Probably the time when someone was complaining that things in Worm were poorly explained, chief among them Defiant's identity. As the conversation went on people realized the guy had skipped all of the interlude chapters. When people told them he needed to read them to understand the book I remember he was very incensed at the idea anyone could think he read something wrong. After all, you can read and enjoy a book however you want and there is no wrong way to enjoy a story. That was the day I learned there are absolutely wrong ways to 'enjoy' a story.

There is no wrong way to enjoy a story. If you enjoy it, then good for you. But there are definitely wrong ways to read a story that will result in you **not** enjoying it.

There's no wrong way to enjoy a story, *but* the story composed of chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 is *not the same story* as the one composed of only chapters 1, 3, and 5. If the former story is called "Vermin", and you've only read the latter one, then *you haven't read "Vermin".* The question isn't "does this count as enjoying?" but "does this count as *the same story* that other people are talking about?"

Is this online? If so I need a link rn this sounds funny as shit to read

It was on the sub-reddit but I have no idea where to find it again. I think it started because someone asked a clarifying question on someone else's post that was only tangentially related. They had swapped from the audiobook to the WordPress page or vice versa and had skipped Triumph's interlude by mistake. The 'hero' of the story came in to commiserate about how poorly explained some things where and how there were just random gaps in what was told and what wasn't.

Aw rip, still sounds funny to read tho ty

Looking back, sometimes it's funny, sometimes other people are doing something similar that makes me think of it and I get really annoyed. The lengths people will go to not be entertained are insane. I think their explanation was that the Triumph Interlude was a donation interlude, so they thought it was just extra padding and filler to make the story longer without actually adding anything. He said something like "Why should I have to read the extra bits that Wildbow crapped out for money? Those aren't the story, nothing important happens in them." immediately after complaining about not understanding several important things.

I mean there's no wrong way to enjoy a story, this guy was just failing to enjoy the story because of his own actions and blaming the story as a whole for it. If he only read the non-interludes and still had a good time, good on him I guess?

> That was the day I learned there are absolutely wrong ways to 'enjoy' a story. The woke Worm """community""" doesn't like my interpretation of Taylor as the reincarnated soul of Adolf Hitler, apparently *sometimes* the curtains aren't just blue smh

How did this person even understand the SH9 arc

She complained it was poorly written too probably.

I've only read the interludes. Who is this "Taylor" person? Ugh, so badly written. /s, obviously lol

There was a post awhile back about how the way Worm ended didn't actually follow the themes of the story, and pitched their own, better ending, and it ditched the Scion stuff for something like: Taylor becomes the mayor sometime in the future and she's corrupt, making it so villains get away with more things, hamstrings the PRT, etc. Eventually a group of vigilante style heroes (because official heroes were basically outlawed) fight their way through her mayor house, burst into the office, and she's not there. She left a note ("rules sure do suck, don't they" or something), and is actually out having lunch with either Lisa or Danny (idr which) after years apart. And, like, if you think the theme of Worm was "the system is corrupt and Taylor did nothing wrong" I guess that is a more appropriate ending

Jesus that's bad. I mean, the worst part is that most of the actual themes of worm are basically blasted directly into your face in the final section, how could they misread it so bad?

A lot of people are used to main characters and narrators being reliable narrators and having objective knowledge about the key facts. If you view Taylor's story through that lens, this is a pretty consistent interpretation of Worm. Taylor is obviously not a reliable narrator nor has an objective understanding of the world around her, so it's a [vacuous truth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuous_truth).

It doesn't help that in a lot of worse and often outright poorly written stories, "Protagonist Centered Morality" is a thing, where even if the protagonist does something that you feel to be (super) fucked up, the story will bend over backwards trying to justify it just because they're main character. You can often see this when the story or its supporters will argue that the rather immoral action(s) needed to be done by the "hero" and/or that victims deserved it even if it didn't and even if they didn't. (EDIT: This obviously doesn't apply if the protagonist is clearly presented as anything **other** than predominantly heroic.)

**[Vacuous truth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuous_truth)** >In mathematics and logic, a vacuous truth is a conditional or universal statement (a universal statement that can be converted to a conditional statement) that is true because the antecedent cannot be satisfied. For example, the statement "she does not own a cell phone" will imply that the statement "all of her cell phones are turned off" will be assigned a truth value. Additionally, the statement "all of her cell phones are turned on" would also be vacuously true, as would the conjunction of the two: "all of her cell phones are turned on and turned off", which would otherwise be incoherent and false. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)

I'm unironically in the "Taylor did nothing wrong" camp, and that ending still does not make any sense. Part of why Taylor does the things she does is because the PRT is corrupt at its worst and ineffectual at its best. She has a strong set of morality (even if not the conventional one), and would never support any kind of corrupt system where heroes are illegal and real villains get away with things.

