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Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

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The problem here lays in how Contessa, March, etc. are always Plot Device powers.

Even Sting in general is sort of a plot device by itself.

They have powers that basically give them the magical ability to be relevant to the plot as a point of conflict, which kinda makes sense if you remember what Shards are all about.

They will never not have the ability to be relevant as an obstacle to be overcome, because that is how canon contrives their abilities to be.
 
qwer303 said:
I also agree with this, it's frustrating how every powerup MC gets is almost immediately invalidated by insane amount of buffs villains receive. If their amount of power was anywhere near the canon level MC would have dealt with all the gangs in 10 seconds.
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Basically this.

And yeah she's going to come back good as new, we get another million words of nothing, and then another fight that he just barely scrapes through.

I'm done with this plot. I'm done with the ABB. If the next update started with "And so I decided to wipe out the ABB and did just that and none of them got away" it would be an improvement.

We have spent literally over half a million words on the ABB. This is ridiculous. That is over half of the entire word count of the entire Harry Potter series. Again, in the time spent dealing with this plot, I could have read over half of the entire Harry Potter series. Half of the entire series. To put that into perspective, the pacing we are at right now would be equivalent to the first Harry Potter book ending at the troll scene, and then having the next four or so books in the series focused on fighting the troll. And then at the very end the troll gets away, has a way to quickly heal itself, and there is zero indication that we don't have 20 more books of this troll fight to look forward to.

Just please, send a PM and feel free to spoil things, just please tell me this will be over within the next 20 thousand words.
 
EasyCo said:
Basically this.

And yeah she's going to come back good as new, we get another million words of nothing, and then another fight that he just barely scrapes through.

I'm done with this plot. I'm done with the ABB. If the next update started with "And so I decided to wipe out the ABB and did just that and none of them got away" it would be an improvement.

We have spent literally over half a million words on the ABB. This is ridiculous. That is over half of the entire word count of the entire Harry Potter series. Again, in the time spent dealing with this plot, I could have read over half of the entire Harry Potter series. Half of the entire series. To put that into perspective, the pacing we are at right now would be equivalent to the first Harry Potter book ending at the troll scene, and then having the next four or so books in the series focused on fighting the troll. And then at the very end the troll gets away, has a way to quickly heal itself, and there is zero indication that we don't have 20 more books of this troll fight to look forward to.

Just please, send a PM and feel free to spoil things, just please tell me this will be over within the next 20 thousand words.
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Lord actually said something similar in a spoiler, so it's actually not as bad as it looks rn.
 
EasyCo said:
Basically this.

And yeah she's going to come back good as new, we get another million words of nothing, and then another fight that he just barely scrapes through.

I'm done with this plot. I'm done with the ABB. If the next update started with "And so I decided to wipe out the ABB and did just that and none of them got away" it would be an improvement.

We have spent literally over half a million words on the ABB. This is ridiculous. That is over half of the entire word count of the entire Harry Potter series. Again, in the time spent dealing with this plot, I could have read over half of the entire Harry Potter series. Half of the entire series. To put that into perspective, the pacing we are at right now would be equivalent to the first Harry Potter book ending at the troll scene, and then having the next four or so books in the series focused on fighting the troll. And then at the very end the troll gets away, has a way to quickly heal itself, and there is zero indication that we don't have 20 more books of this troll fight to look forward to.

Just please, send a PM and feel free to spoil things, just please tell me this will be over within the next 20 thousand words.
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I assume you haven't read LordR's comments on the topic, considering what you're saying. If you haven't go read that. If you don't want to, I'll put it in spoilers here:

Lung: Dead, gone, not happening again. This character has been removed. No longer exists.

Oni Lee: Not a threat. Basically, he's a robot with no programming telling him what to do. He pushed his power so hard he now has little to no autonomy left. As of right now, he's on his way to a clinic to be healed, after which he'll stand around and do nothing because no one is ordering him around.

Bakuda: Not a threat. Super Tinker Cancer. Most likely is going to 1: Die, or 2: Go to the PRT and beg them for help. They'll tell her to disable the Deadman switch, cure her cancer and throw her in the Birdcage.

