the One Steve Limit was broken by the reveal that Mannequin’s name was Alan. There was already an Alan in the story before then, Emma’s dad, who is a divorce lawyer.

The One Steve Limit, as convenient as it is, is itself bad writing, and resisting it is a touch of realism. In any case, as you’ll find out before the end of the chapter, this Alan was actually introduced first.

Yeah, the one-steve limit being broken isn’t bad writing, especially in superhero stories where people go by Cape names for a decent chunk of the time, and when it’s quickly established that they’re not the same person (like being in a setting previous people of the same name physically couldn’t be). It being revealed that Alexandria, Lung, and Skitter are all named Taylor Hebert was probably the weirdest one-steve-limit break, though.

Yeah, I forgot all about the first Alan until his surname was brought up.

I disagree that the One Steve Limit is bad writing. Sure, it’s more realistic to break it, but even in a story like Worm, realism should sometimes make way for clarity. Lack of realism is not bad writing. Confusing the reader when you don’t intend to confuse the reader is.

Even as much as I’ve gotten into the habit of calling characters by their first civilian names when I know them, I don’t have a problem with the Limit being broken in Worm so much as with the timing. It wasn’t a problem that we got a second Alan with Mannequin’s introduction. It was a problem that the first Alan came back two chapters after the last mention of the second Alan by that name, and immediately after we’ve been dealing with the second Alan for 3.5 Arcs, and the first Alan’s precise identity was kept hidden for a sizable section of the chapter.

Hi Krix, your devoted reader ShareDVI here.

First, sorry for confusing you with my ‘end of book 2’ ask – the wrap up of S9 arc is indeed what I meant, based on a one split of Worm into books proposed by a guy on reddit.

(how can you expect the consistent inter-book transitions from a guy who can’t number his interludes right? (jk, but the mess with bonus interludes is caused by Wildbow’s experiments with donation stretch goals, basically))

Hah, fair enough. 😛

Secondly, I updated the spoiler shield extension – it now disables comments completely, also works on all Wildbow’s web serials: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/32012-worm-ward-pact-and-twig-web-serial-comments-spoiler-protector
(tested on Maxthon)

At first I wasn’t sure about this, considering that the way it previously worked was pretty good as far as I knew – no chance of spoilers except from Word of God and comments based on Word of God when it blocks anything posted after the next chapter – but upon further consideration, I wasn’t reading the comments anyway (though I was tempted to after this last Interlude) and I think this will make the scroll bar a decent indicator of how much chapter is left again.

Extending it to the other serials is definitely pretty good, though! You should totally send that link to Kat and Quow (and Nick, for Worm) too, if you haven’t already. 🙂

(Maybe they’re why you made that change?)

Lastly – I once sent you an ask about this, but it got spamfiltered – i mirror your liveblog for personal use in Telegram at https://t.me/krixwell_worm, the quotes are a bit messed up, but at least I don’t have to use tumblr that way.

Huh, alright. No objections from me there!

About Barker, it’s worth noting that he was able to activate his power simply by coughing later in the chapter. The insult he used in the demonstration was nothing more than deliberate disrespect.

…alright, fair enough.

Though I kind of liked the implication that the power was directly tied to hurtful words, so that’s a shame.