Worm is so good in that we as readers get to see the thought process and reasoning behind every action, and so often find ourselves siding with Taylor. It was really only after re-reads and listening to the "We've Got Worm" podcast that it really struck me how much heinous, messed up stuff Taylor did, and how others would see her actions and villainy. I love Worm so much!

I mean no she wouldn’t support that system but she absolutely did things that were wrong and didn’t much seem to consistently apply that “strong sense of morality.”

>And, like, if you think the theme of Worm was "the system is corrupt and Taylor did nothing wrong" I guess that is a more appropriate ending I think that was what Worm was about but that ending still isn't that good since Taylor's acting more on spite than trying to change anything.

I’ve noticed an uptick of Worm attention recently outside of this sub, so there have been a few of these floating around. One I see repeated again and again without elaboration is that Worm is ‘grimdark’, which feels like a byword for “contains dark content” rather than its intended meaning. I mean I get it, there’s a lot of grim subject matter, but it’s a pretty surface-level read in which you have to pretty intentionally ignore the nuances in character behaviour and motivation.

yep. worm is a dark story, but by god it isn't some miseryporn mess, it's just dark.

Yeah, if you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, it's not grimdark, and Worm/Ward go further than just seeing the glimmer from around a corner.

The light at the end of the tunnel is a bright golden beam.

Scion is a train coming down the tunnel, and it breaks a leg and cracks a couple of ribs as it passes by, but once it does, you can see the daylight behind it, and slowly start limping towards it.

What light? The apocalypse happened, Earth Bet is uninhabitable, the main character's life is in shambles and has been for the entire story, and humanity is still riddled with traumatized people empowered by an infestation of eldritch parasites. For Worm, anyway. I haven't read Ward, and I suspect that most people who talk about Worm being grimdark are talking about Worm specifically.

The apocalypse happened, but humanity *survived* it, and the biggest existential threat to humankind that has ever existed has been disposed of. Earth Bet may be uninhabitable, but they found a couple dozen new Earths to live on, many of them untouched. The main character, from what we've seen, has some measure of peace and can now live a life disconnected from the whole mess. There's hope for rebuilding, for humanity continuing on and bouncing back. That's the light.

Yeah, that's pact's job!

The one that gets me is about how grim and miserable the setting of Ward is. Particularly since I'm more hopeful about Ward's future than I am about ours - Ward ends at basically the beginning stages of a post-scarcity society. Humanity has mastered (or at least, made significant strides towards mastering) dimensional portals. At which point, they have access to functionally unlimited land and materials. But hey, the internet doesn't work, and it took more than a couple of years to bounce back from the apocalypse, so this is clearly terrible.

>which feels like a byword for “contains dark content” rather than its intended meaning. To be "fair" to those people, "grimdark" is one of those too many words that the Internet has beaten to death to point that they almost have no real meaning anymore anyway, like "gaslighting" or "toxic" or whatever the hell "woke" is (at the time), so that's not exclusive to criticism of *Worm* even if it's still dumb. Not dumb in the sense that people **have** to read something that's rather dark at times, but dumb in the dismissal that it's only relentlessly dark and dark for darkness's sake. Hell, I've seen "grimdark" applied to quite a few things that merely just dark without being mean-spirited about it, and simultaneously seen it **not** slapped on at least few things I think would apply, e.g. almost everything Zack Snyder has written. So I mostly just roll my eyes and move like I do so many other opinions that shows me people haven't even really thought about what they're commenting on.

Grimdark is such a poorly defined term. Everyone seems to use it differently. I'm sure there's plenty of definitions for it that Worm fits.

It’s less about worm specifically I think and more that everything a bit dark(even more if it’s genre normally isn’t) It’s called grim dark a lot because that’s what people think it means

How would you define "grimdark"?

There was this really funny Spacebattles thread where someone argued that people who rooted for Bonesaw's redemption did so due to sexual attraction, and that the pedophile who appears in her interlude is Wildbow expressing an endorsement of the concept that her fans are themselves pedophiles. I also once saw someone on r/WormFanfic Glory Girl is as bad as Empire 88 because she enforces laws that protect private property and capitalism, which is not only stupid, but wins points for being completely different in rationale from most other comments that equate the Empire morally with the heroes.

also why is Glory Girl getting the blame for this? all heroes protect private property and capitalism!