March: She is also no a threat. March's threat to Joe was mainly how she could co-ordinate people. She is currently a shard zombie thing, her mind is currently running on shard OS. She can't interact with people in the same way she previously did, which was why she was so dangerous. March has peaked in terms of threat. She's done.

Long story short, ABB is done, not a thing anymore. We're moving on to the next threat.
 
EasyCo said:
Just read the 40k chapter and I'm honestly starting to get more and more fed up with this story. It's well written (aside from absolute abysmal pacing), but literally everything being developed is feeling more and more pointless. I'm getting the distinct impression that Roustabout firmly believes in that "If you give Frodo a lightsaber then give Sauron the Death Star" and it's really starting to cripple the story. What's the point of reading hundreds of thousands of words of Joe improving himself in innumerable ways if the plot forces the antagonists to always be right up there with him? When he was getting beat down I was about ready to just drop the story out of sheer frustration.

I've just spent who knows how many hours reading hundreds of thousands of words of constant improvement only for it to be next to meaningless because the ABB are pretty much on godmode with how they're always right with him. This encounter should have lasted all of a thousand words with an utter curbstomp, and instead I'm supposed to suspend my disbelief and believe that it was nearly a pyrrhic victory with how much he was hurt. And I think the only one who died was Lung (and considering this story I'm guessing not only did he not die but he's going to show up right as rain because status quo is apparently god here), with everyone else getting away from what I skimmed.

I'm sorry for how stressed and frustrated this must come across as, but I hope it's at least understandable. Is this how the rest of this story will be? Endless improvement with his allies is utter shock at how nearly godlike he's becoming, only for his enemies to get last minute plot power ups to make him win by the skin of his teeth? Considering how similar this result was to every other encounter, it makes me feel like everything has been a waste of time.

All I want to know is if he actually can improve and be miles ahead of his enemies and have it actually matter in confrontations.

Again, I love this story otherwise I'd be nowhere near as invested, I'm just getting burnout from the chapter lengths, glacial slow passage of time, and the constant near defeats. Honestly it feels like each time he gets an upgrade the author feels the need to spend 10 thousand words going, "But don't worry it might be an upgrade but his enemies are still vastly superior and will make sure he bleeds every step of the way because it can never be made easy for him!"

Alright, got all that off my chest so now on to the last two updates (at the time of writing this). It was an amazing fight, but for every advantage he has the fact that it was so close feels utterly unbelievable and forced, and with them getting away it looks like we get to go through this whole thing again.
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One thing you should remember is that ALL SHARDS ARE SANDBAGGING. It ain't just the Endbringers, according to Ward canon, any and all shards can become mini-Endbringers known as Titans without the Entity's limitations and oversights. Joe himself says since he's outside context, the shards will boost their host's power levels/control, which they can potentially do all the way up to Titan level, whenever the host is nearby him to Pavlovian condition hosts into spending time interacting with Joe so that they can harvest data on him. This means that if LordRoustabout really wants to up the stakes, Joe might have to fight each and every shard before killing Scion to prevent broken triggers or Titan shenanigans in the aftermath of Scion's death - hell, he might even have to deal with the remnants of Eden or all the proto-Entities the shards keep trying to form. Long story short, Joe will NOT be ROFLstomping the Wormverse - he is a human Tinker 12, not a Diebuster.
 
Sickhumor said:
So all the talk of forging people into super humans I just have this image of a more deranged Apeiron popping out of portals to drag in random people going "come here son I'm turning you into a hero" fwoosh "oh god it burns" clang "ouch" clank "ouch" CLANG "OUCH" hiss sizzle then pop out comes a person coated in quenching oil looking like they came from a ancient heroic mythical story.
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Apeiron: "Come on, Taylor, twenty minute adventure."
 
I read a couple of comments talking about the same "problems".Broken suspension of disbelief, no payoff of to build ups, power uping adversaries without explanation etq. And i met a problem.

I don't feel it. There was no breaking of suspension of disbelief. I saw payoff to build ups when it make sense, and saw reasons for why March and co. could oppose to Apeiron and not be just another thug Joe clutched in his 40k net. I saw explanation right in the text. Read it with my own eyes. And i don't understand. What different between this ten-twelve commentators for who this very long chapter become a breaking point and the ones like me, who sincerely think it was awesome?

