Web Serial - Tumblr Posts

book 1 cover art by @staarcaake

Stardust is a queer, semi-experimental web serial that blends space opera, gothic horror, and dystopia into a color-coded mess of neuroses, hallucinations, teen angst, fucked up family relationships, Judaism, gun kinks, political assassinations, extradimensional tentacles, and bad sex. as of May 2024, we're exactly halfway through book 1, and it's a great time to get caught up!

it updates the 1st and 3rd Sunday of every month, and you can read it for free here. readers have suggested you might like it if you're a fan of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Homestuck, Battlestar Galactica (2003), The Locked Tomb, Fortiche's Arcane, Starship Troopers, and/or the music of Ada Rook. readers have also referred to it as "tired middle-aged man yaoi," "yuri shonen," and said they "want to chew on July like a squeaky toy."

Seven Shades of Sunlight

shapeshifter gf who keeps transforming into you but with a bigger cup size

My thoughts on Claw as of 1.3

I really like Mia, she very much seems like Taylor if she wasn't good at rationalising things.

Tyr is cute, I like him a lot

Who the fuck calls their kid "Random"?

I love the constant background details about how dystopian the world is.

My Fancasts for Uber and Leet but they getprogressively more cursed

Markiplier and Jacksepticeye

Smosh

Rhett and Link

Nice Peter and Epiclloyd

Game Grumps

Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack

The Fine Bros

Jon tron and projared

Justin Roiland

Helen freaks me out so much and I'm so here for it

interlude 9.x moment

One thing I really like about Twig is how the lambs don't immediately defect as soon they're made aware that The Crown is bad. I love that Wildbow acknowledges that leaving and rebeling against those kinds of institutions is actually really fucking difficult and that for many characters such as Lillian serving the crown benefits them in many ways.

Also love that the rebel faction aren't 100% good and that many of their leaders are probably just as power hungry and self interested as the people their trying to overthrow.

Watch out ladies, I like to live a little dangerously. I even browse the Twigblr tag knowing full well I might get spoiled

I think with enough time and effort I could be the Lakesbian of Kenzie or Bitch

i wish more worm characters had a lakesbian for them. I would love to be the lakesbian for lisa but i'm not insane enough about her, and I don't know enough. i think lakesbian just has a little alec vasil living up in that dome, and whenever they get an ask like "what does alec think about burger king" or something stupid like that they call him up on a little rotary phone and he says "-" see i don't even know what alec would think of burger king.

You know how in The Boys, Homelander is this incredibly scary and powerful psychopath who is made even more so by how easily he could probably kill the main characters? The Nobles in Twig are kinda like that

Things you never say to someone who just came out (Worm Editition)

Sylvester what are you doing here?!?!

I like to imagine Wildbow Snax are like scooby snacks but their shaped like little boars and theirs a boar on the box

taylor are you doing this on purpose

That one Crawler clone who survived Dragon's nanothorn net nearly became as dangerous as OG Crawler in a week and I would have loved for it to have gone somewhere.

wildbow did a good job of writing fights where powers interact in unique ways, but i think he fell short in the s9k arc. i think its possible he gave himself too much to work with, and then struggled to deliver.

think about it, 281 capes, and the various combinations of smaller groups they couldve formed, and thats just one side of the fight. coming up with entertaining situations for all of them to fight against the combined efforts of the undersiders, protectorate, and wards is a tall order even for wordcount georg.

in the end, he kinda went with the easy way out for much of the s9k - seven cherishes get killed at once, eight siberians get killed at once, eight harbingers get killed or captured at once - and i cant entirely blame him. thats certainly an easier solution than writing eight different encounters with siberian and eight different encounters with harbinger, considering both of them are nearly impossible to kill.

i think ultimately, just from the sheer number of characters he wrote into the story, he set himself up to run out of interesting ideas for fights (although i will say i enjoyed the harbinger situation quite a bit, it didnt feel like a cop out the way the siberian cube did).

What I'm really saying is that I think Sylvester could beat Homelander

You know how in The Boys, Homelander is this incredibly scary and powerful psychopath who is made even more so by how easily he could probably kill the main characters? The Nobles in Twig are kinda like that

This interaction is so funny knowing that Coil is the one who hired the Travelers and brought them to Brockton Bay. You can't convince me he didn't rehearse this in one of his alternative timelines. It really feels like he opens the interaction this way to put as much distance from the idea of them being connected to him as possible

Some of the most annoying worm fans are the ones who are so poisoned by power scaling nonsense that their only criticisms are nitpicks like "Jack not being able to lose to parahumans is bullshit" or "Lung gets worfed because he always loses to Taylor how is only X level"

They forget that these elements are in here for narrative reasons and not so you can put these characters on a fake Tier list and argue with strangers on r/Whowouldwin.

Jack not losing to parahumans challenges many the characters notions about treating regular humans as an after thought and shows that maybe powers are not the best solution for every situation.

This same thing applies basically any superhero or action story.

Imagine living in Ellisburg and walking across the street and then a fucked up Goblin shows up and eats you

imagine living in brockton bay and walking across the street and then the siberian shows up and eats you

Uber and Leet are also cosplaying as Vi and Caitlyn from Arcane during this

No but seriously imagine it:

Your seeing the undersiders in concert. Everyone is having a great time. The undersiders seem a little excited. “We have a surprise for you guys.” Grue says. All of a sudden the travelers come out and start singing “League of Legends startup song”. When Trickster gets to the chorus, someone else starts singing….

“Oh the misery everybody wants to be my enemy.”

Lights flash everywhere, and you see the undersiders singing leagues of legends startup song along with the travelers, while cauldron is singing enemy by imagine dragons. Everyone in the crowd is going wild and Crying. Then if things couldn’t get any better, Uber and Leet walk onto stage and kiss, holding the gay flag.

Me before reading a Twig chapter: maybe things will get better for Sy

Me after reading a Twig chapter: It didn't :(