A fun little bit of Stealth World building many people miss: The full name of Uganda in our world is Republic of Uganda not People’s Republic of Uganda. Also for Parian/foil Shipping I prefer Needle and Thread.
Huh, that’s interesting. I guess things went a little redder for Uganda in the Wormverse, presumably for parahuman-related reasons.
I don’t know what the name for Parian/Flechette is, but I do know it’s a popular ship, so somewhere someone’s got to have a name for it.
There ARE loads of Lily/Sabah shippers but I don’t recall ever seeing a ship name, which is weird. I guess the Wildbow fandom just doesn’t really do ship names.
I think that Needlepoint is the ship name for Lily/Sabah
I don’t know of any ship names for Parian and Flechette, but how about Pins & Needles?
You caught on to the hints far quicker than the last live blogger that got to that part! As for ship names, Needle and Thread certainly fits.
Needlepoint! Is the ship name i prefer. There are probably others. These others are blatantly inferior. (Pun ship names are the best. Like the ship name for Taylor/Lisa: Smugbug.)
Nice! I like Needlepoint. Certainly a lot more elegant than “needle gal pals”.
YAY you finally reached Lily’s interlude! Her and Sabah are second only to Rosemary as my favorite ship from anything ever!!!
I really liked their interactions. I hope it works out for them! 😀
You keep saying Interlude 4 when you mean Interlude 3. Interlude 3 was the post-bank-robbery Wards interlude, Interlude 4 was Brutus being a good dog. Also, RIP Aegis, Gallant, and Brutus.
Whoops! Yeah, I think that’s an error that’s fair to go back and fix. It’d be a different story if I’d been wrong about which Interlude something was in and actually meant the Brutus Interlude, but I was absolutely talking about the Wards Interlude.
I’m really glad you discussed the issue of “scale” in your last predictions post. Early on in your liveblog, I was dying a little bit because “Oh Krix, you have /no idea/ the size of the story and the elements that are coming!” (Remember when you thought it might just be a high school drama?!) But now you have a better idea and I’m just really glad to see your sense of scale expand appropriately. 🙂
Hah, yeah… this story and world have just been constantly expanding. It makes it hard to tell what’s important sometimes.
Wildbow has struck an odd balance between the benefits and drawbacks of not following the law of conservation of detail. On the plus side, plenty of dud information makes it harder to correctly deduce the plot despite the evidence being there, the world feels a lot more real, and there are lots of hooks for fanfiction authors to work off of. On the minus side, you get this effect, where it’s hard to tell not only which details matter, but which subplots matter in the grand scale.
And honestly? I’m inclined to say all of them matter, even though some are definitely on a higher scale.
The rating system isn’t so much a description of their powers but of their capabilities. It’s what the PRT uses to get a read on what to look for when fighting parahumans.
Fair point. Technicalities don’t matter that much unless they impact combat significantly.
Search your blog for Angry Banana Bunch, you’ll find an untagged ABB gag.
Another untagged ABB gag: Awesome Beach Bodies.
More unmarked ABB gags: Ablatives But Better, Amplified Banana Blasters, Absolute Beetle Buffoons.
Two untagged ABB gags when Bakuda makes her entrance: Achoo Blessya Babes and Asplody Beach Balls.
More untagged ABB gags: Antithetical Bottle Breaker, Actual Bad Boys, Archer Biting Babies, and Anti-Bitch Brigade (one of your better ones). I was also wondering if you intended to make a “Fuck you, Max” tag.
Another untagged ABB gag. Allflavor Bean Bags. Also, I’m seriously considering starting Homestuck and Steven Universe just so I can get all your references.
Another untagged ABB gag: Amorphous Basket Balls.
Thank you!
Due to blog search being kind of unreliable, I was unable to find some of these, but I really appreciate this nonetheless. Those I could find have been fixed.
I think I decided against making a “Fuck you, Max” tag at some point, but I’m not sure. At least that gag wasn’t constantly changing, so it’d be way easier to apply retroactively if I were to change my mind.
And as for Steven Universe and Homestuck, I think you should do it. They are both great. Though fair warning, they both have a sort of slow start (SU does it better than Homestuck though), so I recommend you avoid judging them too early. With Homestuck in particular it’s worth noting that up until a point in Act 4, the story was being based on people’s suggested commands, which explains a lot of the floundering early on.
By the way, when you finish watching/reading, I recommend you check out the liveblogs of my friends @loreweaver-universe (SU) and @mindareadsoots (Homestuck). 😉
[Lot of the GV is Greg posts.]
(No, really, this is how Sharks presented it.)
Ahh, right! I guess the ship heart could be a Harpy ploy of “Those two losers belong together. Right, Taylor?”
Also, I don’t seem to have seen Greg’s surname before, so I suppose either the initial V was made up for the piece, or we’ll get to meet him again. I hope for the latter – I liked that kid.
This might be considered a minor spoiler, I’m not sure – the physical boardwalk was damaged, but people continue to refer to that area as “the Boardwalk” sometimes in the subsequent arcs.
