Transcript
Speaker: Good evening, Perpetuity, and the Brockton Bay Book Club for the final, but not last, podcast episode of Ward.
Speaker: Joining me on this sobering and auspicious day, we have myself, Alan, one of your hosts. And joining me tonight, we have Nick. Hello there.
Speaker: Anna. It's me. Jacob. Yellow. And on the keys, our producer, Michael.
Speaker: Yep, and the internet's already really bad. So that's always good to see. everyone in chat nothing new I did not make a PowerPoint. Not a PowerPoint, a bingo for tonight.
Speaker: But if I did, I would have put ah technical difficulties right up there. that Would have been safe to do. I'm already nostalgic for the internet buffering. but Yeah, I'm not. will sleep well.
Speaker: It's okay. Michael, if you want to go do the the breaker box on and off at the top of your Frankenstein's tower. frankenstein's tower and stare at the Is that what you do? Do you just stare at it like yeah what yeah take ah take a flip-flop and like beat it in front of it? Pretty much. I assumed it was like a wet noodle.
Speaker: Yep. I threatened unplug it. wet, sloppy noodle. Yeah, the prayer circle, we're all doing the... He's got to give a good a good stare to the hamster that's on the wheel that controls, that powers the internet.
Speaker: You know, really intimidate the hamster. Faster, buddy. Faster. He pulls out the old modem. You want your nuts back. That's like the beat with a baseball bat and he hangs it in front of the other one as a warning.
Speaker: that Yeah, this is annoying. I'm going to go look at it while you say hi it and guys introduce things. Yeah, we'll say hi-ish. able to say hi. i of course, and typical fashion, am drinking my hot... This is my microwaved hot milk.
Speaker: I'm heated up for you. To brew this in remembrance of me. Yeah, what temperature did you do? What's ideal temp? um I couldn't tell you because I don't have ah a cooking thermometer, which I realized the other day I went to go find a cooking thermometer that I've never had.
Speaker: we have one. So I'm not crazy. There is one. Yeah. I couldn i were through the i opened the drawer, looked in there, went, I must be mad.
Speaker: And, so you know, in classic male in the kitchen fashion, you might have to move spatula probably like. and right I did. i I shook. I shook the drawers. I didn't. I'm sorry. I didn't flip them upside down, you know, but also I've never I don't think I've ever actually used it before.
Speaker: That being said, it's not a temperature issue for me so much as it is it is a time we've established. It's one cup of milk at ah two minutes.
Speaker: and um i don't I don't know the wattage, per se, on my microwave, so... and tell you what like average power is for that. um If you do, I will say I do like it a little bit hotter. If you do a ah two and a half minutes at a cup and a quarter of milk, um that gets you like right to frothiness level. And it's almost, if you do any more than that, you do like 245, three minutes, it will bubble over whatever container you have and like explode in your microwave.
Speaker: Just frothing milk everywhere. Good to know. You got to be careful. here now milk it It goes real fast. Yeah. Yep. ah Have that to look i have water. What are you drinking, Hannah?
Speaker: Yeah. It's just water. I was going to get alcohol. You peer pressured me. about You said, oh, what alcohol are you drinking? And then I didn't get alcohol. Should I go get alcohol? We have apple pie wine in the fridge.
Speaker: I was, that's what I was going to do. was going apple pie wine. Apple pie wine it is. All right. Okay. I'll go get it. I'm going to cry my fucking eyes out. So. Would you get me some apple pie wine, Hannah?
Speaker: Yeah, baby. Oh, Beckford's right here. Beckford has a little eye infection. So he's been so sweet and sleepy lately. Poor boy. Yes. um Jacob, what are you drinking tonight?
Speaker: I am drinking, this is some of my homemade pb and j mead I'm sipping on here. I would love to try that sometime. And you will. I promise you.
Speaker: it' I'm not as ah as... I'm trying to think of a of a non-derogatory adjective to describe a group of people that would create their own alcohol.
Speaker: um But it is fun. like you feel like Breaking Bad. Brewers? Brewers? I said non-derogatory. Yeah. Yeah, sure. But no, it it does give me that the the Breaking Bad feeling, except it is totally legal, as long as you don't sell it, which I don't.
Speaker: Interesting. Isn't selling it like half the fun? Yeah, that's that's the more bad of the breaking bad, right? So, right now it's breaking. Actually, that's a good... I know there are some substances like alcohol. You can produce it yourself but not sell it without a license. It makes me wonder now, like... Coffee, sure. You can produce it yourself but not sell it without a license. Hannah, Hannah, I've been delighted to that recently.
Speaker: There are some that are just... You cannot even produce legally, right? out what you can and cannot. Yeah, camera. It's me. Put me in focus. What you can and cannot sell under cottage license because cottage license exists when it comes to like food and stuff. If you go to a market, you can buy bread made out of somebody's home, but you're not allowed to sourdough starter, pizza dough, any beverage um that isn't pre-sealed.
Speaker: um So yesterday we were vending at a market and um the there was a coffee girl there and her coffee was delicious. But then another patron, another vendor was like, I think that's illegal. And I was like, oh, cool. That's good to know.
Speaker: Something to do with the milk. is Specifically in South Carolina, different states have different laws, but under cottage law in South Carolina. No beverages. Dude, I would be a lawyer of cottage law so hard. That would be a great deal.
Speaker: Just busting up farmer markets yeah every weekend. Yeah. yeah You dress as like one of those hobbits with the like shillelagh. You have to dress as a hobbit the whole time. 100%. You have to let me make you like a nice little hat or something. I have a really cute like witch hat, but it's made out of the straw material, like a straw hat, but it has a point.
Speaker: Oh, that's fun. and i've i'll make I've got tonight. but kind are my yeah After my iced coffee, I'm now having the can have the old man drink. This is my caffeine-free Coke Zero.
Speaker: Got nothing in it. It's a Coke with nothing. making yeah yeah Just just got drink water. It's good for you and has more flavor somehow.
Speaker: Fantastic. That was there a ah with nothing meme reference. the Make him one with nothingh with not the other and nothing. nothing.
Speaker: It's a pizza, right? Or a sandwich? Yeah, it's pizza. Pizza? Yeah, okay. Give me a pizza with nothing. awesome With nothing?
Speaker: Anyways. Well, Michael, how's the hamster doing? Yeah, how's the hamster? Can't find him. Yeah, it's bad. like no no Oh, Yeah. and down bed I the quality of the stream. I mean, I've been lowering the quality since day one. so if you lower the quality... Can't be that much harder.
Speaker: We could just be, like, pixelated, you know? like We're we one like we're in like, witness protection, you know? And in in arc
Speaker: yeah Ask the It is my job to make everyone look and sound good. Do not ask this of me. hurts so bad. so bad. I could restart the router and we everyone just jump back in.
Speaker: but We're live. Oh, great. Okay, I need to find a new live chat. Hold on. For those of you who missed, ah Michael went outside.
Speaker: he was looking for the router. i'm I'm not going to say which patron it was, but Michael had to wrestle the router away from them um in order to get the stream up and running because they didn't want this to be the final podcast. you so yeah um Which I understand, but you know, sometimes ah you just gotta let things go.
Speaker: Exactly. You know, as as the song says, if you love me, let me go. Which song is that, Nick? Was it this?
Speaker: is it I don't know. That's a song, I'm pretty sure. That's fair. It's one of those songs that's like probably actually meant to be a sad song but became a meme. Kind of like Ed Sheeran's When Your Legs Don't Work Like They Used To.
Speaker: What? Exactly. What song is that? That's the open line to that song. I'm going to Google it now. yeah It's about loving someone. I'll be loving you till you're 70 is the chorus thing.
Speaker: It's called Thinking Out Loud. The name of that song? No, the song is called Thinking Out Loud. Okay, that's what I thought. I was like, it's called Your Legs Don't Work No More? It's called Lieutenant Dan?
Speaker: You can see why. There's this great clip, though, of um somebody interviewing Ed Sheeran, and he's he's talking about it and he's like, yeah.
Speaker: You know, like things just hit on the internet different. Like, you you know, you don't expect, you know, like my song, you know, the opening line when your legs don't work like they used to before kind of became a meme. And the interviewer is like, yeah, yeah. And like starts laughing with him. And Ed Sheeran goes on. He's like, and you know, it's about like when my grandma got old and she couldn't start keep walking anymore. And my grandpa was holding her up. And he is like immediately like, oh, got what have I done?
Speaker: Oh, anyway. So what are we talking about that tonight? What are we doing? yeah what's going on What we doing? wow What's happening? Tonight, we are going to be going over final thoughts on Ward.
Speaker: the and in In its entirety. um I thought we'd get, as we usually do per arc, just some general thoughts from everybody now that we're at the end.
Speaker: um What we think about ah maybe just the experience as a whole. um And then we'll go in and kind of, by people think could talk about like, if if there's any specific stuff we want to talk about.
Speaker: um Ultimately we will get to wild bows post-mortem on his own work um and talk about that. So let's, ah let's dive in Nick.
Speaker: Big thoughts now that we're finished. Yeah. So, um, this might be a bit of a lengthy analogy, so I apologize for that, but I'm nothing if not verbose. Um, so i was trying to think of what kind of a sequel worm is. And I think I came up with a, what I hope is a decent comparison.
Speaker: Um, and I think I've referenced it many times before. So it feels appropriate is, Star Wars, the original trilogy, has had two sequel trilogies.
Speaker: Well, technically one is a prequel, but for intents and purposes, as it came out after, it was a sequel to the originals, right? And to the universe that the original provided.
Speaker: And so you have episodes one through three, ah Phantom Menace, Clone Wars, and Revenge revenge of the Sith. And then seven through through nine, ah Force Awakens, and the other two whose names I forget.
Speaker: um yeah And I was trying to think which, what kind of a sequel is Ward? Because episodes seven through nine, I'll start, they're not great.
Speaker: I think they started with some promise. ah with some interesting concepts, but a mixture of corporate meddling, bad writing, and ah not having a plan kind of ruined the entire trilogy.
Speaker: And now it's at the point where I don't really even want to watch episode seven. And when i show Star Wars to my kids, I'm not going to show them seven through nine, at least not until they're old enough to think about it critically.
Speaker: By contrast, we have episodes one through three. There are some parts of those episodes that are real rough. There are some things in there that are not well done.
Speaker: But man, if there isn't some charm to it, there's still those moments that make me go, yeah, episode one was really weird and political, but wasn't Darth Maul cool? Like, wasn't that neat that we got that?
Speaker: Um, yeah, midichlorians don't really make sense as an, as a thing, but man, Anakin's anguish at killing the sand people, like we meme on it, but genuinely like a, a decent scene for a character of art and arc and an explanation for why he's a bad guy.
Speaker: And i think that Ward kind of lands in that category. There are quite a few rough bits. There's a lot of stuff that I think didn't hit well that could have been done better and explored in a much better way.
Speaker: um But at the same time, there's a lot of charm to it. There's a lot of great moments. I liked revisiting the characters. I liked revisiting the universe. There's a lot that I would have done differently, but by the end, like I still enjoy episodes one through three, and I'd go back and rewatch them, and I'd introduce them to my kids as part of the the Star Wars canon.
Speaker: um And so that's kind of broadly how I feel about Ward. We can get into more of those specifics. But when I think about what kind of s sequel it is, I think it falls into that episodes one through three category where it's like a lot didn't work. There's a lot of stuff you can be like, yeah, that wasn't great. That was kind of embarrassing, actually.
Speaker: But there's some great charm to it, some great moments. And I think overall, the experience was still worth it.
Speaker: Well said. Nice. Well said.
Speaker: Hannah.
Speaker: Ditto. know um I mean, i I feel like you put it really well, Nick. It's funny. you were they you were You were relating it to Star Wars. I was kind of thinking about it in terms of some other books that I've read and specifically my books that I've written and like what I want to do with the story and in the third one and stuff like that. And I, I think because worm
Speaker: holds such a significant place in my heart in terms of characters and the world and and the story just being so cemented in my head is something I just absolutely adore. That it's like comparing Ward to Worm is difficult for me because that almost doesn't feel like a fair comparison.
Speaker: um
Speaker: Very much in in the line of what you were saying basically about like how... someone else like it it feels like ward it has the same characters it's in the same world but it's also not at all like i don't even want to obviously we spent a great we have spent and i have spent a great amount of time comparing ward to worm but in the end like looking back at it like honestly they're not even truly comparable and i think going thinking about it i feel like I've done Ward a small, like a so a small disservice because of Wyrm, like comparing it to Wyrm.
Speaker: And there are a lot of issues that I had with the plot and with certain beats, as we've talked about, and some character stuff. But I think because it's Wild Bo, we've been, I've been, I'll say, very harsh towards Ward. ward And i don't know. i i'm ah now that we're at the end, I'm just kind of sad that it's over. And,
Speaker: i yeah, i not as good as Wyrm, but still, it was it was fun to be here again and to meet new people. And, ah yeah, I don't know. I'm i'm still a little torn in in terms of my personal feelings about Ward, but I think that it It hasn't like destroyed my opinion of Wildebo or his writing or by any means because but i still really I still think that his characters are super deep and i love, love, love love
Speaker: all of the powers are so interesting and good and like the depth that he goes to explain a lot of stuff. Like sometimes things don't make sense and I'm like, okay, word soup, my man, word soup. But for the most part, I feel like I've had a lot of bad things to say about Ward and I feel bad that I have felt that way a little bit. ah So I don't know. I,
Speaker: I don't know. i'm so real i'm I'm feeling very torn. I mean, I think it's fair to be more critical of the things you enjoy and you kind of wish it were better. like Yeah. To carry my analogy a bit further, like people have written so many things about how they would have made episodes one and two in particular better.
Speaker: But you see very little about writing about how episode seven, eight, and nine could be better because people are just like, not only do I not care, but there's just like no fixing it. but Yeah, that's valid. And I feel like that's that's part of it is like we, if we are critical, it comes from a place of we really like this and not.
Speaker: Very much so, yeah. And not that we just don't care about it. Oh, yeah. Is at least how I feel. Yeah, I agree. I absolutely agree.
Speaker: Jacob, thoughts? ah Yeah, I think these are some some great thoughts. I think the experience of reading a work like this at all is a blast to do with a group. Anyone who ah isn't necessarily on a pack podcast but has a group of friends and wants to read through a story together, I can't recommend it more than...
Speaker: I can. it's It's a lot of fun. And to experience like this long-form storytelling, ah which isn't really a genre i enjoy on my own.
Speaker: um i enjoy shorter stories, movies, miniseries, ah novellas, things like that. I just prefer more condensed storytelling personally.
Speaker: But getting to sit in this world for over a year with... a group of people is a lot of fun. So like that aspect of it was a blast.
Speaker: Um, I think when it comes down to it, there isn't much in ward where I was like, damn, that is just awful.
Speaker: And I really want to stop reading right now. I don't, I don't really have any moments like that.
Speaker: unfortunately i don't have a lot of the opposite there were very few chapters that ended where i immediately started reading the next chapter ah not just because we had a podcast to film and i wanted we had to get reading done but because i genuinely wanted to keep reading whereas you know worm was almost always i don't i mean i read that thing in like chunks of mismatch chapters e etc um It's just one of those unfortunate stories where you get to the end and you're like, yeah, that was a pleasant experience.
Speaker: Glad I did it. I love being in the world and we'll kind of get into more details, but where I will certainly re re read worm.
Speaker: I will imagine a few more times at least, um, I don't know if I'll ever pick up word again. i think it's just sort of going to sit there and that's fine. It's, you know, it's again, I would never say it's bad. I don't think it would categorize. i think it's too shallow to categorize works like this is just good, bad or something like that.
Speaker: Um, lots of good, lots of not as good. Um, But ultimately, I was just sort of bored by the end of the story, which is unfortunate when you're reading something this long.
Speaker: um But overall, it was a really fun experience. I'm glad we did it. Thank you. ah said um Yeah.
