{"body":"12:05 PM <~barredowl> alright, then. so, first impressions?\r\n12:05 PM <~barredowl> i'm... honestly not sure what to think about this, 100%.\r\n12:06 PM Same here. This tale was quite odd when I first read it and re-reading it now, it still doesn't leave me with an affirmative feeling\r\n12:07 PM I hadn't understand everything, but for what I understand, it's the war, then everyone dies, except Monica and her people who are on space? Right?\r\n12:07 PM <~barredowl> i think mostly, this works as a conclusion for the series here: you've got all the main characters that we collected throughout, and we get to know their final thoughts before this happens\r\n12:07 PM <%red3> This tries to go for a good ending -- and judging by the way that it's written, it would be a fantastic conclusion -- but it doesn't feel like an ending. Again, I don't care for these characters or what happens to them since I've only seen them fight and say hammy Avengers lines. There are characters introduced in here which require a lot of background information to understand. There's also some really odd inclusions \r\n12:07 PM <%red3> here like the soliloquy and some pretentious lines about humanity and the future of the species.\r\n12:08 PM <~barredowl> mm, yeah.\r\n12:08 PM <%red3> Pighead: From what I see, everybody dies and Monica and her crew are absorbed into the 3396 mass to become the next stage of human evolution, yes.\r\n12:08 PM <~barredowl> i think armando's thing works the most for me: though maybe that's just a byproduct of it being relatively soon in the tale\r\n12:08 PM <~barredowl> monica's, not so much, and O5-8 just bounced off me\r\n12:09 PM <~barredowl> so, i guess for the majority i wasn't specifically invested in the character interactions with this larger event occurring.\r\n12:09 PM Oh, 'kaaaaaaay... I think I will need to re-read this. But at least, it's better than the previous skip, at my opinion.\r\n12:10 PM <%red3> Armando's section tried to give him a backstory way too late into the story. Like, they're literally trying to flesh him out in the ending. It doesn't work. The only one that I really rather enjoyed was the final one from 3396's perspective because we never got to see what it thought about this entire thing. It's a good way to end this tale, but this tale is not a good way to end this series.\r\n12:10 PM <~barredowl> that's true\r\n12:10 PM If I could say, when I first read this, I always assumed that the mutants/those affected by 3396 were altered by the parasite and ultimately doomed to become one with it. Re-reading this tale is quite hard to say. Also the O5-8 part of this was very hard for me to follow especially with like gods and Eight pulling out an anchor to do battle was... perhaps not good for this?\r\n12:10 PM I mean, for what I understand, it's not so bad and even if Red is right about the fact that it don't look like an ending and that some lines and soliloquies look pretty melodramatic, I still feel that a cycle had been ended, in a way.\r\n12:12 PM <%red3> BlueJones: I believe that the fight scene was meant to be against Mekhane and the Sarkic goddess? They're probably something related to the two skips linked to them, but that's not a very good way of storytelling because it requires the reader to know those skips beforehand to understand.\r\n12:12 PM I didn't even clock the fact that Mehkane and Sarkic gods played into this\r\n12:13 PM Wait, this was Mekhane and Sarkic gods?\r\n12:13 PM <%red3> Again, most likely not.\r\n12:14 PM Had a quick check on the two links in O5-8's section and it doesn't appear to be Mekhane or anything with Sarkicism\r\n12:14 PM <~barredowl> yeah: i guess some of the reason this didn't do much for me is cause i'm super bad at ingesting information in large quantities\r\n12:15 PM <%red3> But that's what I picked up from the two characters. One of them was logical and represented the automation of humanity: their honor, their societies, their civilizations. Meanwhile, the female character was talking about how humanity needs to just have a final battle and destroy one another. The way that they play off one another seems very similar to the relationship Mekhane and the Sarkic goddess have. I'm not saying \r\n12:15 PM <%red3> that they are -- again, it's most likely just a reference to those two skips -- but it's an observation.\r\n12:16 PM <~barredowl> yeah\r\n12:17 PM <~barredowl> but i think that's mostly my opinion expended. a lot of this just didn't do much for me: there were some interesting character moments, but ultimately i wasn't really sure what was happening.\r\n12:17 PM <~barredowl> how much of this being a fault of my own, i can't say\r\n12:18 PM I'm afraid to say this but I gotta do downvote here since that this is... kind of relying on some huge information that the reader should have before hand (echoing what owl says really)\r\n12:19 PM Upvote for me, because still well-written and not a bad ending for the storyline, but I definitely see weaknesses and I'm not sure the up will stay.\r\n12:19 PM Not at all.\r\n12:19 PM <%red3> This is going to be a very light upvote from me because, unlike a lot of the previous tales, I didn't have to force myself to finish it. I want to say that this is due to CadaverCommander's touch, but I don't know how much of this they influenced. Still, I could at least tell that this could be a very good piece if it weren't attached to such a terrible puzzle.\r\n12:19 PM <~barredowl> hmm\r\n12:19 PM <~barredowl> see, i was invested\r\n12:19 PM <~barredowl> don't know how that plays into my final vote\r\n12:20 PM — ~barredowl shrugs\r\n12:21 PM <%red3> Does anyone have anything else they wanted to get out before I go into a long rant about how Cadaver is amazing and we shouldn't read anything that's not Cadaver because Cadaver is Cadaver?\r\n12:21 PM MalyceGraves → MalycePhones\r\n12:22 PM <~barredowl> i think i'm good, lol\r\n12:22 PM is there any point ranting about straight facts\r\n12:22 PM <~barredowl> oh i forgot you were in this xilas\r\n12:22 PM <%red3> XilasCrowe: Hell yeah, brother.\r\n","name":"Thrive","extension":"txt","url":"https://www.irccloud.com/pastebin/Ni2L3PTJ/Thrive","modified":1593458666,"id":"Ni2L3PTJ","size":6156,"lines":42,"own_paste":false,"theme":"","date":1593458666}