With that said, don’t take the maps *too* seriously despite their impeccable presentation; they are fan-made. You’ll notice the Protectorate HQ is shown as on an island in the Bay when it was described in 3.4 as actually on a refitted oil rig, for instance.
Ah, fair enough. And yeah, better take them with a grain of salt.
Another thing I noticed besides the presence of the Boardwalk and PHQ, and the absence of the Wards HQ, was that Lake Heroic was on the Docks South side of the border between that and Downtown, despite repeated mentions of it being “in the middle of Downtown”.
Way back in post 166793990799 (after 7.5) you gave some thoughts as to what the long term story might look like. Has anything that happened in the past arc and a half changed your opinions on any of this? Care to give us some new long term predictions? Also how do you feel about making these sort of long term story prediction posts be a regular thing you do every few arcs?
Looking back at that post… wow. Let’s look through it a bit:
For all I’ve been through, it’s still rather difficult to tell the narrative scale of many of the subplots. For instance, the War of the Docks could just as easily last the whole story out as just for a few more Arcs.
The War of the Docks seems to be more of a background thing than I expected when it was first introduced, but it does seem to be ongoing. The Merchants of all people have the upper hand at the moment.
Coil’s master plan having been revealed now does give something of a long-term goal for the protagonists, if they ultimately accept his terms – they can work towards taking control over the city and helping it improve. There’s also the possibility that they can’t trust Coil after all, and after he takes over the city with their help, it’s up to the Undersiders to topple his brutal regime, which could take anywhere from a few Arcs to two thirds of the story.
I feel like we’re leaning towards the latter outcome here, but I’m not sure it’s going to be as climactic for the story as a whole as I was thinking back then. The Endbringer attack really emphasized the issue of judging the scale of the subplots.
A greater threat might come to Brockton Bay late in the story. For instance, I still think there are decent odds there will eventually be a mass breakout from the Birdcage (if Lung survived Interlude 6 and gets out somehow, I pretty much guarantee a round three against Taylor with Lung in his fully draconic stage).
Just look at this. Leviathan definitely fell under the category of “a greater threat” and wasn’t anywhere near the end of the story as a whole. And look at those examples I gave! Those are way smaller issues.
Incidentally, this is why I feel like the other two Endbringers (which I’m 95% certain will show up later) will be even bigger threats than Leviathan was. I think we’ll likely see the Simurgh second, explore exactly why the problems with her visits tend to be worst afterwards, and then later have a visit from Behemoth, the one it’s probably hardest for a city to recover from physically.
If not Lung, Coil or Bakuda, then maybe the Endbringers, or some parahumans with powers that makes them essentially Lovecraftian horrors (there might be overlap), will be the final bosses? I really don’t know.
Behemoth as the final boss is a possibility. Also possible, though unlikely, is that the Endbringers get sick of Brockton Bay surviving and decide to break their usual patterns and attack all at once. That would really be something, jeez.
Whatever the story and its ending becomes, at least I know that it’s something you can make a sequel to, so I’m going to tentatively rule out the permanent destruction of the Earth for now. 😛
(I can’t say the same about Taylor dying at the end, though. I have no guarantee that the sequel is told from her perspective.)
Well, the Earth isn’t gone yet, but I’ve learned some information that really undermines the idea of Taylor having any more plot armor than anyone else, so it’s now even more believable that she won’t necessarily survive to the end.
On a lighter note, I expect Brian x Taylor to become a couple. That, again, is a subplot that could either get tied up in this Arc, or last for pretty much as long as Wildbow wants, but I do think they will end up together eventually. And they’ll be adorable together. :3
Ahahahaha
This was written right before the rejection
But yeah, I’m not thinking this anymore. If this were a different story, then maybe, but this story and this author seem the type to respect Brian’s rejection of Taylor rather than go “just give it time”. And on top of that, their relation has only gotten worse since then, both ways, for reasons mostly unrelated to the rejection.
And hey, let’s throw a random crack ship in here for good measure, and see how that goes. Hmm… how about… Greg… and… Lisa. Sure. Let’s see if Greg x Lisa happens somehow. 🙂
There’s… still time.
Anyway, let’s move on to new predictions!
Currently, the only long term hook we really have is Taylor’s decision to make things better, but I really don’t know how she intends to go about that yet, making it very difficult to theorize on. I think and hope we’ll see how that goes.
On the other hand, it also feels like this is where we start focusing less on Taylor and more on how things develop in society as a whole through whatever happens from here.
Also, I do think we’ll learn more about the origin of parahumans (something involving “shards”, though I try not to speculate on that yet). Discovering the origin might also have something to do with a potential final threat even bigger than the Endbringers (which, as mentioned, I’m sure we’ll see all of over time).
And yeah, you’re right, I should probably do this kind of thing more regularly. 🙂
A string of images in your post-3.1 fanart dump are broken – I only see “External image” instead of the actual image. And yes, I am rereading, now that we’ve finished what you call Book 1.
Ah yeah, I’m aware of that sequence. It seems to be an issue with the reblogs – I believe you’ll see those images if you go to the original posts on the screener blog. I suppose I could copy the images into the reblogs… I’ll see what I can do.
Krixwell Liveblogs 