Speaker: Overall, I think if I can take Ward at my own pace... then it becomes an enjoyable journey for me. um You know, the whole not about the destination, but I, you know, I enjoy being in this world. I enjoy the characters. I enjoy the, ah the events even.
Speaker: um But when I'm forced to sit and mull it over. um It doesn't even need the fridge test. Like, I just kind of like, yeah, if I'm forced to sit still in this world, it's, it's not as, it's not as fun.
Speaker: And, and Remind me what the Fridge Test is. i'm ah know You went saw the movie. You thought... not in fact, we use Star Wars an example. I went and saw a episode ah eight.
Speaker: um And i was like, oh, that was really fun. Like, there were some really bad parts in that. But overall, like, there were a lot of good parts where, like, they tried something different didn't necessarily work out, but I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: And then i went home And, you know, you're midnight, you wake up, you open the fridge to see if there's some food in there, and you go, that wasn't good.
Speaker: As you stare into the glow of the refrigerator. The fridge test. The light, soft glow of the refrigerator provides... Hang on a second. It provides you that enlightenment. And as you stand there staring at the milk for way too long and you start going...
Speaker: No, that was shit. Yeah, actually, think it was shit. And then you close the fridge, you go back to bed. Yeah. yeah Actually, it didn't make any goddamn sense.
Speaker: That's the fridge test. Gotcha. But, ah yeah, this is one of those where, like, if you allow yourself to think about it for any amount of time and you take your time with it, i don it it just doesn't work out.
Speaker: However, I will say that having read all of the other big Wild Boat pieces, a lot of the issues I have with Ward aren't exclusive to Ward.
Speaker: Um... Ward just happens to be the one that we've gone through and read about, you know, and read through it and, knit you know, and picked at. um But ah having read the others actually makes me more lenient towards Ward's, Ward's issues and less lenient towards Wildbo's writing.
Speaker: um because it's it it doesn't get any better in terms of like the problems. um I will say that overall, I do think Ward has a much...
Speaker: deeper... ah yeah Yeah, it's just... it's It's more depth of character. um I've described this in dimensions before, but most character most people, when they write their characters, they write two-dimensionally.
Speaker: um and that's just kind of what we're used to. And even the background feels like a two dimensional image is kind of drawn behind them.
Speaker: And with wild bow, all of his characters feel like they could be the main character. They feel like they're thought out and, um, given uh, a psychology of why they work the way they do. They are systems in themselves and he's really good at systems. Um,
Speaker: And so they are they feel like a shallow three dimensional pool in his other writings, like in worm, um, where there is an actual third dimension to them.
Speaker: And then we get to, uh, uh, to ward. And I feel like there's, it's even deeper. Like, um, um, and And even the combat I describe as like, there's an emotional dimension to combat that was not present in Wild and Wild those other works that like you did these other things, but now you have to be concerned with how is, how is everybody's emotion during combat?
Speaker: And that's, you know, this, all of a sudden this new thing that you've got to keep track of and you've got to write. And unfortunately, when you're adding so much, so many more dimensions to your writing, it gets bogged down.
Speaker: you start to see that like in creating a depth of character and, um, of universe and all this other stuff, you lose the enjoyability factor.
Speaker: Um, like the ability to process the information. Um, it's sort of like, uh, I think somebody called it button counting or like, if you have a, an author who describes an entire outfit down to the, but how many buttons are on the shirt.
Speaker: that's not enjoyable to read. Like you, if you spend that long on something fixating, that's great that you have that depth of universe, that you have that image in your head, but that doesn't make it enjoyable.
Speaker: And for me, Ward is an incredible advancement and a lot of things for wild bow, but it doesn't make it more enjoyable.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah, and i I do want to say in in terms of the positives and the impressive aspect of it, I i can't imagine writing web serial just personally. Not only does it seem like the kind of format that would be incredibly hard to balance, it is impressive that at the very least I would say it is consistent. It may not always be good or the direction we'd want it to be,
Speaker: But the fact that he can write such a consistent character grouping, especially for our protagonists, is just rather impressive. Like, I feel like if i were to try that, a lot of my characters would start to bleed together. And maybe he's got like, you know, a massive bulletin board behind his writing computer with like all the characters and like things to remember. Right. It's all the red string.
Speaker: It's all the red string. Exactly. um I think I remember he mentioned at one point he has like a deck of character names and he kind of like draws names to figure out like, okay, who's going to have the problem next. Um, you know Which is kind of a fun way to write. I can imagine that's interesting. But it as as the scope of it, it is impressive.
Speaker: um But yeah, i think I think there is something to that where it's like there's so much to it that almost... it's It's sort of like, um I guess I'm an Allergy Guy tonight. It's sort of like Skyrim as a game. where You realize Skyrim is this expansive world and there's depth and corners that you can explore, but you realize it's like a ah really big puddle.
Speaker: it's like like you You try to dive a little deeper and it's like, oh no, likes it's expansive, like very vast, but... like There's too much. and it and it's so like you You break it down and it's ultimately like a lot thinner than you might expect it to be.
Speaker: um With Wild Boat, it's almost like the opposite where it's like so big. It's like, but there's not enough time to dive the depths of it. So in the end, it feels kind of like that puddle where it's like, I know this universe is so big and there's so much to it, but there's just, I'm sorry, we don't have enough time to explore it all. And it's a shame. Yeah.
Speaker: It's like somebody built an open world fully. Like you could walk in every building. Every character has voice lines, you know, everything's been rendered, but you are only allowed to,
Speaker: play a very linear part of that and it's like wait wait wait but I know you've made this game this way why are we going in this direction why are we doing this why are we even in this part when clearly like there's other things going on in this world you've created yeah yeah As a side note, apparently some some players who were frustrated with the recent Wolverine game um were able to like break out of break out of the level, and they discovered that other parts of the world are actually fully rendered and interactable, and there's now a theory that the game was meant to be open world, but then at some point the like higher-ups were like, no, we don't need this to be open world, make it linear.
Speaker: and Interesting. Yeah, that was about right. I don't know. It's tough because feel like almost... ah it's tough because i feel like almost Worm is one of those things where almost occasionally reading the wikis is more interesting than the story itself.
Speaker: it's got a word It's got a very comic feeling. and Like sometimes when... Like I've read comics before, but I'm a huge comic reader. So a lot of times if I just want to catch up on lore or something like that, yeah, you just go to the wikis and you read through it and it's awesome. And it's great. Yeah, Worm has a similar feeling sometimes.
Speaker: Yeah. Kind of just make up. I can see... Although it conflicts with my, on a moral level, it conflicts with me. But I can see why the fanfic community loves the parahumans so much.
Speaker: ah yeah yeah Oh, yeah. Morally, fanfiction is reprehensible. I was about to say, where was the moral laundry here? The official stance of the Brockton Bay Book Club is that it is morally reprehensible. Did we all write some fanfiction at one point in time?
Speaker: yes so Yes. Yes. Could you have access to that if you went to the Brockton Bay Patreon book club Patreon right now? um Also, yes. I mean, some have said the Brockton Bay book club is morally reprehensible, which accurate.
Speaker: They have used those words before. Yes. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah As J-Man says, ah the pacing becomes a huge problem that plagues Ward in multiple ways throughout.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. If you all want to talk about pacing, i down i will close i will break be the closer on pacing because I have issues on not just Ward with pacing.
Speaker: I think that's a wild bow problem. I also... but sometimes thinks that's just a serial problem, but we can talk about that. I was going to say, it could be a serial problem. and I think it is a serial problem. Yeah, a lot of serialization, like a long form serial.
Speaker: um it It would make sense if that's an issue with the genre. It does because I think the, you know, and Wildboe kind of alludes to this in his postmortem is that when you're competing for attention so much, and I think of this more with Wyrm than with Ward.
Speaker: I mean, you read Wyrm and it's like breakneck pace. Yeah. It feels like. But part of why I can imagine it works as a web serial is because, like you said, Jacob, every chapter you're like, well, I got to know what happens next.
Speaker: And you imagine you've got like two or three days between every chapter naturally it gets more paced out to where it doesn't feel so absurd. It's only when you sit and read it from start to finish that it starts to feel absurd.
Speaker: And I think maybe, you know, if, if for us reading Ward felt slow, imagine waiting two or three days between every chapter and but I don't have to imagine. I remember. Or in Alan's case, remembers.
Speaker: Where in fact, yeah it's like, nothing happened. And now I got to wait two more days. What if nothing happens next time? You know? yeah um And that's, I can imagine that's a really difficult thing to balance as a web serial.
Speaker: So where you're you're much more tempted to be like, well, I got to make every chapter hit. I got to hit that breakneck pace. And so knowing that intentionally he was trying to slow Ward down, I think maybe is part of what did him in, in terms of the pacing, is just like, oh, people are bored. I got i gotta to get the attention again. Something's got to happen, you know?
Speaker: and And we say it all the time, but just to reiterate it again, um the fact that it is essentially... a first draft. Minor editing. Yeah. He does. Wild. It's crazy. It's crazy. we're all We're all creatives and writers and in various ways. i have written chapters that I have completely deleted.
Speaker: i have started a story with a character and then said, yeah you know what? this This character doesn't work. I need this character in the scene. And then like rewrote the whole... I can't imagine... And granted, my process is obviously very different. But like...
Speaker: I can't imagine writing at his pace consistently. ah Minimal editing. Like, my God, we we pair Wildbow with, like, a competent editor that wants to work with him and, like, find that union.
Speaker: i my God. Unstoppable. Unstoppable force. and Oh, my God. first it is it is crazy Yeah, I was thinking about this with because, again, comparing it back to my own stuff, but like the there's you have all these key beats. Like when I was writing The Black Hand, it's like I have these key beats that I need to hit and to move the plot. But I also have some fun characters I want to have. And I want to have these like fun little moments. And I want a couple little fun filler chapters that kind of.
Speaker: you know, give you a little peek into the world or into specific characters or whatever it might be. and it's like, i I can write the whole book and then rearrange chapters and go, actually, I think this interaction works better if I put it over here. And if I do this and then I go, actually, you know what? I think this chapter needs about another thousand words or actually what I'm going to do is instead of her going to bed, she's going to go out and explore the city and change that, you know, in draft four of eight. And it's like, there and I can do all of that because I have the freedom of it's just me and my computer. And then potentially much, much later on in the drafts, my editor, my beta readers, like, i and and then I can get that feedback and change more. But, like, to make all of those decisions in what I can only imagine is, like, he sits down and he goes, cool.
Speaker: And he writes it all out. And then maybe the next day he, like, goes in and changes a couple of things. And then he posts it. Like, I can't, I... And I feel like i would I would stock the fridge, basically. And every chapter would be me panicking that, like, did I go too hard? Did I do too much? Do I need to slow it down? And then I'm, I can't, I can't, oh my God. I'm not, I'm not built for web serials. I'm not built for it at all.
Speaker: ah To build off of that too, like, also like, yes, it's incredibly impressive, but also editing is such an important part of the storytelling process that I think is is necessary for exceptional stories. Like, I do think Worm is probably the exception to the rule, right? And again, I would like some more examples from other serializations. I think it'd be interesting. but i mean i was even watch a lot of the behind the scenes stuff for lanterns the dc show out right now and as it was scripted filmed all the way through production
Speaker: what is What came out as episode five was written as the final episode. And then in the editing process, they said, you know what? This episode, everything we filmed and wrote for like the last two years works better as a mid-season episode. And they reshuffled it around. Like, editing is essential for like good storytelling. You you need to kind of think through, let things flesh out.
Speaker: have your ideas move around and like come back around and like lay things out. And so I think, you know, yes, I mean, Wild Bo deserves all of his, his praises for what he can do is incredible. But I do think it but it probably is, is a, is a, I'm trying to think of the right word there, but like it does limit his potential because he's unable to let those stories sit with him as he's writing them and like come back be able to work on them. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, you also have these books in the industry currently that started out as like a fan fiction that were, you know, a web serial where they were posting on fricking Wattpad and they were doing chapters once a week or once, a you know, twice a week or something like that. And they got really, really popular and people loved them.
Speaker: And you i mean, you see it all the time with some huge books that then got rewritten and readapted or books that just got okay, well, everyone loves this. We need to take it down and reshape it and then republish it under a new name or under a new whatever because we changed a couple of things. like You have a lot of big-name books that do that, but also there are a ton of indie books that do that that. Indie authors that published their books and then a big-name publisher like Random picked them up and went like, okay,
Speaker: let's Let's do this and let's do it right. And then they get movies. like We're talking years and years and years of finished product projects that are then like re-edited and reformatted and republished that then get reformatted and re-edited it again in a new format. like Oh my God. i the The process of that is crazy and yet it happens all the time. And it's like...
Speaker: i I mean, I would love to see that happen for a while, though, in the sense of like yeah having an editor come in and and go, okay, this is what we're going to do. We're going to just tackle ah Worm and Ward, and we're going to make this the most polished, beautiful thing we can. we can And like unfortunately, that does mean, usually, immense amounts of cutting and refining and adding and revisiting and And I mean, they talk they talk about like with the editing process that like you're cutting up your baby and like that's exactly what it is. Like you have to because it's for the greater good of the story of being able to look at your work critically and go like, hey, I love this. The fans love this. The readers really love this, but it doesn't suit the story and it needs to go. And like that's not an easy decision to make.
Speaker: I'm very bad at it. I'll tell you right Especially post-release. Yeah. Oh, post-release for sure. Oh my gosh. like Now it's even harder. if you If you ever did want to go back and edit it, it would be yeah very hard.
Speaker: Incredibly so, yeah. couple of good comments here. Fran said, i enjoy the big worlds he makes. Love the extra materials and pale were so fun. Sometimes there were short stories that only pay off in other extra materials, which is a fun thing you can do in web serials. You can't do another format. I agree. Yeah. J man said really highlights how special worm is and what was pulled off there. don't know if another piece of fiction will ever perfectly replicate it.
Speaker: And then Fran added, the only problem is that an editor would make Wild Boe not stop a character so they not stop a chapter so the characters can watch an Air Bud parody, and I don't want to live in a world where he doesn't do crazy shit like that. That's so true. That is completely fair. hundred yeah alex i do want to I do want to come back to the pacing thing, though, because Alan said he had some thoughts on pacing. I wanted to make sure he you got to share.
Speaker: yeah Oh, yeah. So, i ah you know, we talked part of this is the is the serial format, and we'll also get into this in the postmortem, that, like, while you are writing a serial, um you do have a general, you have a world you want, you have.
Speaker: You also, i assume, I know for a couple of his, like, you have a beginning and an end point that you want to get to, um and maybe things along the way that you want to hit, and you are trying to for all intents and purposes, pace yourself out to that.
Speaker: And the question becomes like, how long is this going to be? Um, cause when he starts worm, you know, you get, you know, your first two arcs in and you're like, Oh,
Speaker: Am I going to be putting out 6,000 or, you know, 60,000, you know, word arcs? You know, am I going to be doing this many pages a ah day?
Speaker: um And then you do, you know, double and triple that all of a sudden. And, you know, suddenly you're taking up more time ah but you're making less ground in the beginning to end story.
Speaker: um And ultimately, like the weakest part, everybody agrees for Worm is the time skip. And that's because he planned on writing out all those years.
Speaker: The problem is they'd moved six months in a you know, book that is supposed to be two and a half years in the making.
Speaker: um you know, in story. And he, you know, you look at that and you go, I am two years into this. I don't want to keep writing this story. I like, it was, it was fun while it lasted, but clearly like, I'm not going to do this again for another five years, real lifetime, you know, writing out this. So You know, he got tired, um which is a case for, you know, a lot of these. And, you know, so okay, well, we we've got to get to the end.
Speaker: Like, I got it. We've got to make this satisfying. So you time skip and not received well. People don't like that. But it gets you to the end, which people do enjoy. Because it's like, we I know where I'm going. Just got to get there.
Speaker: And sometimes that involves truncating things or expanding things. um And unfortunately, that is the animal of a cereal and trying to calculate in your head the trajectory of your beginning to your end.
