#twig ask

[lakesbian]

ok so im not at all interested in doing Wildbow Apologism and i acknowledge that this take might be extremely charitable to wb so take it as you will. but one thing i did think about while going through your twig lb and the parts about sy's relationship with jessie feeling bland and underdeveloped compared to with lillian, is the part in his Ward retrospective where he talks about how he "tend[s] to find the power imbalances in relationships to be one of the more inherently interesting parts of relationships" and how thats why many of the relationship dynamics he writes play into that and why those relationships tend to get more focus. which does make sense when you think about how his writing of Healthy and Equal relationships virtually always feels bland and underdeveloped (see: dragon & defiant, foil & parian, probably a bunch of others i cant think of right now). so i do idly wonder how much that might have factored into the discrepancy there

youre making excuses for him yeah. no, the author who successfully wrote relationships like taylor/rachel, aisha/alec, blake/evan, blake/green eyes, and so on and so forth, did not lose interest in a character (who he had previously given massive focus to developing sy's relationship with) the literal second she came out because he was "less interested in their healthy relationship." he's just transphobic. do you hear yourself. also do you recognize how it's dumb to cherrypick a shallow and uninteresting lesbian relationship from a well-known homophobe's work as being a demonstration of him making healthy relationships underdeveloped. come on now.

[procyoren]

uhhh,, since ur taking reqs,, could you draw David from Hilda?? :D

A special boy

[laterreurofficial]

hi! i was wondering if we could hear about all the folks working to make la terreur happen? i’m curious about how many people are working behind the scenes on this lovely au :)

twig: five people artin' and writing six people spewing ideas seven people in the group chat hope this helps

wis: Hi!!!!! It's mostly the six of us who work together on this project :) However as shown in the diagram you are mostly likely to get direct answers on this blog from the three of us. You can tell us apart by the tags but usually all of us tend to respond differently/each have our own little voice, lol.

[ubtendo]

Boy oh boy, finally got it finished

(Don't ask me why this looks like paper mario, I have no idea how that happend)

Separate version with info for each:

(If you find any typo, no you didn't (please tell me, I'll fix it tomorrow))

[crowliphale]

worg (flags: kremy is demisexual & demiromantic, frost is demiromantic, gideon is bi)

[brawlersinzone]

A handful of Twigs for your time (OC by @welldrawnfish, ft. my OC Freya)

[apolaskiart]

Two bros, chilling in a hot tub, five feet apart cus they're not gay negative five feet apart because they're working things out...

[frenchoniontf2]

*grabby hands* moar chubby sniper ‘m begging… 🥺🥺

Yknow what sure (surprise!! Hes shirtless now!!)

And i gave him alien boxers too

Btw to all of those requesting other fat mercs, yes, i see you. I may or may not do them depending on if i feel like it / if im free cuz my inbox is like... more than 100 rn lol

[egophiliac]

I love how you draw Grim the size of a small cat. It genuinely blows my mind that according to the game he's actually approximately 70 cm tall... Like, Ortho is 148 cm. That's only two Grims! If Grim stands on Ortho's head, they'd be just a bit taller than Malleus (who is 202 cm and I'm not sure that's counting the horns)! The proportions are just so wild to try to imagine realistically... (and I do like the small cat Grim take more, it's very endearing)

every time I remember Grim is actually supposed to be the size of, like, a medium-to-largeish dog, and then I just...draw him cat-sized anyway. I also think it's cuter that way! 🤷 (let's just say he's not allowed to ride the servant unless he takes the shrinking potion first.)

ultimately I figure we all get a little artistic license in our fanart, and mine are:

cat-sized Grim

Lilia with hair spikes up to the heavens

w i d e Silver

[phanoutfitsblog]

Do you know where Dan (or maybe Phil) got a shirt with what looks like an 80-90s female musician/actress printed on it? Dan was wearing it c. 2021, and I saw it in the wdapteo released early 2022 in the doorbell footage, but I swear I saw it somewhere else, too.

you're gonna have to send me some photos/screenshots my guy cause i cannot find the part you're talking about in wdapteo

maybe someone in the replies can help?

[lakesbian]

So, since you're on your self-destructive Twig reread, can I ask something I've been curious about for a while?

So (afaik) the premise of Twig-Sylvester is that our protagonist has unique mental flexibility and ability to manipulate people - the 'face' or people person in the group of black ops assassins.

But from your lb it seems that his 'social manipulation tactics' are just like, psychology today's '10 ways to spot a liar' listicles, extremely basic at best and flat out wrong at worst. Now, I do have some sympathy - writing social manipulation convincingly is hard, similar to writing a mystery novel when you're not as smart as your detective. So, in your opinion, how much of the annoying pseudopych is like, a simple failure to be skilled enough at dialogue/intrigue to make it convicing? Or is it the author genuinely believing in Sy's worldview? Or does it seem like the worst simply conspires to make Sy's failing manipulations succeed anyways for plot reasons? Ty ty

its not self destructive but you can yes. that's generally accurate about how sy is supposed to be although thats not necessarily the same as him being the face or the people person. that reminds me of other twig flaws i want to complain about again but they've already been complained about so ill just answer the question

i don't know if wildbow genuinely believes what sy thinks? taylor is honestly way more convincing as a manipulative/successfully persuasive person, because there's an intense sense of earnesty to her character writing, and we're given convincing reasons for why people listen to her. this makes her cool and fun to read about even if her coming off as cool for this trait was never a main intent. i think twig's main problem is that it's trying Too Hard to make sy come off as knowledgeable about social interactions in a way others aren't & Bad Ass for this. the world does just kinda bend to make things work out for him in a way that i would be more gracious towards if he wasn't written like any overconfident dipshit man who's read pop psych listicles.