I wouldn't know answer to this question of course. Maybe it because my good opinion of this work in general clouded my judgement and i blind to it's flaws, which obvious for every normal peson. Maybe is some other reason. I can only guess, and just guessing about something like this would be stupid way to spend my time. Kinda like writing this post. Yeah...

Well i should at least take something away from rereading what felt like same comment from couple of different accounts. You know what phrase occur strangely a lot in this comment? Beyond "my SoD was broken" of course. Variations of "this chapters so long, that is skimming them". Not reading. Skimming. Strange. But i'm sure that it has nothing to do with claimed lack of explanations.

Oh mankind, i'm too salty about some people venting their frustration. That's ironic, considering that all of this comment is me venting. I will still post it of course. Being a hypocrite is good. Never thought that i will be one of those toxic fans...

I feel kinda terrible about continuing this harmfull theme, so i will try to add something somewhat usefull to this.

Reread apparently awful chapter 41( if so many people telling that it's awful, then why i think it's good? Ah yeah, my opinion is subjective.) and saw something. Need to put this here because reasons, so here.

In the battle with big pyromaniac lizard happened something really strange. Matrix went all "localized Gray Goo" on Gun-EZ( i really thought that Gun-EZ now organic. Why.) and advanced to the point of Joe taking idea if it's first words in consideration. So Apeiron's new construtor AI now pretty advanced and has a volume of gigantic robot. And Matrix also has cores made out of cybertonium. So here's a question. Did we just saw a new Cybertronian-like creature take form? Something like more advanced man-made bots from 4th movie( or was it 5th? They all feel the same.). I mean it kinda loose, but i can't help but feel excited by idea of real transformer( more likely better) in Apeiron's crew.

Sorry for this having nothing to do with current discussion. I will stop this here. (how this kind of thing called? shitpost?)
 
I think some people are not giving enough credit on Lord to plan out and come up with the idea of having march go to bb and utilize her mark on Oni lees bomb to give an actual threat to Joe, instead of being just a stomp. Most of the time is just the generic easy stomp against Bakuda and a somewhat long battle with lung but still goes for a successive victory for the mc in most fics.
 
Slentoru said:
I read a couple of comments talking about the same "problems".Broken suspension of disbelief, no payoff of to build ups, power uping adversaries without explanation etq. And i met a problem.

I don't feel it. There was no breaking of suspension of disbelief. I saw payoff to build ups when it make sense, and saw reasons for why March and co. could oppose to Apeiron and not be just another thug Joe clutched in his 40k net. I saw explanation right in the text. Read it with my own eyes. And i don't understand. What different between this ten-twelve commentators for who this very long chapter become a breaking point and the ones like me, who sincerely think it was awesome?

I wouldn't know answer to this question of course. Maybe it because my good opinion of this work in general clouded my judgement and i blind to it's flaws, which obvious for every normal peson. Maybe is some other reason. I can only guess, and just guessing about something like this would be stupid way to spend my time. Kinda like writing this post. Yeah...

Well i should at least take something away from rereading what felt like same comment from couple of different accounts. You know what phrase occur strangely a lot in this comment? Beyond "my SoD was broken" of course. Variations of "this chapters so long, that is skimming them". Not reading. Skimming. Strange. But i'm sure that it has nothing to do with claimed lack of explanations.

Oh mankind, i'm too salty about some people venting their frustration. That's ironic, considering that all of this comment is me venting. I will still post it of course. Being a hypocrite is good. Never thought that i will be one of those toxic fans...

I feel kinda terrible about continuing this harmfull theme, so i will try to add something somewhat usefull to this.
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Alright, having been one of the people to so viscously attack chapter 41, I think I owe you an explanation of the perceived problems of it..

1. We were being to meta for our own good. Since March isn't explicitely, with absolut undeniable certainty killed on screen, we assumed that she would just be fixed up on some way so that she could continue serving as ana antagonist, because that has happened in all to many different shows or books for us to expect anything else. As March was the main antagonist of this arc, this felt like a massive disappointment and caused al ack of catharsis.