Speaker: The problem with Wildbow Works is he has never learned how to do the math. um All of his stories start, ramble forever, and then all of a sudden, like the end kind of resolves.
Speaker: um They're not like, none of them feel like they've been led there necessarily, or they're so dragged out for so long that you don't feel the like climbing action almost.
Speaker: um When the ramp is just like this, And then the story ends. You're like, oh, well I guess that was the final boss. Sure. um We're done. You know, epilogues, I guess, if there are even those.
Speaker: And he just never learns that lesson that, like, you need to, like you know, we know Sion's the big bad guy. We know that that's, that's the end fight really.
Speaker: Um, unless you've got the fire emblem secret dragon boss that was controlling, you know, Sion the whole time. There is a dragon. So like, could be, ah you know, but, uh,
Speaker: ah I'm sorry. I had i had an ADD thought. Can i tell you? Can I tell you? When I first played um Fire Emblem, I want to say it's Path of Radiance, the first one with Ike.
Speaker: Spoilers for like a 15 year old video game. There is no second boss. And I was like so mentally prepared for it because every other game had it. And you get there and you're like, all right, I beat Ashnerd, but who's really behind all of this?
Speaker: Oh, no, he's just dead. The game's over. ok Yeah. that's all Yeah. um That was basically me waiting to see what sleeper was going to be. And then, yeah oh yeah and that's oh that's all sleep. Okay. No more sleeper. All right. You're fine.
Speaker: um Okay. But that is ah is a lesson that is, that's not exclusive to Ward. The fact that, like, he wrote for two, two and a half years, and at some point in time, you know, was, as we'll, you know, talk about later,
Speaker: gotten beaten down is tired of writing this like wants to move on to something else but can't just like call it like you have to keep going you have to resolve it and that involves truncating a lot of your plans or just getting rid of things and getting to the end um And I think when it comes to pacing, you like for some reason, he just like never learns that.
Speaker: And I also think with the pacing, as I've mentioned before, there's a rhythm or, you know, the climbing, the falling, the rising, all that. um And a lot of times his are just action or there's, there's sort of no, I don't want to call it bounce to him, but like,
Speaker: wo Worm does an excellent job of that, of having like you know the arcs lead to something and and then you know resolve and then lead to something and resolve, ah which is why people talk about cutting like Worm into like five sections, essentially. Mm-hmm. Yeah. you You can kind of do that with board but they're just they're so okay the fallen kind of has like a good okay here's we're clearly leading up to this this has a lot of stuff building into this um and and i would argue that that has a that kind of just that the resolves uh probably the best out of everything and that's the beginning um yeah
Speaker: Yeah, I actually have the Fallen as the strongest arc, in my opinion, in Borde. I think so, too. I think so, too. I agree. Yeah. um And clearly, there's a lot that he wanted to do. There's a lot that like I still think i do not I don't like March as a character. Yeah.
Speaker: Honestly, I keep forgetting. But understand. don't want to remember. But I understand as you are trying to world build and explain the system of the shards, March is incredibly important.
Speaker: and And, you know, really... hints at that and gets you to kind of understand that like they talk about shard heaven and you know the weird connection that people have and that's a very legitimate thing of like everybody is connected when they do the the the dreaming death that's very much because of things that march has talked about to our characters and to the reader um But to again, it's just weirdly paced and you kind of just glaze over it because you glaze over everything in Ward.
Speaker: um Like I said, that's not a Ward exclusive. That is every Wildbow work and it doesn't get better. It does not learn that lesson. I don't want to hear this from you, Alan. As someone who plans on reading everything else, ah I don't want to hear this from you.
Speaker: Shut up. It's interesting though. And maybe maybe part of it I feel like that Do either any of you guys feel like Ward had more gotcha moments? And what I mean is where like with Wyrm, there were those moments of like, oh my gosh, like, Coyle's dead. Is he actually dead? Like, no, he's really dead.
Speaker: Versus like the big moments we talked about like in Ward where we're like, oh my gosh, Vista's dead. Oh no, she's not. ah ah you know like There's a lot more of those pseudo-gotcha moments.
Speaker: Oh no, Marge. yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um And then you have it where like the payoff of that is like March gets killed in an interlude all of a sudden. You know, where it's like, ah oh, right okay, Vista's alive.
Speaker: And also, problem solved now, March is dead. And it feels like Ward had a lot more of those moments where I don't feel like Worm had as many that I can remember.
Speaker: Hannah, thoughts? those ghost Yeah, so it's honestly, i think I think it has to do with weight because I've talked about this a lot and I know Jacob disagrees with me about character deaths, ah but I felt like there were some very important moments in Wyrm with character deaths that feel They feel...
Speaker: weighty they feel they feel like a gut punch. And when it happens, you're like, oh shit, like it it hits you. and And it's not like we need a we need a moment where everyone stops and the battlefield goes into slow motion as you realize that they're falling. Like we don't need we don't need that, but there is just a gravity to some of these like key moments in Wyrm. And I felt like there were moments that were supposed to have this gravity in Ward, but didn't. And they just didn't. And over and over and over again, you have these moments where it's like, that is supposed to feel like a big gut punch moment or a big, oh my God moment.
Speaker: Thank you. Fran said, Groove's refrigerator. That is a huge moment of just being like horrified and your gut sinks and your stomach drops and you feel sick and you're like, oh my God, it's the slow wave of realization. And then it hits you and then you get another wave when you realize like, and it all comes crashing and and it feels like I cannot remove myself from feeling like I was in that fucking refrigerator because it felt so heavy in that moment.
Speaker: I look back at, and of of course, the Wormnesia is strong, but there are so many moments I look back on Ward and I think about the things that stick out to me, like um when they come across the group that's been all chopped up.
Speaker: And that should feel way heavier than it did. It didn't feel heavy to me. It felt like, oh no, that's unfortunate. But not like my my stomach dropped and I felt sick. Like, which is what I feel like I should have felt.
Speaker: and And there's this there' this just weight that I didn't feel with these really important moments. And I don't, to me, some of the best books I've read are ones where I am I am crying into my pillow. i am pacing in my room because I cannot stop and and just sit with it because it's so heavy. I have to move. I have to get up. I have to whatever. And it's very, for me, books are very emotional and I get very invested in characters' lives. And if it doesn't feel...
Speaker: If I'm not feeling that emotion, I'm disconnecting from the book because it's feeling less and less like i can be invested in in these ah big emotional hits because they're not emotionally hitting.
Speaker: And at that point, I'm like, you've lost me. i am now bored with this. I start skimming. I start, you know, I'm listening and then I'm not really listening and then I'm listening again, tuning in and out.
Speaker: and it's And honestly, the the thing that keeps me invested in a book is that emotional tether. And I felt like it was a bungee cord a little bit for this instead of a a good leash that yanked me back in, you know?
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, i think ah if we want, we could highlight a few positives, a few things that stood out to us as like... I would love to highlight your positives. would be great. I would really enjoy that. Like we mentioned, the fallen arc.
Speaker: Oh, go ahead, Michael. There's a couple of comments I want you to read, Nick, before. the chat that are relative to what we're talking about? Fran. Yes. Yes. Fran said, I would love to see your opinions on Claw.
Speaker: That one being the only one that a single book size. Yeah, because that's like six or seven arcs, I think. It is. ah Yeah, it is very small in comparison.
Speaker: i i did start reading that and then got distracted. Honestly, probably because we started this podcast in the first place. um Or maybe because i was like, i I was committed to reading Hale, I think. um Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: yes yeah um And then J-Man said, if it makes you feel better, Hannah, I think I'm higher on Pale than Alan. And Pact has good pacing, in my opinion. Hard to disagree. preach Really hard to disagree. That's okay. That's all right. That's why I'm worse pacing than Ward, but also because it's smaller, so...
Speaker: yeahp And then i like Fran commented. Oh, go ahead, Alan. I was just going to say, we I like whenever Alan is given an out and then he just shuts it down. He shuts it down immediately. Drops a boulder right in the road. Like, nope. Absolutely We know that Alan's middle name is contrarian.
Speaker: yeah at heart i just, oh yeah you know, it's not my fault that everybody else is wrong. You know the phrase I used earlier, you're entitled to your own wrong opinion? i learned that from Alan.
Speaker: So I used to say that. And then… Well, my stepdad used to do it in the… I feel like in in ah almost the more annoying ways. He's like, well, you can believe what you want, but I'll believe the truth. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah yeah Wow. Wow.
Speaker: ah yeah Anyways, um ah fra Fran also commented, the most gut-wrenching scenes are not deaths. They are the dinner with Kinsey's parents, Amy scenes, stuff like that. And I'd agree with that. Those are actually, some of those scenes are some of the best in Ward. Agreed. I think those are the things that I wish maybe had been brought into the story earlier.
Speaker: um and And not that Amy wasn't brought in early. She was brought in early as a problem with the barbecue, like we mentioned, very early on as a major conflict point for Victoria.
Speaker: i think I think part of what we've identified is that we all wish, in a weird way, we all wish there was more Amy in the story. Simply to the point of being more of a true and antagonist.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know i know if more Amy in this story so much as like more Amy... Consequences? More Amy? I was gonna say involved with the... Like the plot?
Speaker: The far-reaching plot. it It almost feels like we did literally take her out of the plot to go to therapy. Yeah. basically yeah yeah yeah and because like she she's there at the beginning and then she kind of fades into the background she's there with goddess but it's kind of in the background of what goddess is doing it's not really a major player and then doesn't show up again until the shin arc um and and by that point like that's when stuff with amy gets really interesting but it almost feels like too late in a sense yeah
Speaker: um I don't know. Yeah. The thinking about the positives of a word, though, um I think we, you know, the fallen arc is one that we we seem to all agree is like um a solid arc.
Speaker: um The characterization mama Mathers is a great villain. so interesting of a power. Yeah. Yeah. ah All the villains are really good. help Her great as a boss.
Speaker: I love how it ties in um our boy Rain into that. Yeah. Yeah. I right i think Rain's character arc is a highlight of Ward. Like as a whole, like his character is one of the best characters in the story. I think i think he's got a great arc. Yeah.
Speaker: um I also think like, you know, slightly a dig. It was such a great setup. I thought they were going to do that with kind of every single member of Breakthrough. Yeah.
Speaker: And they really just did it for him. um Yeah, i remember those early days when we were kind of theorizing in terms of like backgrounds. Because like Rain is given such a rich background and trigger and all this kind of stuff, which which really leads into the Fallen arc very, very well.
Speaker: And so we were like, I remember we were like, okay, so like, Kenzie's parents are clearly dead or not real or like, you know, like we were going like, yeah you know, Capricorn you know, got his own thing. Like we were just all of it. We're like, who's, who's the worst?
Speaker: Chris it was one of Nilbog's clones. Like we're just like going off on these crazy things. Right. And not that any of those characters are bad. i actually like most of Breakthrough as like,
Speaker: triggers and origins, all this kind of stuff. But yeah, to, to what you're saying, Nick, like, um, to, to start so strong or Alan, you were saying to start so strong with, a specific character and an arc focused on them. Like I really, that would have been a nice, a nice direction to have some, uh, continuation there. Jacob, could we have an aside, sidebar real quick? A quick aside. Yeah. Unnaturally. Okay. Uh, you know, uh, uh, the, the rewriting ward podcast. to Welcome. Um, um, Jacob. So here we go. So, uh, so, uh,
Speaker: ah so As we rewrite this, we don't get rid of arcs. We just take, we have to take a character out to replace them with another character that has an essential arc.
Speaker: i I present that we remove Sveta from the breakthrough team and replace her with like one or both of the foil parry and pair.
Speaker: Yeah. Interesting. interesting ah They already have an interesting dynamic of rogue but hero turned villain going on. There's a lot of issues between them and what they're dealing with.
Speaker: um you could have You still get the reveal of kind of how dastardly or gross kind of ah Saba's power always has been about skin. um ah And you have the the whole March arc.
Speaker: Yeah. nothing But directly related to them, which they can talk about, oh, that's interesting that you're also part of a cluster because Rain was part of a cluster and it operates differently. And I think that would be a good, like, person to replace to have an...
Speaker: Very interesting. If you wanted to go that route. If you wanted to go that route. yeah I mean, i I almost could see from the from Wildbo's thoughts and how he said he did wish he'd he'd wanted to spend more time with the therapy group, but then...
Speaker: sort of felt pressured to go into bigger story arcs and more expansive story arcs just yeah by the audience at the time. I almost wonder if that was his plan, was to be like, no, we're going to do therapy for each of these characters, and we're going to do like overarching arcs that deal with some of their major issues, both literally and metaphorically.
Speaker: So we have the rain-fallen arc, but then people are asking, like well, what's going on? like What's next? like We need bigger stakes, And then it's like, well, I had planned to do like a really low stakes story about Kenzie's parents, but I guess people want more. So I got to start building to something bigger.
Speaker: I don't know. I could almost see a world where Ward would be that. And then the final section is Victoria um sort of dealing with her own issues. And you can, you know, you could, like you said, Alan, kind of building up each part of the world through these therapy focus sessions, so to speak. um And then ending with Victoria's with her being like, ultimately, i don't know if people are good and bad. Everybody's a mixture, but we got to come down to the trust.
Speaker: And that's what I haven't had with Amy. That's what i didn't I don't have with Dean anymore. I don't have it with my parents. but um But there's so much we can do as people if we're willing to trust each other. Because I do feel like that's a big part of her story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, ah you just... Every group... Every person's kind of tied to a different group and you can, you know, shoot off to take care of that group and then lead into the next one. um i think...
Speaker: Honestly, having ah our our brothers deal with moons get back in with Moonsong and the wards and deal with the white supremacy kids being there would have been a really interesting...
Speaker: I think so too. Like dynamics of like those merging of teams and having to deal with old, you know, old rivalries and grudges and stuff like that. um Because Victoria also has some issues with them as well.
Speaker: um Would have been a really like, we've got to all do this. We're on the same team, but none of us like each other. We're like the villain almost doesn't matter because... or or make it Paris and then it really matters where like yeah where the you know the Nazi kids are like oh I mean but he makes good points so and then they're like are you serious dog yeah Yeah. Yeah. And then the whole like the whole trust thing of like, OK, like, well, you fumbled that play. Did you let him go? and then you have like a lot of like the inter dynamics of the group of being like, well, I don't know if I can still trust you anymore because now like if we're going to fight somebody like Paris, are you going to secretly be on his side? And like, i I feel like a little bit more push and pull like that. Like that would be really cool.
Speaker: ah But that's that's something that will continue on our other podcast, Jacob. And thank you, Nick and Hannah, for yeah jumping in as guests. I don't know how you got into the studio for our podcast here. But and yeah thanks for joining us. ah who we you know We'll see you later for another episode.
Speaker: Sorry, guys. We had to step out for a second. scene Welcome back to the Brooklyn Bay Book Club. ah the ad ad break was rolling, I'm sure, ah while we were doing that. um yeah Anyway. Fran commented, should have had a whole arc about beating up Paris. Agree? Yeah. Fuck fair. Yeah, right. mom Yeah.
Speaker: Speaking of positive, J-Man's favorite arc was the goddess arc because it's mostly a self-contained story with one of the best mind control powers I've ever seen with alignment.
Speaker: I do agree. Like, man, like goddesses arc. I don't know that I like how it ended.
Speaker: i think I didn't really like the goddess arc. I wasn't a fan of the goddess arc, but to J-Man's point, I do think that, and we talked about this at the time, I remember, but Wild Bo's writing of goddess's power and like the mind control is probably some of my favorite writing in the whole story. It's really good.
Speaker: Also, I love like the Master Stranger Protocol. yeah Like I really enjoyed that because yeah Victoria is so big on all the protocols and she knows all the info. And it's like, this is a perfect time for her to be like, wait, wait, wait, you know? And I, oh, love that so much.
Speaker: A lot of fun. Wild Boat does such a good job with his point of view and committing to the bit of like, I'm writing about the fact that Imp has just gone mid-conversation or we've just forgotten about her.
