to a hopeless battle with a kaiju. Were you surprised by the tonal shift? How would you rate it compared to previous arcs?

It’s a bit of a shift, but it’s not really unprecedented or out of left field. Arc 8 has a lot in common with Arc 5 when it comes to this, and both of them tie back into a concept that was introduced all the way back in 3.6. Through this and other things, the story has been setting this Arc up for a while, which is one of the reasons why this feels like a larger subclimax, an “end of part 1” point.

As to whether I was surprised by the shift in tone… I’m not sure how much there really was one. I did know this story was pretty dark already. The bleakness did reach an all-time high in 8.3, but fortunately, it mostly went back to levels I was used to after that, although still with significantly more death than usual. That said, the aforementioned bleakness high in 8.3 did get to me, being quite a bit more than I had expected even from this story.

In retrospect, Arc 8 was a masterpiece. Though I still think Arc 4 is my favorite so far, it’s definitely one of the better ones.

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Art by @lonsheep, submitted by deadwalker06-blog!

This is giving me The Office / reality show cutaway interview vibes, and I really like that. I also quite like lonsheep’s artstyle in general, as well as the posing and choices of backgrounds. 🙂

Oh, and don’t think I didn’t notice that heart with “GV+TH” in it! I’m not quite sure who GV is, but I think someone felt like giving one of their ships a cameo. 😉

(#i finally know for sure whether that’s an l or an i and i hope i can remember that #it’s an l by the way)

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How much of my hero academia have you watched?

I’ve watched up to episode 3 of season 2. I should probably get back to that someday.

Honestly, though… my favorite part of season 1 was before the Great Deku Tree actually got into the academy. MHA has a fantastic beginning and some neat characters, but I’m not quite as hyped about the later bits. They’re still good, it’s just… they don’t quite follow up on what got me liking the series to begin with.

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“the two E44s” i”M WHEEZING

Ahaha, I’m glad you liked that! 😛

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To clarify the section numbering thing a bit, Interlude 3 ½ actually was NOT a donation bonus. Wildbow didn’t even set up a donation button until after he’d left college and committed to writing full time (around Arc 6 or 7). Back during Arc 4, he had buffer of unpublished chapters, and he accidentally posted the wrong one at some point, and spoiled some people. Interlude 3 ½ was an apology for that. At the time, he didn’t know that wasn’t going to be the only mid-arc interlude in the story.

Ah, interesting!

I’m not sure this does clarify the numbering, except maybe by indicating that Wildbow didn’t know he’d eventually have to figure out a system that allowed for the potential of multiple mid-Arc Interludes in the same Arc, just in case that issue came up. (That much I’d already figured.) It’s nice to know nonetheless, though.

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Hopefully this doesn’t count as spoilery, but your guess as to what’s up with Zigzag is as good as ours. As far as I know, Wildbow has never commented on that. Whoever they were, they’re dead now, so it’s not really relevant to the story.

Yeah, that’s fair enough.

I kinda like this, honestly. The fact that Wildbow puts in things like these that are intriguing, but not relevant and not promising to be relevant (which would make them an annoying violation of Chekhov’s gun and conservation of detail)… details that indicate that there’s a story here, a story we might not ever learn, much like how we see traces of strangers’ stories all the time in real life. It makes the world feel more real.

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Just thought I’d jump in to correct the other asker, Taylor’s odd were no better or worse than anyone elses. Aegis was indeed a likely second protagonist, but there was nothing to guarantee they wouldn’t both die. Wildbow did not plan for Taylor to die, but he was prepared for the possibility.

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I think a lot of people are misinterpreting/misunderstanding WoG on the die rolls. Wildbow definitely didn’t *plan* to have Taylor die there. A lot of people miss the fact that very little of Worm was planned out in advance. I think the “seat of your pants” writer thing has been pointed out in the past, which ties in really well with the die rolls. Wildbow has given various descriptions of how the story might have played out if different sets of characters had died (including Taylor). Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to misinterpret that and think that those descriptions were his original plan for the story. They weren’t, because he didn’t have one! I think he’s said that he didn’t bias things *in favor* of Taylor surviving, but that’s very from saying he biased them towards her dying. Assuming the death rate did end up around ¼, that means she probably had better than even odds of surviving.

I see. I do think it makes sense that he would give the characters modifiers, and that Taylor’s modifier would be low because she is, as someone described her, a “squishy bug girl”, but yeah, this all makes a lot of sense too.

(Incidentally, re: “seat of your pants” tying in with the dice rolls, recall that when I first learned of this [here], I called it “the ultimate seat-of-your-pants writing technique”.)

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Aaron submitted an updated map of Brockton Bay as of Arc 8, presumably still by Ridprime! I’ve included the previous map [here] on the left for comparison.

I really appreciate that the destruction caused by Leviathan is visible not only in the forms of the Leviathan Crater (or Lake Heroic, as I’ve dubbed it for now) and a couple missing waypoints (Market, Undersiders Base, Arcadia High… wait, Arcadia High got destroyed? Did I miss that, or has that not been mentioned yet?), but also in that if you look closely, you can actually see the rubble.

I’m a little confused as to why the Boardwalk and the Protectorate HQ are still on there, though – those were definitely destroyed, I’m sure of that.

But yeah, these maps are really good. Thank you!

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Merry Christmas Krix! Hope you have a great rest of the year!

Thank you, and the same to all of you! 😀

(Or happy whichever other holiday you prefer to celebrate around this time, or even happy no-holiday if there is none!)

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