Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

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Raw Shark
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Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

I'll get the ball rolling. First impressions:

Very Young But Capable Protagonist: Check.

Monsters: Check.

Mutilation: Check.

Crapsack World with hints of even deeper layers of Crap: Check.

No bulimia or rape yet, but nobody's ruling it out.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a third Wildbow story and I'm gonna read the shit out of it. I'm digging the Pseudo-Victorian Monster Hunter / Parkour Kids thing.

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by phred »

I'll give it a shot if it's getting continued. It was posted in December, so not sure if it's going anywhere.

It looks like it take's place in the same world as the story that I voted for when Worm was ending.
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by LaCroix »

I really liked it, it has lot's of potential - Kind of a shadowrun corporate steampunk vibe, but with real victorian steampunk tech.
A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay

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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

phred wrote:I'll give it a shot if it's getting continued. It was posted in December, so not sure if it's going anywhere.
It was posted in December, but he just unlocked it Tuesday and will post another one Saturday. He's still on his regular schedule.

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by Alkaloid »

Well that was grim.

First impressions. I was assuming they were some sort of artificial life given the "technical oldest" line from the first chapter. Obviously they aren't stiched given Sylvesters reaction to fire and apparent capacity to think.

Given the context I'm assuming custom made spies? Helen for the upper classes/politics, Gordon I'm guessing the military, Jamie for academics and Sy is the everyman/commoner.
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

Alkaloid wrote:[snip] I was assuming they were some sort of artificial life given the "technical oldest" line from the first chapter. Obviously they aren't stiched given Sylvesters reaction to fire and apparent capacity to think.
I thought it was obvious that they're artificial ever since the wax masks came up early on. Normal children don't typically apply hot wax to their faces to repel rain, after all. Some kind of vat-grown bioroids maybe?
Alkaloid wrote:Given the context I'm assuming custom made spies? Helen for the upper classes/politics, Gordon I'm guessing the military, Jamie for academics and Sy is the everyman/commoner.
Mr. Hayle compares his colleagues' fixation with weaponry to his own focus on the brain. I'm guessing he's more of an academic purist, studying the development of artificial intelligence, probably with an eye to laying the groundwork for eventually making a superhuman one that could rapidly accelerate the pace of all other research. He has the kids do the job he does because it's useful to the Academy (ensuring continued approval and possibly funding for the project), but more-importantly because it pushes them to their physical and mental limits. Experimentation of a that-which-doesn't-kill-you nature would be considered thoroughly unethical with real kids, no matter how Dickensonian this setting gets, so he made himself some fake ones.

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

Additional Speculation Following 1.3 (I was actually thinking this before reading 1.3, but had trouble logging on yesterday; anyway, 1.3 seals it):

So, I think each of the kids was created to think in a different way. The run-down:

Project Galatea: Named for a legendary statue that became a real girl, Helen is the only kid whose wax doesn't crack at all. She was created to study a sociopathic artificial intelligence that doesn't have feelings.

Project Caterpillar: The only project that we know of that is named after a real thing, Jamie is as patient, methodical, and down-to-Earth as his designation. Hints that he might be intended to undergo some sort of dramatic metamorphosis, possibly at puberty.

Project Gryphon: Named for a proud, brave monster commonly used in heraldry, Gordon was created to be fearless, charismatic, and decisive, an Alpha skillset that will make him a leader in any context.

Project Wyvern: Named for a legendary venomous reptile, Sylvester was created to think in a deviant manner. Hayle more than implies that he expects him to lie, scheme, be a smartass, act out against authority, think outside the box, and all-around be an insufferable little shit because he made and knows him. Sylvester also acknowledges that Hayle is able to manipulate him using his insatiable curiosity, which is surely built-in.

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by madd0ct0r »

further notes:

the gryphon is a chimera type - a creature blended from two different ones and showing the best of both.

Wyvrens have strong associations with poisonous snakes - I wonder if Sly is actually venomous in addition to metaphorically? He certainly doesn't seem bothered by the snakes and spiders that had Dr Hayle lurking on the doorstep of the room. Also, every woman he's seen so far has been shapely or buxom, can't tell if he's a junior horndog or dosen't know what he's looking for.
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

I suspect that Sly just had confidence in his own ability to avoid the spiders and snakes, vs other people. He also seems to enjoy risks, based on his comments during his show-offy 1-story drop maneuver in chapter 1.