Speaker: And it's just written flat out as if that character doesn't exist anymore. um but Which, but as we saw with the Amy mind erasure thing going on in Shin,
Speaker: is such a commitment to the bit that it is sometimes ah to the point of eligibility. Yes, um that does happen. and And it's almost like those auteurs you have for film, Jacob, where I love what they're doing, pushing the boundaries of film and doing something interesting with film making.
Speaker: But this isn't a good movie. give you ah young You know, ah the whole, it's the James Cameron experience. James Cameron, his biggest thing, and Christopher Nolan in parts, their biggest contributions, I would say, are not their movies, but the production side of like the technology that they had to come up with for...
Speaker: the making of their movies. um That's what really, because they make those movies and then you they make Avatar and then everybody has to use the technology that they made, you know, inapp made Avatar with because,
Speaker: other filmmakers see that and go, oh my gosh, how did you even do that? um And then everybody uses that technology from now on. um And that feels like kind of what Wild Bo is. Wild Bo does great with perception um adjustments.
Speaker: Those of you have read Pact, my least favorite arc potentially, um but interesting ah there's a midway point where something very drastic happens to the story and it is a drastic change in the ah reader's perspective.
Speaker: And i was like, there's no way he will commit to this. That would be crazy. And he does. And it throws you as the reader for a loop, but also you really appreciate the like,
Speaker: the concept of the alignment of like, everybody's just on board with goddess now. And yeah. How do you write that? How do you write that and not have the, the main character be like, feel like they could break out of it at any moment or, uh, feel like as the reader, like, okay, but like, you know, I get that there, this is going on, but I'm not convinced As opposed to like, no, POV, you are taken over. You will think like this. like
Speaker: People just don't write mind control like that. Yeah, it's really good. A little little deou Deus Ex Macha Skittle there at the end of the goddess arc too.
Speaker: um the With the candy from Teacher. um Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. I was like, what are you talking about? oh Yes. Yes. ah got out of the candy machine.
Speaker: um But yeah, I don't know. it's a Yeah, Bernard, I am talking about, i believe the monster is called, is it Ur or Uz?
Speaker: um but That whole thing. and No more spoilers. if I'm pretty sure that's the monster that those packed readers will know. um Oh, Nick, I wanted to point out really importantly, J-Man said, finally home, mango margarita time.
Speaker: that is That is the best margarita in my opinion. So, J-Man, my sale of approval. Enjoy yourself, your mango margarita. i wish shot ran Fran also commented, we could fix this. This is a while back, but we could fix that by making rain trans like a bunch of the fandom headcanons.
Speaker: Well, I didn't know that that was a headcanon thing. That's funny. That is funny. You know, if there's one thing i know about fan writers and communities, they will ship anybody. They will gay anybody and they will trans anybody given the chance.
Speaker: it one No one is safe. Even we are not safe. um No hero, no villain, no even side character is safe from the gaze of the community. The gaze! had a concept for a short story once that was just supposed to be like the most ah fan. the idea was like you just write something that is the most open to fan fiction you could.
Speaker: it was based on but the whole mascot for the Community, Greendale, in the show Community. Their mascot is the Greendale human being, which is just a a non-gendered person in a gray bodysuit. Just make a story of all of those characters. It's just like, can be whatever you want.
Speaker: whatever you want it to be you just make you just make every conversation really intense and take place one inch away from people's faces and you don't know if they're about to start fighting or fucking you just like just let the fanfiction writers enjoy that they'll just go hog wild and they'll have a good time with it yeah I don't know ah ah patrons if you want to write fanfiction about us I think I'd be a pretty hot radio Oh my god! would love fan fiction about us. If it's gonna happen... Game me if your heart's desire. Game me, Blazer. Other highlights.
Speaker: I really enjoyed the downtime. ah As I mentioned in our Worm podcast, i they did not get enough time hanging out at the secret hideout or...
Speaker: you know, going to so warm blankets or going to the mall or, you know the oh you know, it just wasn't enough of that. And I wish, you know, them pray playing the practical joke with the dildo when Taylor joins the Chicago wards, like all that goofy out of combat stuff.
Speaker: And there was a good bit of it still was not enough for me, but like, I loved them hanging out with Kenzie and, ah you know, what it was like to live with this both the damsels at one point in time and, like, having sleepovers.
Speaker: and the The little bit ah that we got of Aunt Rachel's. Like, I would have loved so much more of Aunt Rachel's. That would have been amazing. But such is life.
Speaker: Yeah, i I definitely feel like, because with thinking about it, the with the pacing the way that it is, like the beginning part of Ward, I felt like, yeah, had had the pacing down a little bit more because you have the this bigger wrapping up arc and you have some more downtime and stuff and like,
Speaker: I mean, I really enjoyed... i i don't remember if I enjoyed it at the time, but looking back on it, I feel very fond about fond of the whole Hollow Point situation. And like I thought that was really fun. And like them going to the mall and getting dressed up and Sveta trying out new coats and stuff. like That was a lot of fun. And, oh, yeah. We didn't really get much of that past a certain point. It just kind of stopped. But the world was burning. And the machine army was somewhere.
Speaker: so Still a problem at the end of the story, apparently. i Apparently, I don't... and Maybe fixed by Saint of all people. Saint's got it under control. jacob Jacob's favorite character has it under control, for sure.
Speaker: Wait, let me talk about it. um Yeah, there are other other small parts like when I would have loved more. arab takes
Speaker: Jaint fan fiction. changed say those Those are rough options. i But that's what it's going to have to be.
Speaker: Saint Cobb. Saint Cobb.
Speaker: Saint Cobb. let think No. We'll work on it. Chat, work on it. incorrect on it work work on and work on we workshop it yeah chat works yeah yeah Talking about going out and shopping, i would have loved
Speaker: feta weled gossip going on oh like it's what a terrible arc well yeah i mean and in a good way like it's good that you know but finally you know progresses, I guess, you know, gets, you know, gets out of that relationship.
Speaker: But I would have liked more stuff like that, you know, you know, more stuff with, uh, not necessarily just rain, we you know, always pining after what's Aaron, um, and having to deal with, uh, Lachlan tucking him. But like, yeah,
Speaker: but no Like more of the, you know, more of the nice saccharine and cutesy things. Like, yeah. Yeah. That would have been really nice to see more that. I loved all of the like little moments with, because I, I mean, i shipped it, but like Moose and Victoria was definitely a vibe for me. i loved that. I thought that was really fun. i felt like I was, i was incredibly disappointed. And y'all know, I do read copious amounts of smut.
Speaker: I don't need smut in my Wild Bo novels. I don't need that. um But I would have liked a little bit more little flirting or like some some chemistry back and forth, some banter, you know, like I don't need awkward Taylor grew moments. I don't need that. But I do need like some fun.
Speaker: fight dynamics or something or just like some cute banter back up. Like that was a door moves to Victoria. Adorable. I love that. Like I would have liked a little bit more of that with Annalise. Like i love their flirting when they're like out on the battlefield standing next to each other. Like i need more. i need more of that. yeah More, please. More, more.
Speaker: I think um to kind of transition. Yeah, there you go. yeah there you um to transition into sort of some thoughts about reading Wild Boats post-mortem on Ward, I think it feels like that was maybe the intention he went into it with, is he wanted more stuff like that, wanted more stuff like Hollow Point. And not that The Fallen is low stakes, but lower stakes than in-bringers in the end-of-the-world potential, right?
Speaker: um And I feel like... Oh, man, it's part of why a web serial has got to be so hard because you're getting real time reactions to what you're doing.
Speaker: and if you have an audience that is stuck with you and, you know, not just because you always have the super critics and you'll always have the super fans, but you've got that solid middle that's saying the pacing's too slow, nothing's happening, starting to get bored.
Speaker: You're like, well, shoot. this is That's the voice in your ear. My income and my passion. and like I don't want my my fans to be bored. like What do i do? um and I think that's just such a difficult thing to balance, I can imagine. because i don't know. i think, you know again, it's one of those where like Hollow Point was kind of cool, but it was a thread that didn't matter in the end because ultimately...
Speaker: I mean, what, like, ultimately, plot-wise, what did it do? It introduced Prancer and Moose to us. Like, that that's all it did. Literally. Yeah. You know, like... A couple other people, too, but yeah. Mostly them, but, you know, the most relevant ones, since they get Titanized later.
Speaker: Yeah. um I don't know. it's It's hard, right? But that is some of the stuff that was super good, is just those relationships, the downtime. um but I remember reading. Yeah, the lower six stuff.
Speaker: um Yeah. I remember reading in there too that there was a lot of stuff he regretted, like kind of turn having Jessica kind of turn villain for a bit, so to speak. um And like the, you know, things that just didn't land, like having multiple LGBT characters go through crises back to back.
Speaker: um He realized like, oh, that didn't land very well. Like that can come across really bad. um And then, of course, we talk about at the end, right? We all think they're going to commit mass suicide, but in fact, they are not.
Speaker: And yeah he, you know, that's one of the big things he said just didn't land right the way he wanted it to. um And it wasn't clear what what was happening. um And I don't know, it's it's hard, right? You think things are clear as you're saying them, but then you're like, no, I guess that was more muddled than I thought it was. Nobody understood what I was saying.
Speaker: And it's so interesting, you know, like not not to break the record again, but that's the type of stuff that gets ironed out in editing. You know, it's like, you know, so it's it's interesting to hear. That was a real interesting to kind of hear his thought process reading through that.
Speaker: I didn't read it ah because I was told by Alan that he would just recap it for me and I wouldn't need to read it. And so I didn't read it. ah I'm wishing I had now. Dang it Yeah, well, I mean, we'll we'll go over at the end and talk about it decent amount. um At the end? Alan, it's 945. Yeah, I know. I know know. What end are you leaning towards?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm trying to think of ah more or things we had to talk about with positives. I'll read some of the comments here. ah The goddess shit was so good. it from Fran. The goddess shit was so good. ah The comments started pretending that they were affected by it. It started acting like goddess was the main character.
Speaker: That's solid. That's fine. No, that's just a good one like that. J-Man said, downtime and friendship is a huge reason why pale rank so high for me. Best wild bow relationships he's written.
Speaker: Absolutely. I very much agree. I wish there was more even, but I do like that they are building something like, ah which is part of why I like worm. um Also in a little bit of twig is like, there's this intention to build something and it's a little bit more,
Speaker: Like, they're trying to build connections in in Ward, um which just kind of feels like it gets lost ah amongst everything. I wish there was just more a clearer vision for, like, trying to get what, you know, Victoria wanted it in terms of, like, building a system or connection for everybody.
Speaker: ah But, Hale, absolutely, definitely Wild Bo's best writing. um Still suffers from all the Wild Bill problems, but also has the best writing. ah do Bernard asked, do you think the protagonist should be different?
Speaker: um We've talked about that a little bit, but... I think... honestly i mean i I'll tie that in with J-Man's next comment, because J-Man said, sorry to keep praising Pail so much, but it being multiple POVs was a big benefit.
Speaker: My biggest rewrite would be Ward being from multiple characters' POVs, too. I don't... I think that would be a legitimate option. Obviously, it's hard to be like, in theory, it sounds cool.
Speaker: um In practice, would it have worked? Maybe. ah We don't really know. um But yeah, maybe having multiple POVs could be helpful, you know, we've talked about, and I think Wildboe even alludes to this, where he's like, he played with lots of different protagonists. Rain was one.
Speaker: ah Tristan was one. Tristan and Byron was one. um Sveta was one, I think. um Ashley was one. And then ultimately landed on Victoria. I do think at least from the therapy group, Victoria still probably remains the best protagonist.
Speaker: um Second to maybe would be Rain after her. Yeah. I think you do Victoria and or Rain. Like, you know, i think those are all the others I think have difficulty with but story arcs.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, for sure. But I think interspersing more interludes from the POV of the therapy group. Yeah. You have like, like throw in a give me a few more damsel interludes. Give me a few more Tristan Byron interludes. Give me a few more Kinsey interludes.
Speaker: So they're not full POV characters, but you get more from their understanding and how they work to where it almost feels like their secondary protagonists, where you see enough of them that way.
Speaker: and And I mean, the few times we got to see Victoria from other people's perspectives was very interesting. And I would have loved to have seen when Victoria comes into the therapy group, what does that look like from Brain's perspective?
Speaker: You know, um I think it's the right character to have because she's so knowledgeable about ah the world that she can explain it to the less knowledgeable characters.
Speaker: um And people, you know, we've talked about, oh, we love Tattletail so much. um But as a plot device, she's the exposition. You, if you have rain, then you're still just going to have Victoria over there, over his shoulders, giving him all that exposition.
Speaker: Or maybe Chris. um You know, there other people have their niche categories, but it's mainly Vicky because she's a tape geek. Or you just have Vicky say it in her head. um Yeah.
Speaker: It's the same. i remember bringing this point up, you know, when we first started the... the reading through ward um but i keep coming back to the comparison i i had made between ward and young justice the dc animated show that's like all the you know kids as sidekicks robin super boy etc um and season one of that show is phenomenal it's really really good i highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys that that style And then season two, they do a five-year time skip.
Speaker: So now all of our teenagers are young adults and secondary characters. And the story in season two follows the new young Justice kids.
Speaker: And they're fine. They're good. They're interesting characters in their own right. But to take a story that was so tied, like you had the world building tied to these characters and then...
Speaker: kind of abandon them for a new set of characters is is ah is really disjointing. And it's hard. I've been trying to think of stories that have done that well.
Speaker: I can't think of a lot of examples that have done a period, and I can't think of stories that have done that well. And I think that that's been a, that was a detriment to Ward. It's not that I don't like Breakthrough. They really grow on me. are They're fun, interesting characters.
Speaker: But I can't, we said this before, but I can't, get away from the fact that I think I would have just enjoyed this a lot more if we had gotten to grow and develop with the characters we knew from from Worm. Give us give us the the the chicken tenders and Rachel, Herian and Foyle, and Victoria. like Victoria, i think, is included in that, and that's why I kind of like her as a protagonist. I think she's fine.
Speaker: But you know there was so much to tell there that I wanted to get into that, you know, we'll never will. and yeah Yeah, the only one of with that in mind, one of the few examples I can think of that maybe pulls it off pretty well. um And it's only because it's a massive time skip is ah Brandon Sanderson has his Mistborn universe.
Speaker: Era one and era two, totally different cast of characters besides like two characters. Like literally, I think there's two who cross over. And um part of the reason why it works though is because it's literally like a so centuries long time skip, right? And the only characters who are the relevant ones are like the deathless gods that have persisted basically. you know yeah yeah it It is interesting because um you fall in love with this new cast of characters, but the other characters from the previous era still have an impact, right? They've become like legends and heroes and
Speaker: They have religions based on them, and it but it feels like almost a ah totally different world. And so I think that's one of the ways that you can make it work. And part of what happens with Ward, I think, is it's so immediately after Worm's events that maybe there just hasn't been enough time difference for us to feel like, well, this is still the same world.
Speaker: where's all the people we know and love? Kind of like you said. yeah don't even know if it's that. I think, honestly, I think it's just the main characters don't have enough.
Speaker: Like, I think it's just the everything around them. I do think that Byron and Tristan Rain, and even Sveta to some degree, don't have enough personality over,
Speaker: over like You have to make it better than the other crew in order to like get people on board. Cause they're already going to be like, well, these aren't my people.
Speaker: So why should I care about them? So you're already at a negative to start. Do you have to make them better? You can't even just make them as good. Um, it's like, ah yeah I know people love Gru and Regent and stuff. And Regent does have personality, but like Gru's kind of bland. That's sort of his character and his literally his power.
Speaker: um And within the dynamic of the group, it works for him to be that way. I felt like the Undersiders. Because you can't have everyone be the most character of characters.
