Reminder that this will become unavailable tomorrow, so if you’re an Exceptional Friend and haven’t started the story yet, you probably should!
This was a great story. I enjoyed my time spent. With all the descriptions of how brutal and over-the-top the Clay Arm was, I would have hoped it to be a Bizarre-Dreaded-Dangerous weapon. Maybe even a bonus to one of the BDR stats, instead of just a quality.
I’m still happy I did it, though.
edited by Shiner Jane on 4/10/2017
Managed to find some time to finish and enjoy this story and I must say that I really enjoyed it!
The young Comtessa, the Clay man with human hearts, the mystery about the Scholar which I haven’t killed, the Lore about this faction! Just great! I am curious what happens if you keep the arm; can someone point me to that certain Echo? I read this thread, but no link posts to the one I’m looking. I can dig the last two months of people’s Echoes, but don’t want to end up finding a spoiler about another story.
Would be lovely if there will ever be a trip in Poly related to this ES! :D Loved it!
This thread probably shouldn’t still be stickied.
Many people seem not to like this story very much, but I have to say my only real gripe with it was a lack of emotional responses to choose from for our characters upon waking up with a clay arm.
Like, I would’ve loved to spend some actions on panicking and general OMG-WTF-IS-HAPPENING-histrionics instead of going straight into cool detective mode. ;)
For myself, I disliked the mechanics at the beginning – being flung into a fairly lengthy process all of a sudden and having to do a chunk of a story I preferred to do, and to complete, in my own time.
Having said that, I like the Clay Men as such, so I enjoyed finding out more about them, This was by no means my least favourite or indeed the most unappetising ES we’ve had in the last year.
Another very late post:
I liked the story! The lore about Clay men was very interesting, and I do kind of wish we would have found out more about the subject’s resocialization among their peers.
I could not out of good conscience keep the clay arm, but I’m glad I had the option to. This was a very interesting story, well done :)
The only negative I found was the forced-entry in the beginning. As evidence by the time gap, I was planning to save my Stories for much, much later and I couldn’t and that was a little upsetting. Other than that, it was great!
Did anyone glean the significance of the reference to Theseus in this story? Why was the "Theseusian" called that? We don’t really learn much about the character other than that he’s mad about the arm swap and wants his own back. The nearest I can think is that a couple of Theseus’s six Labours have to do with bodily distortion.
On a related note, as a classicist, I found the term "Theseusian" incredibly grating. The correctly formed adjective for "Theseus" is "Thesean". I mean, FBG are a smart lot, so I consoled myself with the thought that they might have done this on purpose: as the Theseusian is a tortured amalgam of flesh and clay, so too is his appellation a tortured amalgam of Greek name with incorrectly applied Anglicized Latinate suffix. Still felt like nails on a chalkboard every time I read it, though!
I assumed the reference was to the paradox of the Ship of Theseus. He is replacing each part of his body in turn, and trying to become something fundamentally different as a result, while still also himself.
1 Like
I assumed the reference was to the paradox of the Ship of Theseus. He is replacing each part of his body in turn, and trying to become something fundamentally different as a result, while still also himself.[/quote]
Ah, of course, that makes good sense! Nice pull.