2. In the end, the end-boss, the final challange of the arc is Lung. Now, I've gone into detail why this feels unsatisfactory on this thread already, so I'll keep myself brief. Due to all too many fanfics beginning or simply containing a part where Lung gets curbstomped, the fanvase kind of views him as weak and a pushover. The fact that in universe Joe doesn't treat him seriously and outright dismisses him doesn't help.

3. And lastly, the chapter ended when it did. The last two interludes have served to clarify many things. They remind us that Lung is actually a big deal and pretty terrifying when viewed from someone who isn't a protagonist. They make it clear that Joe only backhanded March rather than hitting her full force, which makes her survival much easier to swallow. They explain just how Oni Lee pulled off his stunts.

So yeah, these were the issues I had.
 
KnightofRoyalty said:
I think some people are not giving enough credit on Lord to plan out and come up with the idea of having march go to bb and utilize her mark on Oni lees bomb to give an actual threat to Joe, instead of being just a stomp. Most of the time is just the generic easy stomp against Bakuda and a somewhat long battle with lung but still goes for a successive victory for the mc in most fics.
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i think they are just not computing the threat march is with her attack power

think of it this way people, everyone knows and expects flechette to be able to one shot endbringers if she hits their core
march has similar attack power that can be copied by oni lee who can clone spam you
it should have been expected it not to be a COMPLETE total stomp where March has time to prepare and a weapon with a delivery method that could harm/kill the MC
she should have had at least ONE chance of turning things around, and she took it, if only she did not want to grand stand and get greedy staring into MC's tech.
 
tri2 said:
she should have had at least ONE chance of turning things around, and she took it, if only she did not want to grand stand and get greedy staring into MC's tech.
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It's not even a question of being greedy. They HAD to make a show of Apeiron's death to reassert the ABB place. And while ultimatly March doesn't give a fuck about the ABB, Lung does, and March can't take the control from him, so she have to play ball.
 
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You know I was having some trouble understanding why Oni Lee's shard was able to copy sting when I realized it probably wasn't what if that purple flow before an explosion is more a signal then anything else for sting so Oni Lee's shard copied the signal and Sting made the explosions
 
Katillno said:
You know I was having some trouble understanding why Oni Lee's shard was able to copy sting when I realized it probably wasn't what if that purple flow before an explosion is more a signal then anything else for sting so Oni Lee's shard copied the signal and Sting made the explosions
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Oh that would be lovely. Because then that means that the sting-signal can be effectively created by things other than the Sting shard.... which would mean that Joe could replicate that signal. 😈
 
Katillno said:
You know I was having some trouble understanding why Oni Lee's shard was able to copy sting when I realized it probably wasn't what if that purple flow before an explosion is more a signal then anything else for sting so Oni Lee's shard copied the signal and Sting made the explosions
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Pretty sure that's all Oni lee's shard.... The duplicator.
Honesty shards are OP...
 
tri2 said:
replicate it entirely on scion's true form?
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Eventually, yes. Unfortunately for those hopes, LR is playing up Scion's access-locked dimensions, so any shanghaied sting applications will likely be restricted to all of the other uses for absolute-destruction abilities. What? Just because Joe can cheat and treat all materials like iron when crafting doesn't mean he won't have uses for a sting-based cutting tool. What? No. The only reason he made it is because its useful. There is no spite involved. None whatsoever. Move along. Nothing to see here.

EDIT: Personally, I'm interested in the interactions between sting-physics and the extra-dimensional physics of his fusion reactors. Sting is an explosion. So... sting-based 'combustion' when? XD
 
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Katillno said:
You know I was having some trouble understanding why Oni Lee's shard was able to copy sting when I realized it probably wasn't what if that purple flow before an explosion is more a signal then anything else for sting so Oni Lee's shard copied the signal and Sting made the explosions
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I mean... isn't that basically canon? For this fic at least I'm pretty sure it is. March places a "watermark" on an object which turns that object into a Sting-bomb. Realistically the watermark itself holds no actual power; it's just an abstraction devised by the shard when it put together the limited version of its power it gave March. A "homing beacon" for Sting in a sense, though less like a weird bit of space-tech and more like a line painted on a tree to tell lumberjacks it has to be cut down.

The only thing Oni Lee is doing is copying the "target," while the Shard in question is more than happy to "hit" each one.
 