Speaker: Exactly. yeah um But I think it really is just like the everything around them. i don't even know if it's necessarily the group. um i'm As we were talking before, I'm reading the Joe Abercrombie ah Blade Itself series and its trilogy, the ah the second trilogy, um which takes place like low less than years, like years, years after the first one.
Speaker: Not a single POV character is shared, but they are interacting constantly with the POV characters from the first one. It's sort of like all the children and some new side characters that you're just like, what the fuck am I supposed to care about these people for? But they slowly all get interwoven together.
Speaker: Um... And I think part of it is just like we we didn't get the interweaving as much as we wanted to out of the gate. um It took too long.
Speaker: um i think I think it was just it was too much different for people. Yeah. I think this is sort of when we go back to the Star Wars, I really enjoyed the attempt that Rian Johnson made with episode eight.
Speaker: But I understand probably between maybe some bad writing, maybe just trying to be too experimental with the formula and probably a lot of production meddling.
Speaker: um Yes. Like it really bombed. But I saw like... the subversion of all the stuff they were trying to do, um you know, that's classically in Star Wars that I really wish they had kept, um you know, i and and the fact that they like went so far as to just like throw everything he had out the window for the third. And I was like, well, this is why I didn't like the seventh episode seven, because you just literally did the same thing. Yeah.
Speaker: that's, that's too much at that point. Um, and then we, you know, we talk about Cora all the time. I appreciate Cora's not better than Avatar. didn Cause it's not as consistent for a lot of reasons, but Cora also has all these little pieces and really does try to flip the script on all the formulas for like, just how the app, even the avatar was as a person, like,
Speaker: just did all these little things. I really appreciated it. And so at the end of the day, when I think about ward, um, I'm not going to think it as good as a whole as worm, but I, there are so many things that I am never going to be able to think about without referencing ward.
Speaker: Like I'm going to keep coming back to ward as a reference point for just things. Um, and yeah, that I've never seen in other stories, even if they weren't done to their full potential, like superhero therapy group, you know, with supervillains and stuff.
Speaker: I'm never going to like the closest we've ever gotten to that is the bad guy therapy and like, uh, uh, wreck it Ralph. Like, yeah, the close we've ever gotten to that.
Speaker: and um And there's a reason why everybody kind of loves the, you know, you're a bad guy, but you are not bad guy. Like it's, you Ward's the only one doing that. Ward's the only one doing all these cool ideas.
Speaker: Um, it just maybe wasn't executed the best. Yeah. Yeah. Well said. And that brings it kind of full circle for me to what I was saying about episodes one through three of Star Wars is is like, there's so much cool stuff in there. So much charm and words the same way.
Speaker: There's so much charm, like so many great characters. There are those moments that, um you know, they just kind of stick with you concepts and ideas and, know,
Speaker: yeah Yeah, overall, just a lot of a lot of good things. Not the best executed, perhaps, but not bad either. Oh. just kind of Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I was going to say, we'll just go through this. i Star Wars Episode I, for a lot of people, that movie can get entirely by on the introduction of battle droids.
Speaker: the introduction of pod racing, yeah and Darth Maul's double-bladed lightsaber. I've got such a soft spot for Darth Maul. Holy fuck, man.
Speaker: The first time we saw an actual light. flipping Jedi-ing with our, like, the instead of, like, kind of what everybody could have done with swords, like, and a plastic lightsaber. Like, we saw a legit, like, oh, those are sword fighters. Like, holy cow, like,
Speaker: That's cool. the choreography for me. It's the fucking fight choreography for me. And number one is one of my favorite things. I'm i'm a fan. I like certain movies more than yeah But one was always one of my favorites because of the choreography. It was so good. The fight choreography was so good.
Speaker: Big fan. And there's a lot else, but like that's, I mean, that movie is basically coasting off of those and for very good reason. I personally like episode two the most, and I know it's the worst one, but it introduces the clones, which are the best thing in the Star Wars universe next to the Jedi.
Speaker: Like the clone troopers are so freaking cool. So much so that they like retroactively made all of the armor in earlier time periods and you know look like clone armor because they were like, well, yeah that we peaked there. so Yeah, yeah i mean, it introduces Jango Fett, who's a great character, as like, yeah oh, he's you know Not that we needed the lore on Boba Fett exactly, but like it it adds a nice little depth to him of like, okay, that's kind of cool. that Interesting.
Speaker: All of the Mandalorian lore comes from book two and the supplemental material with like Karen Travis and all of them talking about the Death death Watch and um you know stuff that came out with KOTOR and the Mandalorians. Before then, it was like the Mandalorians are...
Speaker: Boba Fett and whatever he wears with the armor like I guess they're a thing yeah like they're just alternate humans and then all of a sudden from episode 2 we build out ah you know the entire Mandalorian culture pre the Mandalorian show which I will never forgive for retconning all of that because boy did they make him a bunch of bitches um But and then like even with episode two, I actually really do like episode two.
Speaker: um I yeah, does some of the characters are great. um Episode two also gave us between episodes two and three before the Clone Wars show, which I've heard is really good. um Episode 2 did birth briefly the animated... Genndy Tartakovsky, the guy who did Samurai Jack.
Speaker: Yes. The animated Clone Wars like shorts that were so good. Yeah. Like... um it actually kind of made me disappointed in episode three general grievous's appearance because he was so badass in those oh my gosh um but yeah like yeah there's just so many things and i i think i kind of feel that way about ward where i'm like okay like i can see the flaws they're apparent but man there's just some good stuff um Yeah, just some some good stuff. And it's hard. I think i'm I'm only stumbling on trying to name specific things because Ward is so much bigger than Star Wars in terms of content. um Yeah. You can even say how much bigger it is.
Speaker: Ward coming in 194... I'm 1,944,784 words.
Speaker: i'm sorry one million nine hundred and forty four thousand seven hundred and eighty four words in total. nine So 0.3 more than Worm with 10 less arcs.
Speaker: Yeah. It doesn't feel like it. That's the thing. Worm felt so much longer than Ward. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, does somebody even has it I think red Tom might've done the, I know the white squirrel, uh, has a word count for this. They even broke down not only by arc and chapter, but also by character point of view.
Speaker: um the Victoria coming in 1,379,000.
Speaker: ah Does anybody want to guess what the next three are in terms of POV time? POV time.
Speaker: I Rain would be high. I was going guess rain yeah Rain. Rain comes in at number three with 42,000. Okay, okay. okay okay Wait, wait. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.
Speaker: Hold on. just just give me just Give me a moment. Give me a moment.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Are we talking about POV in terms of like interlude chapters and other chapters? Yep. Word count for how how many POV they have. I mean, it's it's got to be
Speaker: It's just for somebody else in the group, but it's... i My gut wants to say...
Speaker: Sveta. There's two big multi like yeah multiple interludes that they had mo mid arc that like kind of went back and forth if you remember. It's not Sveta. Sveta's like number um Are Byron and Tristan considered one person?
Speaker: Capricorn. gay oh Oh, because 38,000. They have a couple back and forth with the whole Tristan and Byron work about their background and ads for all of that. that's right um So they actually got like multiple in there.
Speaker: um And there is one more longer one that we that we do go over ah that gets, it's a pretty long example. Do you remember which which character? Is it?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: It is Ashley. Oh, okay. I thought it might be. Because we get her entire backstory. That's right. We get her entire backstory. Yes, that's right. that Which is a ah great... Both of those love those stories. like self Once again, self-contained kind of, but very pertaining to the moments that we get them in.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, great, great ending to that, too, for a character who cares so much about grandstanding and image for it to basically end with the Thanos quote of the I don't even know who you are, kid. You know? Yeah, exactly. like God damn.
Speaker: There are a significant amount that do not get full chapters that are also ah marked here.
Speaker: Coming in at 93 words, we have a random bird.
Speaker: but unfortunately right next to that is last minute from the um Oh, fuckers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sadly, in third to last place, our boy Moose was 786.
Speaker: Probably when he gets yoinked into the Titan. Yeah. yeahp He had that one and he was the POV. I believe he was the POV when they went to the cafe as well. It had to have been longer than that. Was it just Moose? You think so? Or was Prancer the POV then?
Speaker: I thought Prancer was the POV. I think it was Prancer. Because he makes a comment where he's like mentally thinking about Belzit and Moose. Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah backford you In their little triad situation.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. yeah Poor boy. All right, but yeah, there was 56, 565,000 words of non-main character.
Speaker: Wow. Holy shit. That's a lot of non-main characters. That is the one Brando Sando book of just other characters.
Speaker: So true. but For reference, I think the Lord of the Rings trilogy is like 350,000 words. or something like that so ups screw yeah i want to say I want to say Hobbit is like 11, 100.
Speaker: Hobbit is the standard for like good novel minimum. It's like 95,000 something. Is it 95? I thought it was 110. It's longer than I thought it was. 95, 56. Perfect. Very nice. This is 113 right here.
Speaker: Oh, nice. context i'll be honest. 113. Nick, you can ride that high forever. 113. I know that that's a normal fantasy novel.
Speaker: ah yeah That just means nothing to me now. Cause most of my Joe Abercrombie books that I'm listening to 22 hours. Yeah. twenty two hours Yeah, it's wild. it I will say, for most fantasy... Most fantasy is chunkier than this, but a lot of first-time authors or most novels in general stick to like the 100k.
Speaker: yeah I think... I mean, it's it's unedited, but my the one that I... wrote back when I had more time in my life. I think I ended up at like 1.30. That's where I ended. yeah yeah kelly um Since we're talking about numbers, I... when i Oh, go ahead.
Speaker: Finish. I was going to say, what I think when I plotted out mine, I was on the low end. I was like just coming in at 90,000. I was like... yeah Listen, yeah that's what editing is for. Editing takes away. Editing does not add.
Speaker: That's incorrect. Editing does add. That is incorrect. You're editing wrong if you're just editing. Here's the thing, though. depending on the ah And then we'll get to Michael. Depending on the type of book you're writing, it can be fine.
Speaker: Classic novels all the time are only about 50,000 words. I was just curious. The Great Gatsby, 47,000 words. And it feels way too long. yeah That shit should have been an interlude. And honestly, a kind of was.
Speaker: I mean, Michael, you were talking about numbers. I was going to wait till the end. But since we're talking about numbers, I did this at the end of Worm. And you guys had a fun time trying to guess how many hours we have recorded.
Speaker: And I did it again for Wart. Oh, so I've got it. Hours and minutes. I've got it. It's a it's a rough estimate, not including OK.
Speaker: okay I can tell you, do you guys want to start with ah with how many episodes? Do you guys know how many episodes we did? Yeah, let's start with that because then I can... That'll help you guys figure out our range. Let me look at this. Don't look, Alan. Don't look. Do you guys know? I'm not looking at our thing. I'm looking at the world chapter count. 38-ish episodes or so. I was actually going to say 38 for the episode count.
Speaker: I was going to guess 45, but...
Speaker: so How many arcs were there? Alan's going to want to guess. There are 20 arcs. There are 20 arcs, but we didn't start splitting them until a little ways in.
Speaker: Right. So I'm i'm going to guess 36, maybe? 40? Alan, do you have a guess on on how many episodes?
Speaker: I said 40. Oh, 40? 40. I'm saying... Okay, hold on, hold on. I'll say... Wait, you said 38, 36, 40. ill hat the first you said thirty eight thirty six forty I'll say just to be different, actually. ah i'll say i like i like the thirty six i'll say i'll say thirty six then Hannah's right. She stuck with it. It's 36.
Speaker: Oh, dang. That means we did some of these in one. i would have guessed 35 otherwise. if you had I guess there were a couple that we did we did later on where we we went like a month without doing a podcast and did one big one. We did do that a couple of times. yeah um Yes. So there you go. Total time. 36 episodes. How much time was that? wait.
Speaker: We got to be north of... Am allowed to use a calculator? Yeah, yeah, calculate whatever. You got to be at like... Of course. I'm going to say... I love... i know I know that you guys get into this. I love it. opened my calendar. I don't know. 88 hours. I opened my calendar. egg Final guess, 88. All right. Yeah. 96.
Speaker: Hold on. Hold
Speaker: hold on home house
Speaker: Wait, hold on. but I'm going to say 91 hours and 16 minutes.
Speaker: I didn't hear. what What did you say, Jacob? 88. For Nick. we' bat For Back to the Future. Okay, no, for Nick. You're right, actually. For Nick. My brain was in science fiction.
Speaker: Oh, no. um I'm going to say 92 minutes. ninety two and a half minute 92 hours and half 92 and a half hours there we go that's what I mean sorry 92 hours 30 minutes holy fuck okay we a good thing we're not doing prices right rules it is 82 hours man I did think it was going to be lower 82 hours and 22 minutes gosh we got to bump those numbers up yeah we have one yeah is that counting this one
Speaker: I'll make it 96. No, it's not. Exactly. None of this is counting that's three three days four three three point four three days days.
Speaker: Wow. Continuously of listening to us get through everything. There you go. Well done. um That is a heckin' lot of content.
Speaker: That is a heckin' lot. It sure is. Hit it, wow Also, for another sense it's just since we're going through fun numbers, we did our final book club for Worm in Review March 10th, 2025. That's when we Worm.
Speaker: that's when we ended wom Just in case you forgot. Dang. How about that? Honestly, that seems really way too recent. or Yeah, know. Yeah, that seems really well. I know. But that was like a year and a half ago. That's... Yeah.
Speaker: I think I track things for some reason in D&D campaign time, which is like two and a half hours per campaign. Or two and a half years per campaign, so... yeah yeah yeah we're We're close. We're so close.
Speaker: yeah We will never finish the campaign we are currently playing. We are on the last session and we will never finish it. Oh my gosh. We've got a lovely little murder mystery we can do in the meantime. There you go.
Speaker: Alright.
Speaker: We ready to get into Pig's pen with the ward off?
Speaker: Yeah, elaborate. I'm probably I'm probably going to read it later. I haven't read it yet. um I'll probably read the whole thing later. But someone just give me the give me the the brief. I'll give you some of the some of the snow paraphrasing and some big stuff.
Speaker: So I believe he started in 2017 with Ward because that's what have been out when I would have been reading it. And this is May 3rd, 2020. Ward off a retrospective on the sequel.
Speaker: ah Michael, is there any way we could put link in description for but Oh, yeah, i should have done that. one I'll update with that after this is The link begins with saying this isn't an easy post to write.
Speaker: um where a lot of people really enjoy going over this as a retrospective. ah Let's go through here what I had highlighted. Alan, can you move your mic closer to your face while you read?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, more importantly, I could just move the thing to the front so I can look at it well. And then move y'all to the side. um so ah It's frankly pretty draining to think about tackling this whole thing ah and doing everything that needs to be done. Every sentence needs to be written with a balance in mind and balances to consider. And it's hard to do this for a story following for two and a half years.
Speaker: Say over a hundred times times that people's takes are valid and that my focus here is the fault in my own things. There's still people who are going to cherry pick my statements and argue you that they've been disenfranchised as fans.
Speaker: the end of it more than anything. i want to be frank about what's going on, what happened to what I thought I did well and what I thought I did poorly and what played into those things. Let's step back. How do I frame this?
Speaker: Talked about both writing in different contexts before. um ah but The product stage will move down um past this thinking process into the big thing ah down here.
Speaker: Ward, if you'll bear with me, we'll go back before they started Ward. um All the lessons from the prior serials, my thought process was I wanted to tackle a familiar setting whose lessons and with growth to date in mind.
Speaker: Twig, which was the one right before this, was a sharp turn into character moments, moments to breathe, moments of more intimacy with the main character, something I did appreciate. um It was a bit too much of a sharp turn, ah so maybe i thought I could strike a balance.
Speaker: all of the lessons to apply, but go back to the worm verse and approach the sequel. Put all of that into action as best I could. I think that's fair, right? If I'm going to learn from my lessons, what the heck? If I'm not going to learn from my lessons, what the heck am I doing?
Speaker: If I even do these retrospectives. I had an impression regarding sequels. was careful to use that word impression because it wasn't an out-and-thought process. I had thought the process out. I'd stumbled over the obvious.