This is also a pseudo-Victorian setting. Not saying that he's not a junior horndog who gives narrative bias to boobies (though his comments to the audience with regard to looking up Lillian's skirt seem to indicate the opposite: practically no sex drive for a boy his supposed age, just a desire to piss people off), real and fake cleavage is probably a major thing in general.

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by LaCroix »

I agree, they are something between alive and stiched. They do seem to need some kind of waterproofing (Or it was done to mask their scent against the snakecat beast??), but at the same time they don't have stiches or a weakness to fire. Sy even thinks of stiched humans derogatory as THEM, not as US. They do have an expiry date, tho, and they seem to have to undergeo a regular "treatment", which might be used to extend that expiry date?

My guess is they were orphans (thus sub-human lowlifes to any proud Victorian), were bought and genetically modified as toddlers. Their creator/handler is a top dog at university it seems, so he might be capable to do that. If you are allowed to revive stiched together human corpses, experimenting on children is not too far off the mark. After all, it's the Victorian era... They did not particular value a poor child, apart from how well it fit through a chimey or into a running machine.
A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay

I do archery skeet. With a Trebuchet.
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

Out of all the relationships possible in this thread, I love Sly vs Gordon the most. This is the best thing ever and bears infinite discussion.

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

High-fives to Wildbow for revealing what Petey does on Halloween. *shudder*

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by madd0ct0r »

Yeah. That was horrible, even by twig standard's. It's just eugh
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

I love Sylvester's assessment of Petey: No mention of the fact that he was purpose-built to rape women with his entire body to control their minds- that's cool. But he's kind of an uncooperative douche...

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by madd0ct0r »

started a rough rpg character builder for a similar sort of world.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

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madd0ct0r wrote:started a rough rpg character builder for a similar sort of world.
I've contemplated writing it up for my GURPS group. The setting hasn't thrown anything out there that 4e Basic can't easily handle, though Biotech would be useful if you want to dig deeper into technobabble territory than Wildbow himself does, and the Martial Arts book would of course be employed in my version.

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by madd0ct0r »

Gurps covers EVERYTHING.

I was going for a bit more limitations led, nothing extreneuos setting specifc
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

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Writing up a GURPS setting is like creating a topiary: It may be simple or elaborate, but either way, you probably need to prune more than you keep. Even the Basic book would have all kinds of stuff that would be extraneous for this project, which would be declared out of use for the game. GURPS is a toolbox, and you don't use every tool in the box, or even most of them, for every job.

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by madd0ct0r »

true. guess I just like making lists. I would like what you think of it, real big boy criticism, if you've got time.
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

It's a fine list of setting-specific ideas, but if I was going to spend time playing or running a Twig game I'd want to use something much more robust and nuanced. I could go over to GURPS Forum and start a thread about building Helen's personality, or Sanguine's eyes, or what fucking Petey does and get 2-4 answers that are valid interpretations of the rules and the source material to choose from depending on the exact effect and feel that I'm looking for.

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

I kind of have to wonder what happened to Wildbow when he was a kid, sometimes.

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by madd0ct0r »

Maybe he found his pet dog dead in the woods a week late?

There's this really strong theme of body horror running through all his writing. Power, control and manipulation too, but those are necessary dramatic engines to haul the plot along. Still not as bad as petey though.
That may actually be a point. All of his hero's are pretty nasty dangerously simplistic people. They need this background of visceral disgust to appear attractive by contrast
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

Ghetto spoilers, since tags are not functioning:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SYLVESTER: I spend my time thinking about how to get out of bad situations, or how to get around them. I think about my enemies and their thought patterns, about their weaknesses, and how everything can be arranged to maximize our odds.

Mary thinks about how to make people bleed. /spoilers

Have I mentioned lately that I have an age-inappropriate love for Mary? She's kind of the girl that I wish that I knew when I was 13.

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by Raw Shark »

The newest header graphic, with Hubris sitting at attention by Gordon's side as he casually feeds an apple to a huge war-beast, is the saddest thing ever. Gordon had some sense of empathy and knew that he was just another monster, albeit a beautiful one.

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker
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Re: Wildbow's Twig Discussion Thread

Post by LadyTevar »

So... it's still an on-going thing?
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