Y Ddraig Goch said:
Pretty sure that's all Oni lee's shard.... The duplicator.
Honesty shards are OP...
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It could be the fact that both March and Lee were super deep into sechen ranges so the shards just shrugged and allowed the power interaction to favor them. That's the kind of thing shards probobly have more say in, when esoterica interact in such a way.
In others situations it's possible that sting would not allow its limitation to be bent so, but DATA.
 
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Esprit said:
EDIT: Personally, I'm interested in the interactions between sting-physics and the extra-dimensional physics of his fusion reactors. Sting is an explosion. So... sting-based 'combustion' when? XD
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I'm pretty sure March's power is described as an "omnidimensional explosion" only because she combines it with a secondary grab-bag power to create timed explosive runes.
 
Subrosian_Smithy said:
I'm pretty sure March's power is described as an "omnidimensional explosion" only because she combines it with a secondary grab-bag power to create timed explosive runes.
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Possibly. Whatever the justification on the shards' end is, that process is governed by some subset of physics, the understanding of which can theoretically be implemented anywhere, so an 'omnidimensional explosion' sounds like an incredibly handy reference when designing a polydimensional fusion reaction.
 
EasyCo said:
Just read the 40k chapter and I'm honestly starting to get more and more fed up with this story. It's well written (aside from absolute abysmal pacing), but literally everything being developed is feeling more and more pointless. I'm getting the distinct impression that Roustabout firmly believes in that "If you give Frodo a lightsaber then give Sauron the Death Star" and it's really starting to cripple the story. What's the point of reading hundreds of thousands of words of Joe improving himself in innumerable ways if the plot forces the antagonists to always be right up there with him? When he was getting beat down I was about ready to just drop the story out of sheer frustration.

I've just spent who knows how many hours reading hundreds of thousands of words of constant improvement only for it to be next to meaningless because the ABB are pretty much on godmode with how they're always right with him. This encounter should have lasted all of a thousand words with an utter curbstomp, and instead I'm supposed to suspend my disbelief and believe that it was nearly a pyrrhic victory with how much he was hurt. And I think the only one who died was Lung (and considering this story I'm guessing not only did he not die but he's going to show up right as rain because status quo is apparently god here), with everyone else getting away from what I skimmed.

I'm sorry for how stressed and frustrated this must come across as, but I hope it's at least understandable. Is this how the rest of this story will be? Endless improvement with his allies is utter shock at how nearly godlike he's becoming, only for his enemies to get last minute plot power ups to make him win by the skin of his teeth? Considering how similar this result was to every other encounter, it makes me feel like everything has been a waste of time.

All I want to know is if he actually can improve and be miles ahead of his enemies and have it actually matter in confrontations.

Again, I love this story otherwise I'd be nowhere near as invested, I'm just getting burnout from the chapter lengths, glacial slow passage of time, and the constant near defeats. Honestly it feels like each time he gets an upgrade the author feels the need to spend 10 thousand words going, "But don't worry it might be an upgrade but his enemies are still vastly superior and will make sure he bleeds every step of the way because it can never be made easy for him!"

Alright, got all that off my chest so now on to the last two updates (at the time of writing this). It was an amazing fight, but for every advantage he has the fact that it was so close feels utterly unbelievable and forced, and with them getting away it looks like we get to go through this whole thing again.
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I think everyone is really making the ABB into bigger threats than they actually were. Without March's ability to basically ignore all of his defenses and her thinker bullshit which has been established as bullshit he could have walked all over the ABB confrontation which would have been fun but ultimately boring rather than the legitimately epic struggle this fight actually was. He could and eventually did outpace Bakuda in the tinker-off. So much so that she was a nonissue in the final confrontation because he destroyed her lab in less than an hour and left her scrambling for any scraps of her power base she could find. Oni Lee without very specific and practiced instructions would never have gotten anywhere near him. We had already seen Joe punk Lung once. It took an entire team of capes under the direction of one of the most significant thinkers in the worm canon to pose a significant threat and everyone keeps posting about how nerfed he is. I just don't understand the logic. The ABB were a challenge because they went out of their way to make themselves a challenge. They faced the bigger badass with a plan, hard counters to his strengths, and capitalized on his moment of weakness. He still carried the day because he has the power of gods and anime on his side.
 
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