Speaker: As it stood, I figured the world was established. People were already pre-invested in it. And I had the benefit of the doubt from the audience after seven years of writing for this audience.
Speaker: Except... Uh, sequels are hard and literally the opposite of those things are true. The world's needed more work. A good chunk of the audience had spent the last almost four years diving into fan fiction, developing fanon and setting up their expectations to invest in something entirely different.
Speaker: And with a good few people, I didn't have that benefit of the benefit of the doubt at just the opposite. but Even before starting, I was thinking myself, setting myself up for a sharp turn.
Speaker: Relates back when I was stuck in a product mindset. My approach was choosing what to write, characters, themes. um In this, I went back to Worm and asked myself what chapters and segments I like best.
Speaker: Carol's interlude is one of my favorites as the author, as were Jessica's. The therapy group, The ultimate decision to have Victoria as a protagonist, the intent to tie her coping with the city's coping, it felt and feels right.
Speaker: I tried a lot of protagonists, including Rain, Capricorn, and Kenzie, and a long stint of trying to write Ashley, but bringing a bit character back from the dead to be an actual protagonist felt a bit cheap, and her internal voice was really difficult to write.
Speaker: Victoria clicked when I had a late night thought about her power changing as a consequence of what happened in the background in Worm. Then I had a couple of months to think about what I wanted to do with it. I think when there's an active fan base like Worm has with a couple hundred thousand readers and 15% of those readers finding places on the internet to discuss it, communities form, communities set expectations.
Speaker: There's a part of me that feels like there's nothing I could have written that would have pleased everyone. And if I had thought about that process sooner, maybe I could have adjusted or broadcast something. But I firmly broadcasted things like the fact that the protagonist from book one was done.
Speaker: She's not coming back. And there were still people clamoring throughout and theorizing that she'd make an appearance. I'm not sure there's any right answer except for me to forge ahead while communicating as best I can.
Speaker: I started the story joking in some circles that I was going to get burned at the stake for my protagonist choice. I felt confident I had a story to tell and I had expectations regarding the sequel and those other things.
Speaker: What's another little added difficulty, I thought? I had to challenge myself. I was hoping I could sell Victoria as a well-rounded character. I went in figuring I'd take the time to world build to introduce characters and lay groundwork.
Speaker: It took seven arcs to get started on the Undersider story and worm after all. Ten arcs before the first key character points were introduced. I was intending to move faster than that, but then i wasn't even done arc two with laying the groundwork and building the world when people started getting vocally restless.
Speaker: The choice of Victoria as a protagonist was a flash in the pan. Backlash I had to get past, but an underlying sentiment that touched everything going forward.
Speaker: move back. So I was left with a choice. Do I carry on and trust that I was on course or adapt to the feedback? So here's where I want to stop and revisit my thesis ah and try to give at least one short quote.
Speaker: We'll actually skip through some of that. Like i said, if you want to read all of this yourself, we'll hopefully include link description. Um, Some of the stuff fell but fell by the wayside ah was sort of like the therapy.
Speaker: Facing pressure from multiple corners to move the story along and a sharp shift in the discord from Worm sequel when? Worm sequel when? Can't wait. When Twig is over, i want the Worm sequel to this is too slow.
Speaker: And by this number of words, we were hoping or we were here in Worm versus here in Ward. I read the tempo of the community as a whole and dropped some stuff and moved stuff forward, telling myself I'd answer it later.
Speaker: The therapy, some of the world building. But until I get to later, it's a story where the city feels shaky in a way that's thematic, but jarring to some readers and where therapy has sort of failed. And that that sends a bad message, which ties into the next point.
Speaker: ah I wanted to include some LGBT representation, included more characters in that spectrum. But then it's like, okay, let's have this character go through a critically bad patch, draw a card from the deck of characters, and it's Tristan.
Speaker: Let's have a character related to them flip out. Kenzie, let's have a couple break up, Perian and Foyle. Then I've got a number of characters who are LGBT, all suffering in a short span of the story.
Speaker: And that's the sort of thing I could... I should catch. I don't know if it's prejudice that I'm not aware of informing the choices. I really hope it's not. Or bad draws coupled with the fact that there's more LGBT characters in the mix.
Speaker: And it happened, and it's on me that it happened. ah It's on me that in a similar fashion, I had a lot of lesbian relationships with power imbalances, sometimes predatory or abusive. In this case, it's less that I'm drawing characters from a deck more that I find the power imbalances and relationships to be one of the more inherently interesting parts of relationships. And as such, most relation and racial liberal ah relationships I write play into that, whether it's Carol and Mark, Defiant and Dragon, Salt and Battery, Cy and his partners, or Perian and Foyle.
Speaker: But by making it most of my characters' lesbian relationships when it's a thing in media that is portrayed as a bad metanarrative, regardless of the non-lesbian contacts. um After all, all of this, all I can say fuck me.
Speaker: ah feel miserable and I let stuff slip by and try to watch out in the future.
Speaker: um It gets tougher when I'm not writing one story, but two. I'm trying to engage with the people who are reading along, giving them food for thought and stuff to talk about in the days between chapters. And I'm trying you to write for the people who binge.
Speaker: I'm approaching every sentence, asking myself what the catch is. What's the point where people get confused? Every single romance scene I write, I get people saying it's creepy. Most combat scenes I write, I get people who are lost about X, Y, and Z. So I approach each new one with a mindset that I want to be better.
Speaker: but that requires effort and it requires consideration. If I write A, B, or C, is it going to be misinterpreted? it If I create a character and they're M, N, or O, is that offensive?
Speaker: Am I retreading old ground? Am I essentially writing a character I've written before that has someone else's written before? How can X, Z, M, O, A, and B tie into themes in the work as a whole?
Speaker: Is that interesting? Does it make sense from a setting or character perspective? What's the overall audience mood like going in, coming out? Even the little letters I put for interludes gets hundreds of lines of discussion and complaining, each a single letter.
Speaker: That chapter's not even written as anything except some broad notes on a lined Post-it note, and there's 10 different things to be thinking about. As I have Daystar 21 point blank written, and I'm left to figure out what blank should be.
Speaker: Every sentence gets heavier. There's a reason chapters take me 20 to 30 hours to write when they used to take me 8 15. which I guess is where I'm supposed to go back to my thesis here. What's the big takeaway? What's the lesson? Or what are the lessons I need to learn?
Speaker: yeah and a lot of kind of but pause Just to kind of pause there real quick. um Part of my impression of what I was getting from this was i got a really sense of tiredness from Wildebo in reading this. like He was just kind of...
Speaker: He sounds exhausted by the end of it. um And hearing that the criticisms and the comparisons started all the way back in arc two. Like, yeah, like he said, you know, we're still in the setup period. We're still in the opening, you know, chapter. And I don't know, it has got to be hard. And and I think i I can sympathize with what he said of not realizing oh, there's been four years and people have developed their own headcanon and fanon and like fan theories and people have analyzed and re-read and read Worm over and over again. And then to be told, oh, after all of this, we're going to Victoria?
Speaker: Glory Girl is our protagonist? I can get where that's got to be a tough sell, but not recognizing it's a tough sell because you haven't been in those conversations. you know You're not...
Speaker: the person reading Worm five times. you You wrote it. You're done with it you know you're You've moved on. um It's tough. And so it's hard to know. you know i do appreciate he says, you know this is on me. Ultimately, the the decisions are mine. i But at the same time, i do think I can imagine it's very difficult not to listen to the audience on the side.
Speaker: um Especially if Like I said, they're not the extreme pro or con. They're kind of more in that middle ground. um And even, you know, it is easier to listen to criticism than it is to listen to support.
Speaker: um Oh, yeah. And so, yeah, so it's it's tough. I can imagine. um Specifically with the LGBT representation.
Speaker: It's tough. Yeah. That one's really tough. i I'll be honest. i never i never felt like i I never felt like he was picking on the lesbian couples.
Speaker: um And like, I'm not a lesbian, so I can't speak to that. ah But like, that that um that's that's really fucking tough. Honestly, I want to, ah listening to all of this, I'm like, I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing later. But like, I just want to give this man a hug. Like,
Speaker: Oh, boy. i can't imagine how stressful this is. I'm... oh Yeah. well ah It's hard because, like he says, he's like, I just think these types of relationships are interesting no matter who's involved in them.
Speaker: Not yeah knowing that it's a it's a trope of lesbian couples in particular, right? It's... Like, and it's hard because the only comparison I can think of maybe is if like you wrote a character of a particular race in a certain way, not intending for it to be received anyway, but just thinking, well, this is an interesting character trait to give somebody.
Speaker: And then after you've already written it, you find out, hey, actually, that's kind of a thing that is in media, and it's a harmful serious stereotype. It's like, oh, well, shoot, I already gave them this trait. Now, what do I do about it?
Speaker: um At the same time, though, and and I'm not necessarily excusing that, especially when it's done on purpose or it is done in a tropey way, of course. At the same time, though, I i do wonder if Can we just kind of let characters be humans and let like gay, straight, lesbian, trans just be flawed people too? Like same with like race stuff. I don't know.
Speaker: Maybe that's coming from an ignorant perspective of somebody who's not been on the receiving end of a lot of bad stereotypes. I'll admit that it's probably a ah blind spot I have. For a spot for some some people, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. I don't know. It's it's tough. It's really tough. To paraphrase Disco Elysium. ah I believe, ah what's her name?
Speaker: ah or ah The Orange or whatever her name is. Class A. Class A from Disco Elysium. ah Blank literature is what it's like to be miserable and blank.
Speaker: Russian literature is what it's like to be Russian and miserable. ah Lesbian literature is what it's like to be lesbian and miserable. like Yeah, yeah. yeah That's funny. Yeah, I don't know. ah Yeah, think i think stories are are, as much as we may intend them not to be, they are very much reflections and products of the time that they are written.
Speaker: And a lot of stories do a great job of of being quote-unquote timeless, but they're still reflections of the times in which they're written. And I think when you get into a a habit of... Yeah, it's it's hard for...
Speaker: our demographic looking at the camera here to relate intently with a lot of other demographics, but, um, characters
Speaker: aren't supposed to be realistic. Quote unquote, you're not writing like, Hey, this is Joe Smith's day in the life of Joe Smith.
Speaker: It'd be boring as hell. Like characters are supposed to be reflections of, Uh, emotions are supposed to be, ah vessels by which the audience can step into the story. And so I think a lot of times when those characters that are written to be the stepping stone for certain demographics, uh, fall into the,
Speaker: what some of us might just consider to be standard tropes uh it can it can feel very different it can feel very ah targeted or or singled out or things like that and i think that's it's really hard to write around um and to do so gently as ah as a as sort of meta to the example that i thought of right um Just a very, very loose one, but there's that new Harry Potter adaptation coming out from HBO at the end of the year, and they ah they cast a ah black actor as Snape.
Speaker: um Little diversity, great actor. If you've ever seen some of his work, fantastic English actor. But, of course, there's that great scene in the stories where, in the flashback, James Potter hangs Snape upside down from a tree.
Speaker: Oh, it's not a great... What are you going to do? It's a bad foresight. It's a bad some bad foresight. So like even though the intention even is good... Even even less less in the future, somebody pointed out that... like Harry is totally suspicious of Snape, not for any particular reason, but just a bad vibe. Exactly. And so you can you can have the best intention when it comes to writing a character. yeah um and And still, the portrayal of the character in in the story is going to is is still a reflection of the world and times in which it's written.
Speaker: And that's like, it's ah it's a hard thing to get around. Who knows? You might be able to read Ward 50 years and have a completely different interaction with it, you know? So it's, it's, it's just the unfortunate reality of trying to, of trying to write complex characters in a complex world.
Speaker: It's funny. You talk about the whole like Snape thing too. Cause I was like in another in another take that somebody has, i could see somebody going, it's the brilliant choice to cast that character of that to show that like, obviously like not even in this world, like race struggle, much like class struggle is still very apparent. I mean, there's already race struggle.
Speaker: in the hogwarts world with you know yes like that's already a thing so like why not lean into that like and i could see somebody going a brilliant brilliant move like right this is absolute way to way to like tie modern problems and things to show that like even in like this world and then on the flip side people going oh like ah like, can't believe you did that. And it's like, it was a very intentional choice. As long as it's intentional, like you said, it's the intentionality. I think, yes, I was just about to say that. The intentionality, I think, is the biggest thing about it. If it's like, we unawarely made this decision, and it's like, okay, well, I mean, for for the case of having...
Speaker: a diverse group of people that are brainstorming that are in these meetings talking about casting decisions and talking about stuff like that. It's like, well, if you have a pretty diverse group of people at the table, someone can step up and go, um I'm sorry, we can't we can't make that decision. like ah You might not be aware of these stereotypes, but like this does exist.
Speaker: And like, then you can make a decision about like, well, are we going to continue on with that casting choice because of X, Y, and Z or because we're intentionally making a statement about this or because of whatever. But like, right I mean, if,
Speaker: it Like with this, like Wildbo, it's like he had no, he was like, I was not aware that this was becoming a problem for my characters, for my readers that are seeing this stereotype coming out in the story I'm trying to tell.
Speaker: And like that it's so hard, but like he's, he's one, he's one person who's like trying his best. Yeah. With that. Exactly.
Speaker: And unfortunately, the like dynamic of listening to people and also not listening to anybody on the internet is like a hard thing to balance because.
Speaker: Yeah. I'm sorry, but you just shouldn't read comments. Like, well, yeah, you need to have people and and ah having the human body, the night the human. Yeah.
Speaker: I was going to say, you have a couple people that you trust. This is you know how this works. Because you anybody can always say, well, you need to listen to more insert group of people. And it's like, okay.
Speaker: But sometimes they have bad opinions. it's like Everyone can have. And then you're like, okay, well then. Yeah, I was about to say. The problem of mankind is we are flawed. Like, we all have our own perspectives.
Speaker: And so, like, I think, you know, one of those things is like, having a small group of people that you trust to vet, ah you know, in this case, an editor, like, which... And beta readers.
Speaker: That you can't really have. Even for Wildbow, yeah, I could see it being not so much beta readers and editors, but just, like, people, you know, he could pitch future ideas to, sure, but really even just reading it in real time. So he's getting their real-time reactions like he would, you know, like an audience proxy.
Speaker: To be like, yeah, hey, um this chapter's not really landing with me. I feel like the pacing's a bit slow. um I like what you're setting up, but I want you to do a little bit more, maybe. like yeah They're going to put it in a measured way instead of a comment that's like, well, this was a waste of time.
Speaker: you know Which is technically saying the same thing. Comments suck. Yeah. yeah and that And again, it's the pressure of a web serial, I think. Of course. Oh, yeah. yeah Yeah. Because you are writing for an audience at the end of the day. Yeah. um Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, at least in theory. And like you're writing for an audience that you want to keep around. yeah Exactly. You want to keep around because you're everything that you're based on all of your stories and your support of like these people keep coming back like we're on ward but Alan's got tattoos all up his arm because he ah really enjoys all Wild Bill's works and has read so many of the books and we're where I'm eventually going to make my way through them.
Speaker: But like this idea of like your audience keeps coming back because they enjoy your writing, because they enjoy your storytelling style. And it's like you don't want to lose them because you you went, well, I'm not going to listen to, you know, the 60% of my audience that's going, hey, this is a bad take.
Speaker: on the on the stance of the other 40% or whatever. like that is I would not want to be making that call. like that is not I have a hard enough time reading the reviews. I try not to read reviews of my own book. i tried I try really hard not to, but it's hard because they'll pop up and you're like, well, I can't avoid that. There it is.
Speaker: I'd like to get through the last two sections. two sections yeah Yes, it. Going off of what we're talking about, the ah the reality is noise will always be a thing.
Speaker: Can't create online and ignore it. Trying to screws up the online part of it, or even worse, it screws up the create part. Initial takeaway while navigating this epic story and carrying a sequel is hard, if not impossible, at least at my current skill level in the current dynamic.
