My issue isn't with either character, it's more just wanting confirmation from a relatively unbiased party that some of the arguments there actually are creepily misogynistic and that I'm not just seeing things. Or, if I am just seeing things, a reality check. Like, there's just that sense of 'wow, this feels skeevy, I'm uncomfortable' and I want to make sure that I'm not jumping at shadows because of past bad experiences.
Oh! Well, yes, you're correct. The arguments on either side are exceedingly shitty, and there is a highly unnecessary amount of girl-bashing and stuff in there, from what I can tell. Your skeeviness sensors are functioning fine.
Whew, thanks. I was participating in the argument, but I got the sense that we were just going to dissolve into slapfighting instead of actually convincing each other of anything, so I tried to exit the whole thing relatively politely and am currently holding back on the 'someone is wrong on the Internet' impulse in order to prevent myself from going back in.
Twig is wonderful. I adore Sylvester, he is my precious evil baby, and the amoral, episodic adventures of the Lambsbridge Gang remind me pleasingly of Worm's earlier arcs with Taylor and the Undersiders. It seems like Wildbow basically seized on the amazingness that was Evan in Pact and has capitalized upon his ability to portray happy kids in dark settings.
YES. Also, the dynamic between the group members is really fascinating, and definitely different than in the Undersiders.
It's really great in that Sylvester is a blatantly unreliable narrator and has this tendency to assume that everyone else is either a manipulative little brat like he is or a pawn that the manipulators use. And how completely open he is about how much he loves the rest of the gang and takes comfort from them and tries to understand and help each of them in his own way. But they don't always see him quite the same way, because Sylvester is a precious little agent of Chaos who can be deeply aggravating to work with even if you do love him, so the group dynamic is sort of structured around keeping Sylvester from screwing things up by getting too distracted by incidental goals (like "oh man this guy is awesome I MUST MAKE HIM NOTICE ME AND ACKNOWLEDGE ME AS AN EQUAL AND THEN LOCK HIM IN A BOX SO I CAN MAKE HIM KEEP DOING THINGS FOREVER" which was about the most disturbingly cute crush ever) and keeping him from using the rest of them for said incidental goals while saying it's for the overall goal. The Gang knows Sylvester, and they know how to work with and around him. Spoiler: some spoilers because I am not sure how far in you are, past about Arc 2 Like, I feel like if the Lambs weren't there to balance him, Sylvester would be leaving this awful trail of victims. Which was why I was super uneasy about him befriending Mary, because she was really emotionally vulnerable and his thoughts inevitably are thinking about manipulation constantly, and around Mary he would mentally make note of how to manipulate her with emotional connections, so there was a real potential for an unbalanced, emotionally abusive friendship even if he admires and likes her because you may have noticed Sy is awful at self analysis and also twelve. But the Lambs basically stepped in and stopped that cold with Lillian befriending her and the rest of them welcoming her into the group and giving their perspectives on Sy.. Which is great because Mary is also precious and awesome. Also, Helen! Helen is great. I really like how she plays with the standard "emotionless girl" stuff, because her emotions are basically completely divorced from her physical reactions, so when she smiles at you or makes physical cues, she's acting. It doesn't mean it isn't genuine, but at her most honest, when she's not trying to convey something, she'll be totally flat.
Spoiler: reply to spoilers, which i know of but other people may not But also just, Mary and the Lambs.
Spoiler: speculation I wonder if they started calling themselves the Lambs specifically because of that pun? I don't think that they ever actually called themselves the Lambs until the second arc, and we do know they love their nicknames...
What are Twig and Pact about, anyways? What are the main selling points/interesting things about them?
Of the two, Twig is easier to give as an elevator pitch for me: In a changed world a century after Mary Shelley, rather than writing the first real science fiction novel, instead unlocked the secrets of life and death, the world is defined by rapid scientific advancement under the sway of ruthless academic organizations, each scrambling to be the first to create ever more fantastical constructs. It's a system under immense strain, constantly on the verge of great change. This is the background in which the Lambsbridge Gang, a group of strange children based out of the Lambsbridge orphanage, operate, hunting those who'd use the secrets of Radham Academy for their own purposes instead of the Academy's. Basically, it's about a bunch of moderately amoral kids with fascinating and adorable group byplay doing morally dubious things for a morally dubious organization. The arcs tend to be episodic in nature, each one focusing on a different enemy of the Academy. It's a lot of fun. Also, it's essentially set in a world where everyone is Bonesaw. So there's that. For Pact...anyone have a good overview there? I enjoyed it but it's not that easy to compact.
Pact is basically about this guy suddenly way in over his head in demons and various supernatural stuff, muttering "fuck fuck I fucked up" under his breath. Also there's a cool bird.
I once saw someone describe Blake as "constantly windmilling his arms to not fall off of whatever the current balance beam is" and I think that's pretty accurate. His internal narration got kind of annoying after a while, though-his verbal tics and repeated words really came through. The bird is indeed pretty cool.
I'm not sure why it was annoying to me, on reflection. I think it's something to do with his repetition of phrases like "on a level." Blake always seemed to have this need to clarify to himself when he's using metaphor-which, given that he can't lie, is a useful trait to have, but gets a bit annoying because he rarely makes declarative statements without qualifying them. Also, he kept going "it isn't like in the movies" to himself every time he got in trouble, but I think that that was more foreshadowing because eventually he decides to hitch his ride to the monster movie archetype and suddenly things are exactly like the movies.
Yeah, the "this isn't a movie" thing bugs me pretty much anywhere I see it, but not enough to dislike the whole train of thought. And the repetition of phrases was something I liked, probably because I tend to do that.
Anyway, in Twig news, I want to hug several people. Spoiler: arc 4 spoilers Such as Warren and Wendy, holy fuck, Wendy drives home how incredibly awful the way they use the stitched are because she's so clearly a person with brain damage who is used as slave labor. And her interactions with the Lambs are just...urgh, highschool flashbacks with them gaslighting her, and how awful is it that next to Fray and Warren they're the ones that treat her most like a person? And it's to manipulate her? Jamie, oh man. Most moral Lamb or what, he doesn't take Fray up on it because he knows the longer he stays the longer it is until they grab some other poor kid to stick knives in their spine. And his relationship with Sy, how the single most tempting offer Fray has for Sy is that she can give him more time with Jamie, and yet he still doesn't take it because he wants so hard to believe in what Hayle is trying to accomplish that it overrides even his love for his friends. And how he trusts Sy to look after his book, the memories he's storing for when he inevitably starts to fail... Mary learning to fit in just as they start to fall apart with Gordon possibly lraving, the family she found for herself might tear itself apart.
I just noticed this thread - I'm in arc 12 of Pact, and planning to read either Twig or Worm after I finish. I drew Blake (spoilers if you're before, what arc 8 of Pact?): Spoiler
Oh my god, I love Worm and Twig. I'm... lukewarm on Pact and never really finished it. I think my favorite thing about Twig is like... they're the bad guys. The Academy is bad. They know the Academy is bad, but they can't do anything about it, and they're just children and they're being put in these situations and it's wrong. If there was an arc where they finally flipped on the Academies, and I think there will be, it's going to be incrediably cathartic for me as a reader.