also, this does kinda get into the thing i said i wasn't going to complain about: twig specifically has this fantasy of sy being generally unlikable to random people (i.e. unattractive, greasy, suspicious, poor (derogatory) etc)--and also somewhat inherently grating and upsetting in how he speaks to people--but managing to have the right amount of Special Social Insight to use magic words & plots that let him manipulate his way into what he wants anyway. this is, of course, not how society works. and it's doubly weird to read about when the lambs are supposed to be a gestalt that cover for each other's weaknesses, wherein helen and gordon are repeatedly stated to be the intrinsically likable ones.

i think if twig made sy have the job of the one who gleans information he gives the other lambs to use socially & then they do most of the persuasive talking, things would feel less dumb. he needs to not have Protagonist Who Does Everything syndrome, there's no reason he can't be the main character without always wriggling into being the public face of the lambs. let him figure out real insights and give them to other people to use without going on a mental rant about his dumb ass social tricks. making this change would imo significantly improve the issue of wildbow just not being any good at making the fantasy of sy's character come off as interesting or even tolerable

[procyoren]

Hello! May I request some Hilda? Thanks!

Most little guy show of all time

[laterreurofficial]

Weird question:

I know Paris is isolated from the quarantine and people don't really know much beyond the bare basics of what's going on. What impact does this have on their economy and exporting? How do they get food in/out. DO they get food in/out? Am I thinking too hard about an AU?

Getting quarantined and Hawkmoth'd absolutely tanks Paris' economy. Stuff does get in and out, but the process is slowed significantly by [insert security process here] and not a lot of people want products from the city beset by magic demon bullshit. It's scary! It's bad!

Most of the characters you see here are rich enough that they're insulated from the worst of it, but Marinette and her family are starting to struggle, on account of their business relying on ingredient imports.

Also, maybe. Don't let that stop you if you're having fun though.

[ouaw-facts-i-just-made-up]

I feel like the entire main gang is just filled with trans men (except Twig who's our token trans girlie). They gather around and take magical testosterone together trust me

This is a true fact.

I changed my header to this and was wondering if anyone would notice.

If anyone was wondering, ive definitely mentioned most of this before but WHO CARES;

Gideon takes/has taken magic hrt (perhaps some permanent kind? It's dnd i can do what I want). He never bothered with anything else, and he doesn't really plan on doing anything else. He's perfectly fine not going under the knife, you know outside of combat. He's just chill and content.

Kremy got the whole magic package, based partly on the headcanon I posted a while back about him gaslighting the whole town into thinking he was born a man. The Baron was just really impressed. I mean that takes skill. Obviously transitioning is different for lizardfolk than someone closer to a human, but whatever needed to be done was, in fact, done. Would. Would gators need hrt?? Like how different are their hormone levels?? Questions I never thought I'd ask but here we are.

Torbek has been kind of busy but might start taking hrt as well after or during the campaign. Probably won't be doing anything else, Torbek would likely freak out, for backstory reasons.

Gricko is the same as Kremy basically but did it all the old fashioned way, if by "old fashioned" you meant "well, a knife and medication were involved". They never get a straight answer from him but everything he says about it makes everyone a little horrified.

Frost honest to God I don't think he transitions at all. Not that he isn't trans but that he doesn't want to transition, at all. Like I said personally I don't think he cares about his gender, though he might invest in hrt as a friendly bonding activity /hj (Normal Thing To Do)

Twig is a fey in the feywild, they HAVE to have some really silly or cool trans shit there. Spells of Instant Gender Correctness. Ring of Dead Name Censorship. Amulet of Repel Transphobe. The fey themselves IMHO, are all about the diverse and just plain getting weird with it (/aff) so they probably got gender you can't even conceptualize. Twig says "yeah my pronouns are she/her and 𝐛⃥⃒̸𝐧⃥⃒̸𝐪⃥⃒̸𝐦⃥⃒̸𝐪⃥⃒̸𝐦⃥⃒̸𝐱⃥⃒̸𝐥⃥⃒̸ / 𝐏⃥⃒̸𝐱⃥⃒̸𝐥⃥⃒̸𝐱⃥⃒̸𝐥⃥⃒̸𝐱⃥⃒̸𝐱⃥⃒̸𝐩⃥⃒̸𝐱⃥⃒̸𝐥⃥⃒̸𝐳⃥⃒̸ but since you guys aren't fey i assume you can't pronounce the second ones so just she/her is fine :)"

[sssaturnsnake]

lie down and take it

heavily inspired by @blluegoose ‘s asexual sanji fic, read it if you’re confused cuz it phrases it better than i ever could lol

[apolaskiart]

Doodle li doodles of the ink inn crew to stave off my mind from the midterms