Just Finished Twig! My Thoughts on it, Worm Through Pale Spoilers

Full Twig, Worm, Ward, Pale, and Pact Spoilers below.
Twig is the fifth serial by Wildbow I read, following Worm, Ward, Pact, and Pale in that order, and is by far the one I feel most conflicted with. It was good, well written most of the time, but there are issues that I find myself reflecting on that haven’t been sitting right with me since I finished. I think most of that has to do with how it ended, and how it started.

“The episodic nature of Twig is much maligned” is what I was told when I moved over to the discord server live-read channel, after finishing the first eight arcs, and I find it to be a good barometer for what most people likely feel about that section, including Wildbow, based on his comments in his blog. The nature of what the reader expects, going into Twig, after Worm if it’s the first thing they’ve read since, is a story that has a single woven thread—the POV character—and that each arc is a backdrop to a new section of the conflict. Villain of the week is not inducive to biopunk, psychological horror, or Wildbow’s writing style, and the consequence of his experiment was a story that severs into two halves almost as well as Pale.

The middle of the story, from Lugh to Sylvester losing his mind properly for the first time was the strongest series of events and of writing Twig has to offer, and I think it might have to do with renewed energy on the narrative’s part. There were more roads to travel down, more avenues to explore, diverse types of conflict and not being shoehorned into a particular style of arc (Which I had labeled slice of life, Academy task, problem, lowest point, solution, resolution). By no means is falling into what some might call a reductive way to look at the story an objective criticism, but I read stories to be surprised or to be emotionally touched, and it took Twig until its latter half to properly accomplish that.

In my previous post on Pale, I remarked on how Verona was someone who I could relate to on a personal level, and several times I showed my complaint in how Sylvester and I had the same reaction, or similar personality traits. Sylvester calls himself a villain and one of my online nicknames is little miss villainess for christsake! However, I haven’t been required to kill anyone, nor has life or death level responsibility been thrust upon me, and my mind is perfectly intact. Sylvester to me is a dark reflection of my worst impulses being brought to light and is an amazing character to analyse on those merits.

For the rest of the Lambs, Jamie and Jessie are by far my favourites, even above Sylvester for reasons I’ll elaborate on soon. Their banter with Sylvester, their gender identity, the fact that they are the most moral member of the lambs. They’re so good, and I quite love them as a character. I don’t have many thoughts when it comes to the other Lambs, save for Helen whom I quite like reading from the perspective of (Wildbow did an amazing job with her interludes), and Ashton, who’s headassery is quite endearing.

In terms of villains, the first half of the story has quite unmemorable ones, some of which I fail to recall at the moment of writing (I swear I’m not playing up the comparisons to Sylvester). The Infante was intimidating until the whole of the lambs fought him, the Baron was more intimidating in his death throes, and what the Infante represented in Sylvesters mind felt more present a threat than the real Noble. Fray was an absent character, in that I feel the story needed far more of her, and Cynthia comes into the story, threatens to be important, and then dies off-screen (could have done with an interlude here, to be honest).

Out of all the serials so far, Twig has the worst ending in both how it felt to read and watch develop, and how it was actually written. Fray has the solution to the problems of the King coming over, I hate the Lambs being turned into Nobles (less a writing flaw and more a personally gripe), the giant exposition dump by “Sylvester,” Hayle, and Fray, and the pacing is all over the place. We fight the Infante, then we spend three quarters of a chapter “recouping” and then fight him again. Then the lambs are put onto a boat which serves literally no purpose save for delaying them, the reader knowing that since it’s chapter fifteen at this point that they’ll escape, so their time is just being wasted, and the constant fodder fighting really grates when there are no proper consequences to it. And I think quite a bit of the worst chapters of pale fall into this style, where Sylvester isn’t scheming, isn’t having a mental breakdown, isn’t developing his connections, it’s useless fodder fighting. Sorry for the tangent. Worm had an amazing breakdown that still rivals what was in Twig, with amazing epilogue chapters, Ward had the emotional resonance and capped off the parahumans duology on a good note, Pact finally let Blake rest, and Pale didn’t let up on developing its characters until the very end. Twig doesn’t promise a resolution to the conflict; it’s just a temporary lull in the fight. It’s very unsatisfying, and I honestly wish Mary just shot Sylvester on the damn tower.

Overall, I do not regret reading Twig, as a gestalt, I’d rate it as a 9/10, but the ending harms my thoughts on it quite a bit, what was originally something that competed with Ward for #2 in my rankings now sits comfortably in the middle of the pact between it and Worm. I have no idea what Claw is about, or when I’ll be reading it, but I will, thank you very much for reading another one of my essays

 (reposted due to typo in title)