Speaker: Solution, I'm going to be doing a series of shorter works for a bit, I think. Less totality to consider, less investment required from both me and audience, more room to experiment and explore. Hopefully it's a bit of a break.
Speaker: By the way, the next thing he did was pale, which was like 2.6 million words. So I famously remember a meme, which was like, you simple bitch, you don't get short stories. But we'll talk about that after this.
Speaker: That's great. um ah This applies to, let's see, I need to reconsider the author audience text triangle where each of these three things interact with the other two. what What am I doing with work? How can I broadcast what the work is? Sometimes I just need to be more explicit.
Speaker: um ah This applies to story points too. There were too many points where I approached so writing a story with a different audience than the one I had. I'd write something that intended as an invitation to the audience to react, respond, and draw what I felt was a singular conclusion.
Speaker: Rain pointed at her. And the de facto response from sub-communities was confusion and frustration at the cliffhanger and theories all over the place. Natalie at the end of the story getting the fob.
Speaker: I thought it'd land one way and didn't consider it would be dismissed. In an ideal world, I should have learned the lessons from the first instance. By and large, that's not the audience I have.
Speaker: and expecting them to sit down and draw the correct conclusions isn't fair. Gotta be more explicit. Next story, I'm hoping to draw on other materials to make things more explicit.
Speaker: As Alan, at this point in time, i am just feeling everything about my castle D&D campaign that this man is feeling right here. it's Literally thinking about D&D. Yeah. yeah um I need to tighten things up. I think part of what I'm feeling the weight of is things that I branch out or if I include more fluff, background, or side characters because that's easy and fun. But fluff can look like a thread to pull to the audience or it can be something they find adorable and then I'm sort of obligated to do something with it or it's a background element or a note of something thematic and readers may think it's more important than it was originally meant to be.
Speaker: Withdrawal's molluscoid trigger or background, for example. To expand, serial is always going to be a serial. I like Sprawl, and I like there being a rich background of diverse characters who could each have a story told about them.
Speaker: I hate to write something where the word counts and threads are so trimmed down that a... gun that gets a passing mention has to be used where everything is relevant or discarded but there's a middle ground and I created more headaches and noise for the audience than I needed to which may have contributed to the fatigue and dynamic where people weren't really engaged with cliffhangers or trying to look deeper than I thought I'd invite them to two years of material and a lot of fluff and it's a lot to sift past one wants to figure something out
Speaker: I don't hate ward big question mark there. Maybe in the end, as much as this ended up being a fairly deep dive into what I think went wrong in ways I can address that moving forward. I don't want to dwell purely on the negative.
Speaker: I'm happy with where I went with the characters. I'm pretty attached to this cast of characters and side characters. I'm really happy with some of their interludes. I didn't want to tell a story where everyone started and ended their character journeys in a super neat and tidy way.
Speaker: But like where the characters stand as the story at the story's conclusion. Some have work to do, but I think that's okay. I'm generally happy where I went thematically. I'm aware there's a shadow of the suicide interpretation hanging over the last leg of the story.
Speaker: But early responses from binge readers who've caught up seem to have been more positive over it. And it may be something that just really read badly when the story was on a twice a week schedule, but comes across better in a shorter time frame.
Speaker: I'm kind of interested in where reader perception will stand a year from now. made some cool powers, or wrote some fun side characters, and I think I'd like to have something smaller with some of those side characters in the future.
Speaker: we'll see We'll have to see what form that takes. Ward overall feels like the story I'd most want to go back to in edit. There were a lot of subtle points where I missed the mark with hints and cliffhangers meant to invite thought and discussion that didn't achieve their goals.
Speaker: The ramifications of those individual things were pretty massive, and I'd be interested to see the reception to the story if and when they were tuned to do what they were supposed to in the first place.
Speaker: Some parts to be trimmed down, some minor bits of fluff trimmed out, some foreshadowing and thematic beats hit. But I digress. As much as I want to see where audience perception will stand for a year from now, I don't want to come to a firm verdict on the story just yet.
Speaker: I have a tendency to be pretty hard on my stories when they've just finished. I'm exhausted from one to three years spent writing them. I don't know what I want to do from here. Maybe I'll do another post a year out when I've thought some more through.
Speaker: this was the last post on, Wildbo's, um, Big Pen. Damn. Writes more about other stuff. I will get to, um, there are other retrospectives, but that was the last one, uh, in his like writing blog.
Speaker: Hmm. Um, good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can feel sort of the exhaustion, um One of the other things I definitely also felt, and I didn't think of what we were talking about, you know, he clearly knew and identified was like, Worm, because it's a serial, has a cliffhanger at the end of almost every chapter, it feels like.
Speaker: Sometimes in smaller ways, but it hooks you at the end of every chapter. And Ward... has it sometimes, but you can feel it not landing or just doesn't have it at all.
Speaker: Yeah. um And I think when you talk about like, ooh, I couldn't wait to pick up the next thing, even sometimes in the more mundane stuff, you're like, well, i got to kind of know what happens, even if it's not life-threatening.
Speaker: you just don't have that. um I think he identifies that. Yeah, and I think, too, the point he makes about, you know, the the aside he makes about Chekhov's gun, um is that part of it is like I get what he's saying with a serial you want to have that sprawl and a bit of that extra and like this doesn't have to be super significant but it can be memorable and fun um like I think about the the dog POV from Wyrm where it's like it adds a little bit to the story but I mean i think something maybe important happens in there so I'm not dismissing it entirely but ultimately like do we need that no but do we love it yeah it's great
Speaker: I think, yeah, one of the issues with Ward is he he sets up these Chekhov's guns without realizing he set them up so hard because they keep getting alluded to. It's one thing if you set up a like, oh, here's a reference, like the reference to Sleeper when we're like, what's that about? Who's Sleeper? I'm not going to bother him. Interesting.
Speaker: We don't need that gun to fire necessarily, but it's interesting. The difference is like if you compare how Sleeper is referenced in Worm to how the Machine Army, as we joke about, is referenced in Ward.
Speaker: It's like, oh, Machine Army's coming. oh they're on the doorstep. Bad things happening. It is like, yeah and then nothing really happens with them. That's where it kind of is like, it feels like he's creating a Chekhov gun and then we're disappointed it never really fires.
Speaker: it's it's the difficulty he talks about you know he likes the sprawl he likes the open world it's the difficulty of building an open world game is you populate it you throw paint on so much stuff um and then you get disappointed when you like can't go into every single building because like why would you or I see something in the distance I can ride to this one why can't I ride over to that one like um And, you know, there you just assume because it exists in the world that it is meant for you when talks about like he's writing this.
Speaker: And sometimes he writes things because they're interesting and they're fun and he enjoys the concept. But he doesn't want to pursue that. That's just, I thought this was neat.
Speaker: And yeah people latch on to it. and i think yeah I think a good example of that as something that that worked really well is ah like Valkyrie's Interlude where she takes on the tower with all of her shades, right? Yeah.
Speaker: Like that's a really cool side interlude gives us a bit of side insight into like, yeah Oh, there are big, big threats out there that the, you know, this is why we're not seeing all the big name heroes. Cause they're all off in other earths to dealing with, shit um, and you know, yeah, there's other stuff it ties into, into the main plot, but at the same time, like that was just cool. Like that was a great interlude.
Speaker: Didn't have a ton to do with the main plot. It was just fun to read. And I think stuff like that is where it's good. Yeah. Um, Again, it's just stuff like the Machine Army where it's like it didn't quite land in part because we we felt like it was being set up and it never quite ended up there.
Speaker: um Somebody in the comments on this made a point about how they said they heard an author one time say that if you include six obvious clues to a reader, you should expect them to only pick up on about one of them. Yeah.
Speaker: And so part of it is you don't necessarily want to think your readers on average are dumb. That's not the point. The point is more, you have to remember nobody else is inside of your head and what is obvious and apparent to you um is not always so to everybody else. And ah this is one of the, although I'm not a teacher anymore, this is one of the gifts I think the teaching has given me is recognizing oh, what's obvious to me is not obvious to these teenagers.
Speaker: How can i make it more obvious to them so they can better understand it and then apply that lesson elsewhere? um yeah And as a writer and as a creator, I think that's something that you can take away is like, okay, nobody else is inside my head.
Speaker: Nobody else sees, nobody else has the bulletin board with the red threads connecting everything. How can I make sure that they make those red threads appear in their minds as they're reading my story? And that's really hard to do well without not doing it. And I think Wild Boleyn's on the less explicit side, at least in Worm and Ward.
Speaker: But you also don't want to beat them over the head with it and make it so obvious it's painful. um Yeah. You know, yeah like the the Netflix show that reminds you of what they're doing every five minutes because they think their audience is on their phones watching the show.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. look I am. so And we are. you know We are the problem. And that's the thing. But that's because the show is boring. Make your show interesting. Make your show interesting and I'll be watching it.
Speaker: yeah yeah Yeah, that's actually I was going to say part of that smart writing is why I actually really enjoy Lanterns. as yeah Lanterns treats all the characters in universe as competent people.
Speaker: yeah So every time you think, ooh, I'm going to pick up on this thing and all the characters in the show are stupid. They're not going to get this until five episodes later. when the next sentence will be did you think I was gonna just ignore that like like oh okay I love those moments I love those moments in books or movies when you as the viewer or the audience you have this moment where you're like oh I picked up on that but nobody else did and then it's immediately followed up by like a so we all saw that box right and everyone's like yeah oh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah and you're like oh shit never mind that's a lot of fun yeah but I think it is a mark of good writing if you if you catch it like 30 seconds before the characters do because then you still get get that little moment of like, oh, I'm clever.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. I love that. I love that. Yeah. ah Yeah, it's it's so interesting. Hearing you read that, Alan, it really does make me think a lot about a D&D campaign of like, as I've only DM'd once and I hated it. I truly, truly hated it.
Speaker: And part of it was I was completely unprepared. Part of it was I was playing with some people who had never played before. And part of it was it was a quick little one shot, but I truly hated it because there's so much thought you have to put into it, which is why I respect all of you so much for DMing. And I just get to be a little happy bard running through all of our stories. But this idea of like, you have to you have to have your story and you have to have these like, you don't want to push your your players down a street because you've decided that there's a thing down there they need to see. But like,
Speaker: you don't want to push them, but you want them to figure it out on their own. But if they're not asking the right questions, like, do you need to like, okay, I'll just, I'll have somebody, have an NPC be like, wow, that's that's a weird thing over there and hope that they'll maybe all look in that direction. And this idea of like,
Speaker: With Wild Bo and his story of like people are reading, they're drawing their own conclusions and they're making decisions about where they think the plot is going. They're trying to pull on a thread when the thread is, it's just, it's a loose, it's just there. It's just fluff. And they're like, no, no, no, this, this must be a piece of something bigger. And it's like having to make that decision of like, well, am I about to try and make that part of something bigger now? Because you've, everyone seems to think that it should be. So like, hey, do I play on that or do I just go, just leave it?
Speaker: just Just leave it and ah hopefully maybe someone will. Because like even with the comment about um about Taylor, I'm waiting for Taylor to show up. And, you know, full well knowing that Taylor's not going to show up.
Speaker: But ah part of me the whole time during Ward is like, well, maybe. Like, maybe. And that's i just that's so interesting.
Speaker: but that was And then i as I was thinking, Alan, you literally said the D&D campaign. It's so interesting to me of like, you're trying to build this world and you're trying to invite people's characters and this plot. and And with web with a web serial, like it kind of feels a little collaborative in that way of like interacting with your readers and the commenters and gosh, a lot of pressure.
Speaker: And I hadn't thought about it like that at all until You know, just now. i Yeah. Yeah. Especially, you know, like you said at the beginning, there's been years between the stories And people have set up their own expectations of what they're looking for. That's wild. Yeah. and And unfortunately, you can't undo the mistake of giving Taylor an epilogue where it implies she might be alive on another Earth. might be alive. even though, in hindsight now, it does seem more like maybe that was a death dream. Who knows, right?
Speaker: Like, who who knows? Yeah. But yeah yeah, you can't undo those things. She was the shadow and in Reigns in their dream world.
Speaker: A shadow figure. Oh my gosh. It was Taylor. There we go. It was Taylor the whole time. Going through the comments in reverse order here. Bernard, um stories need to make characters miserable, don't they?
Speaker: No. That's just an easy default that people do. yeah I mean, I like making my characters, some of my characters miserable, but not... Not required. Not in general. I don't think so. I think it's just the like the human condition is that there are things that come up that are shitty.
Speaker: And it's like what you do with them and how you put your characters, how your characters move through the crap and come out the other side. Like that's what's important. And I think the growth, you know, can come from misery for sure.
Speaker: But like, I don't want my characters to be miserable. Like I want them to be, I want them to go through tough stuff, but I don't want them to be miserable. And I don't like movies that are miserable. Like, movies, books that are miserable, i don't like them. I don't like to interact with them.
Speaker: There's an entire industry of cozy murder mysteries that exist in which people die, but the majority of the story is kind of just really happy-go-lucky.
Speaker: Cozy. and Like... The misery really isn't there necessarily. um Yeah, and and it it depends on, i think it's it's very important to distinguish between, um because this was in response to the literature thing, like blank literature is just them being miserable.
Speaker: i mean, that's true. and yes but literature Yes, that's just literature, though. That's more literary type stuff. but Because they can't get hard unless they suffer. It's true. It's true.
Speaker: um Listen, i was in i was I've been in grad school with English li people. I know what it's like. Yeah. But that being said, though, um I think suffering and misery is a really easy crutch for authors and movies to make a story seem really deep.
Speaker: When in fact, it is simply sad and tragic. Tragedy has its place, and I think there's some really good tragedies. um Obviously, i love some of them, but misery for the sake of misery is not a good um storytelling trope.
Speaker: um And i think I think this probably ties into Jacob's theory about character death as well. i don't know if that's what you were you were eyeballing there, Jacob. Maybe. Maybe. get i like um But yeah, like, like, you know, you can have stories that deal with dark topics, but in very not happy ways, but in ways where the misery isn't the point of it.
Speaker: There's something more than that. Like, um I'm trying to think superman of a good at example. point Superman's an incredibly optimistic movie.
Speaker: that does make at brief moments their characters miserable. um And yet, it's about overcoming. It's about... Like I said, it's just a generally positive movie.
Speaker: Yeah. like And... Yeah. I think everyone agrees that in The in the Last of Us, the ah the TV live-action adaptation, the best episode is the Nick Offerman episode. Oh, yes. I mean, talk about the opposite of misery, right? Like, they are as content as can be in a miserable world, but the story isn't about their misery. The story is about their their love and happiness. like it yeah And it's gorgeous. like ah and this And this is not to say that stories that are about misery are inherently less valuable either.
Speaker: um It's just all context dependent and point dependent. like I think of um to two Japanese works that come to mind as one one more well-known, Grave of the Fireflies.
Speaker: Most depressing movie you can ever watch probably. But it's also beautiful and it's about a real thing that happened and it has a bigger point to it than just, look at how sad these characters are. Isn't that sad?
Speaker: ah Similarly, I read a a manga called Barefoot Again, i think is what it's called, um which is about the author's fictionalized experience of Hiroshima.
Speaker: Like, he was a kid when Hiroshima happened and survived in real life. um And then, you know, kind of told the story later as a fictionalized retelling of it. um And you know what's going to happen at the end of it, but the lead up to it and the like what why it's happening and just the the depth that it adds to that real life historical circumstance, it's a miserable manga to read. But man, it it was good. Like, it was an enjoyable read for a very different reason, right?
Speaker: um So it's it's all about the balance there. Like, I think um I haven't I haven't seen it. But when I think of movies that are just misery for the sake of seeming more meaningful than they are I've heard Requiem for a Dream is like that, where it's like, it's just like, how much crap can we put our characters through in an hour and a half? Let's go. What is it? Manchester by the Sea.
Speaker: Yeah, I Manchester Brothers Sea, I think is really good, but that's more that's more because the whole intention of that is to sort of ah visualize grief and and kind of how we process it. and It does that very well. But yeah, it is yeah just misery.
Speaker: but That's my favorite and my favorite joke about the musical Rent for any musical theateral musical theater lovers. rent is Rent's a sad story. It's a very sad story. But ah there is a point in which anyone who has watched Rent enough, you just get to the point at the end and you're like,
Speaker: Just pay your rent, guys. Stop trying to make us feel sad for you. Just pay your rent. I'm simplifying it, obviously. No, no, no. You nailed it.
Speaker: and no no no that is the the you knowil that I mean, I think about, like, growing up in Bosnia, obviously the history and the culture there is is pretty dark and tragic and fairly recent, too. Like, it's all very fresh. um And Bosnian movies, Serbian movies, like, very much like Russian literature, are super fucking tragic. Like, there's, it's just, there's always...
Speaker: death and and and and betrayal. And it's always like the most gut-wrenching. And i don't I don't like most ah Bosnian movies for, I don't like any Bosnian movies for that reason, because they're all so tragic. But like, also being there, it's like, everyone carries this emotional weight constantly because you know, there are people in your immediate family who died during the war.
Speaker: And it's like, it's It's so present that it seeps into everything else. And I think that like there's a time and a place for that to feel very dark and heavy. But like also, I don't watch Bosnian movies for that reason. Because I have other things in my life that are dark and heavy. And I think I'd rather read smut.
Speaker: sm smart Sometimes. Sometimes I just need a lady riding on a dragon fucking a dude. Sometimes we just need dragons, man. Let's go.
Speaker: Alright, moving on to the next comment. ah Dragon D's nuts. yeah um Yes, J-Man saying I'm sitting here crying because I know we're so close to the end of the episode. oh no, J-Man. just smiling so much.
Speaker: I am was going to work my way to the what J-Man said before about what Wildbo said about Ward. I had it pulled up. I'm going to finish on his retrospective from Pale, just the first paragraph.
Speaker: paragraphs right here. um After finishing Pale, which was his next work. ah This is what I'd actually read before the retrospet the other retrospective. So I um honestly, the other one says like, hey, I missed a bunch of things.
Speaker: um I've just finished up. ah This has two and a half years about of doing something that he enjoyed and his feelings about Ward and previous works with some space to think about it.
Speaker: um Hale ended up being my longest work, which really wasn't the plan when I started. When I started writing Worm, I wrapped up and felt like I had another 50 years of writing in me.
Speaker: Then I finished PACT, and that took a year and a half, and I kind of mentally revised that number downward. I could see where I'd get tired. Maybe I'd write for 30 to 40 years. Then TWIG came, and I changed that 10 to 20 before I figured I'd need to stop to consider other options.
Speaker: I loved writing those works. I love writing in general. Don't get me wrong. But that end date kept closing in by lurches as I figured out the parts I don't enjoy. The worst parts of having a community or say being self-employed and having a new curveball thrown my way terms of taxes every year for five years running.
Speaker: There's also some lifestyle stuff and psychological stuff that happens when you put so much of yourself and your time into a project. I wasn't even done with Ward when I hit zero.
Speaker: I hit the point where I wanted to quit altogether. I was frustrated. Only the support of a select few very kind people. My personal feelings about leaving a project unfinished got to me, or got me to the end.
Speaker: talk about some of that stuff in my retrospective but even in writing that retrospective I had people insisting that they should double check what I was saying to make sure I wasn't offending segments of the parahuman sub community with various voices angry insistent and persistently negative coming from all directions it had been years of dealing with a large number of people who wanted Ward to be something it wasn't and I think a lot of that came through was pretty miserable When I started pale, it was at the point of being overly cautious, not wanting to throw myself into a project that could be another few years of that misery and negativity.
Speaker: I told myself I could do something smaller because I thought if it went badly, it would be easier to wrap up and move on. Except I enjoyed it. So I kept going. For the first time ever, the number went up.
Speaker: It had to, but it went up a lot.
Speaker: Makes sense. Sadly. yeah Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, that does make me want to read pale. So maybe I'll get that at some point. Same. Oh my gosh. Yeah. i It's, you can feel so much of, there's still wild bow issues that are just inherent to wild bow.
Speaker: um I'd be interested to see if he fixed it after pale. Um, but the majority of it, it's the deepest characters you'll meet yet.
Speaker: It's three POV characters. It's, it's every problem that everybody had kind of fixed. Um,
Speaker: There's still issues with, i so I still think there's major issues with pacing that just happened because of the sprawl, like you talked about. I think there's still um a lot of things that, you know, when you're writing for another two and a half years, you go, oh, did I do that? Have I been doing that for the past two years?
Speaker: And it's only showed up now. And I realize, but,
Speaker: You can tell he liked writing that a lot more. You can tell he was, you know, you you could even see the points where he went, ooh, I messed up there. And all of a sudden, ah storyline kind of gets just cut short. And you're like, oh, well, well I guess we wrapped that up.
Speaker: And we're not going back to that. Interesting. um But, you know, one of those may be better to cut early than, you know, yeah try to rush things and cut at the end.
Speaker: um I'm glad he got to, got through Ward. For sure. I'm sorry I had to endure all of that there. Yeah. Because, i especially when you don't even want to do it anymore.
Speaker: Like, man, you know, there's something to be said. I'm a very external ah motivation. i will write things for people.
Speaker: I love that external motivation. i can't just do it myself. But if you don't have either going on for you and you're still writing, that's its own form of hell, especially with something that you did enjoy. um Yeah.
Speaker: Sorry, I laughed and and interrupted because Vic said, are we building to a secret Wild Bo guest appearance? yeah Wild Boats tuned in enough times to probably go, oh, hell no.
Speaker: ah Yeah. the Hell no. oh my god after Here's the thing. after after the bull oh my gosh After all of that he got from Ward, ah it makes so much sense that you just like, I don't want to interact with people reading Ward. I don't want to interact with a freaking podcast going over Ward. Like...
Speaker: I don't want to tune in and hear them talk shit about how Wyrm was better. Like, fuck, man. I'm sorry. John. John. John. Listen. You're great. We love you. I'm so sorry that you went through this.
Speaker: Holy shit. My dude. Great job. If we did, I'd be more interested in talking to him about just the writing process general. Writing process? I was about to say. i would love that shit. We don't have to talk about any of his books. I just want to talk about writing process.
Speaker: Yep. Oh. That would be amazing. Creative workshop with Waldo. Yeah. I would, i would love to. Oh, I mean, we've said that from the beginning, but yeah.
Speaker: What a journey. Um,
Speaker: I this will be our longest episode yet for ah for this book, even. So as Michael nods and tells us, you know, we need to hurry up. He's got dives to hell.
Speaker: um No, no, no. You know. no, no, no. I understand, Michael. Yeah. It's been great having everybody in live chat.
Speaker: We really appreciate moving over to this format because of the direct interaction we've had with you guys. um Yes. It's meant a lot. ah eight Yeah.
Speaker: This is the last live stream we will be doing for ah the foreseeable future. But um yeah, you can definitely always catch us in the a Discord.
Speaker: you're part of the Discord, we're never going to kick you out. um And yeah, we're going to leave the Patreon up and available. We're very proud of this community.
Speaker: I didn't get to um say a lot during all this because I'm the producer and I'm just doing other things. I'm making things work. But I made a really dumb, cheesy, cringy song that I want to ah not play, but i already told them I would. So we're doing it now.
Speaker: If you've heard Regina Speck's... Before you put it on, Michael. Yeah. Hold on, Michael. but but So before you put it on two two things. One, the stream is buffering again, so there's an issue.
Speaker: But I did just want say one last thing. I don't want to go out on my song, Nick. really don't want to leave. I also have a good try. I want to play it and then have it not be the last thing. Yeah, that's why I'm saying me do this now. Not end of the song. It's not good enough for it to be like a fade to black moment. It's not how I envisioned this. No.
Speaker: Of course, the last episode is the worst quality internet. Because it's just perfect. I'm telling you, you gotta, I know you had to, once again, I'm not going to say which patron member it was.
Speaker: But like, I know you had to beat them off with a stick out there. Get them away from your router because they're trying to... mike but Michael was beating them off. We know that. Beat them off. yeah your fellow um Your fellow human. Yeah.
Speaker: Your fellow man, just Sugar Gay? my god. Alright, I'm going to play this if you've heard Regina Spector's saddest song, ah The Call.
Speaker: i made I don't know why, but words that tune came to my head that fit with this, so I'm going to play it now.
Speaker: It started as idea and then turned into a book club and then turned into podcast as we shared our thoughts with the world.
Speaker: And then that podcast got bigger and thicker until it was what you see now.
Speaker: It started out on a whim. And we made ourselves bunch of friends. And we like to say we're thankful.
Speaker: Yeah, we like to say we're thankful. Thank you all for all the years. And remember.
Speaker: Take that, you worms.
Speaker: Perfect. I would appreciate this a lot more if I knew what the actual song was. yeah but No, that's amazing. Hey, that's beautiful.
Speaker: Michael, thank you so much for that. that completely original song thank you yeah since i don't know the original will be forever and i'll i'll hear it someday i'm gonna sing your lyrics because that's the only one i know it was beautiful oh my god i'm gonna need you to put that in the discord so i can listen to it on yes constantly put it in the it was amazing yeah yeah immediately yeah I don't know if anybody's been with us since the beginning, but I was just looking at our Spotify.
Speaker: Our introduction episode, we didn't post our actual first episode until January 1st, 2024. But our introduction episode was posted on September 30th, 2023, which means we've been doing this for almost exactly three years.
Speaker: Wow. True. And so... So it is something between worm and word. We've been doing this for a while and it's been quite the journey. Wow. So I, know I think I know the first three patrons at least.
Speaker: Oh yeah. I mean, easy, but yeah, there's been patrons that have been with us for a long time. And like the song says, it started as just like an idea. And then we were like, oh, let's do a book club. And then that turned to a podcast. And then we got patrons and live streams. And and then we got pizza.
Speaker: So many hours of content. but The amount of yeah hours I've listened to you guys talk. As you know, in the immortal words of Alan, it's not about...
Speaker: the destination in these stories. It's all about the journey. Those character moments, which we had a lot of. Pretty fun. True. Journey before destination, one might even say. You might.
Speaker: Alan but even has said. Yeah. na
Speaker: Vic. Vic said, I'm like Chica from FNAF. I was the first. I've seen everything. the Boy, is Vic seeing some shit.
Speaker: Vega Vic is still with us after all this time. It's amazing, honestly. Attest to Vic's strength of character more than anything else.
Speaker: That's so true. Yeah. And listen, stay tuned. You don't know what the future holds. We don't know. Yeah. Yeah. ah Here's the thing. i'll I'll tell you right now that I'm probably going to read Claw like right after we get done with this. Not like tonight, tonight but like I know that it's like, what, a six arc?
Speaker: Seven arc? think it's like super short. um I'm probably going to hit that. Maybe get a tattoo for it real quick. um And then Seek, you put on hiatus, right?
Speaker: um I think Stink is technically ended. Someone will probably correct me on that, but if I'm not mistaken, he did end it. And it just it just ended as a shorter story than maybe originally intended.
Speaker: but then i you know I will probably read those and I'll give Ark thoughts as we go through. um I mean, shoot, if that's something that like people in the Discord want to like do our own little well you know once a week talk together. I am down to do that or just have our little spoiler channel and chit chat whenever people want to hop on.
Speaker: think it'd be really fun to go through those. That means I can read all the ward spoilers in the ward spoilers panel. I can finally unmute it. Scroll back up.
Speaker: yeah I was so excited. oh my god Nothing you can spoil for us now. It's mostly bingos. I've been scrolling through it a little bit. It's mostly bingo.
Speaker: yeah That's funny. But that's also fun in its own way. True. Yeah. Yeah. ah i'll I'll just say I am i've really enjoyed doing this with you guys. This has been a big highlight for me.
Speaker: reading and then as much as i i but i've been love i've I've enjoyed reading, I really enjoy us all being together and hanging out together because we we see each other you know pretty regularly when we play D&D and all the boys game and stuff. But like doing this and talking about story and character and that is so fulfilling for me.
Speaker: And it has been...
Speaker: It's been really fun. ah yeah And I'm really sad that it's ending. And i've really enjoyed getting to chat with
Speaker: patrons and you know doing ward live has been oh much fun just that having chat like right here is so fun and just a good time and I'm gonna miss this being part of my bi-weekly schedule and and um Yeah, yeah. I just, I want you guys to know how much this podcast has meant to me.
Speaker: And how much fun it's been getting to talk about stupid shit and our weird little side quests that we go on and all the the bingo stuff and everything has just been really, it's been a lot of like really good memories and I i enjoy getting to talk to other people about this and being like, yeah, I have a book club podcast and we just have a blast. And it's just like the best.
Speaker: It's the best, you know, and it this is possible because of the fact that I've got some great friends and you guys, man, I love doing stuff with you guys. It's the most fun and having such a great community with this podcast. It's a very small little community, but it's been a lot of fun, and um it's been it's been great. And, yeah.
Speaker: So, it's been great. Well said. Can't say it better than that. Also, my internet is really wanting to die on me. Holy crap. Why?
Speaker: hey maybe in the middle of my little crimey Maybe it's time we let it go. It's almost like my internet will die as soon as the podcast ends.
Speaker: Yeah, it's been a blast. It's been a lot of fun. More than we could have thought it could have been. I think we're all a little too creative to... ah let this be the very end. So stay tuned.
Speaker: And like, it's nice to know that this isn't breaking up because we are like done with each other. oh which is great. but Like we're going to hang out again later this week, probably. So like, you know, it's one of those nice things where you can, we can kind of just end this on our terms for the time being. And yeah, maybe we'll pick something up later. You never know.
Speaker: m Yeah. I mean, it's, it's been a ride. It's been fun. Um, Yeah, a lot of good memories. um Definitely a lot of fun has been had with you guys. and Yeah, i I think it was mentioned before, I think Jacob said it. um Highly recommend don't make it a podcast necessarily, but highly recommend getting a group of friends together online or in person, picking something that you both want, that you all want to read. Some of you may have read it. Some of you may have not, whatever, and just read something together.
Speaker: Um, I think it's a, it's, it's an undervalued thing to read stories together and talk about stories together. um,
Speaker: you know Whether it's a book club, movie club, web serial club, ah I've told each of these guys of this. One of my favorite things is just getting together to talk about stories together.
Speaker: So I definitely highly encourage everybody watching to to do that, engage with that, engage with good stories, make good stories, share good stories, um and hopefully you live a good story too.
Speaker: you can also do that with bad stories too. Also a good one. You can make it exclusively your thing, but ah it's, you know, the right next to both enjoying something together.
Speaker: ah i have never had more fun than wine tasting bad wine with people. Yeah. Because you all just have this... clean What is that taste? ah You know, is it toilet water? Is it bleach? Like... um Honestly, that lives in my memory.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. it it That sits in my mind. um just you know, me and Hannah and our friends sitting around with the worst wine we've ever tasted going, oh my gosh, more than almost all the good wine.
Speaker: oh ah Just because it's, you know, yeah ah you just doing stuff with friends is kind of what matters. um It was really nice ah having you guys here and being able to do this with my friends and and Michael just long-suffering all of us. I'm so sorry, Michael. appreciate you all of this because it would not happen without Michael's expertise and him running everything in the background.
Speaker: Oh, my God. um It's been a blast. His internet sucks, but he's got a heart of gold. yeah As much as my technology wants me to to fail, I will not be stopped.
Speaker: i will not be stopped
Speaker: ah You know, some say he's an overcomer. Yeah, exactly. exactly Thank you. but All right. Well, what else is there to say?
Speaker: guys are the best. What else is there to say? It's so late. A good a place to end it as any. All right. Well, we love you guys so much.
Speaker: And ah on farewell to you all. Yes. Good night. Good night. Okay. Stay wormy.
Speaker: Take that you worms. You are are the best. Goodbye.