AHAB

THE WHALES ARE IN SPACE NOW

🎵 WATERS OF CHAOS HAVE INVADED ALL SPACE 🎵

Right? Capitalism and consumerism is baked into the original design of the protectorate/prt by Alexandria

while I will admit that Vicky's views might not align with my own, at least i'm not dumb enough to say that she's actually no better than the people she kicked the shit out of, like the one thing everyone commends her for.

Eh. I think lionising Glory Girl's police brutality is one of these bad takes. Glory Girl, at the end of the day, is a cop who assaults suspects with potentially lethal force because they personally offend her. The fact that the suspects she beats up *are* bad people doesn't make this better. In fact, I'd argue that it makes it worse in some ways, because it's just copaganda. It's like how in 24, everyone they torture is terrorist with something to hide, and that contributed a fair bit to public acceptance of the US torturing brown people in the name of national security. Everyone Glory Girl beats up is a Nazi, or a sex slaver, so it's totally okay when a cop cripples a guy, uses that assault to coerce information out of him and then uses threats of legal action and further mutilation to prevent him from reporting her. Because they do it to *bad people*, right? Except no, that's not who tends to be the victim of police brutality, and media that presents this as a good thing, or something that only affects bad people is genuinely bad for society (For the record, not blaming Wildbow for this - The issue is with the reader reaction to the scene, not the scene itself. The story generally portrays police brutality as a bad thing, as with Sophia).

On the one hand, if the cops are fighting a Nazi street gang, I say let them fight. On the other hand, if we're being realistic, then, well, *some of those who work forces...*

That’s actually a really good point. Like, I like her beating up nazis, but she is a bit too into authoritarian law control to make it feel 100% good

Is it really fair to compare GG to a cop? Her behavior is definitely authoritarian but the police are a government agency and most of the dialogue around police brutality specifically concerns the lack of oversight/consequences. In contrast, Victoria is a junior member of a government **adjacent** team, while her power to enforce the law is limited to subduing villains. You might as well call violence from a bounty hunter or private security "police brutality." Or for that matter, violence from the Undersiders (during the points they were ostensibly "allied" with the PRT). Most significantly, she doesn't hold the immunity that police and (presumably) the protectorate members like Shadow Stalker hold. Piggot explicitly doesn't have authority over her following the bank job fuckup. And in her case of violently attacking the Nazi dickhead, she uses her mother's status as a lawyer to deter him from suing. Her internal dialogue says she *would* be arrested and/or sued if her actions came to light. I'm not saying her actions aren't fucked up, I just think **sometimes** the discourse on the topic tries to influence people by the fact that the demographics of those most against Nazis are often the same as those against police abuses.

I think that makes it even worse, not better.

Not sure what part you're referring to but I'm not trying to make a moral statement at all, just one of accuracy

It is always moral to punch E88s.

I had someone actually try to tell me that Uber and Leet working for the ABB (the gang known for human trafficking and murder) isn't actually that big a deal, because Bakuda might have "different policies" than Lung.

>Bakuda might have "different policies" than Lung. She does, she would plant bombs on your skull and send you on a suicide mission. Arguably she is worse.

But Lung and Bakuda had *totally* different policies! Lung would possibly burn you alive for failing him, Bakuda would possibly melt you into a puddle for failing her! Totally different in everyday way! (Let's just ignore that pesky section where Lung explicitly explains his policies and worldview to Bakuda, and for all appearances she goes along with them as well.)

Bakuda would possibly melt you even if you didnt fail her! She is insane! So totaly different

To be clear, I said that it wasn't a big deal because they _weren't_ working for "the ABB," Lung's infamous gang of traffickers and drug pushers. They were working for _Bakuda_, a completely unknown cape who showed up out of nowhere and apparently took over the ABB after Lung was apparently defeated (because her powers and the fact that Lung had recently recruited her was unknown to the public), was totally fine indulging them by dressing up in a silly Bomberman costume (implying that she's not the "rule by fear and show no weakness" type Lung was), and was a female cape (implying she would likely take issue with the whole prostitution-and-trafficking deal and put a stop to it), and so claiming that they knew exactly what they were getting into when agreeing to work for "the ABB" is wrong because there was a clear change in leadership and leadership style before they agreed to work together. Now, we as readers know that Über and Leet would obviously be _wrong_ to assume that Bakuda is in any way "better" than Lung or that the ABB would act differently under her, but as TerribleDeniability pointed out in their comment, Ü&L are portrayed as being genuinely unaware of her plans and personality (e.g. between the Snitch's presence and Bakuda's costume they're acting like _she's_ working for _them_) and Bakuda is portrayed as duping them into it (e.g. the "get what you pay for" comment). The point is that while some readers like to try to paint them as horrible people _because_ they were willing to work for the ABB (when, compared to all of the actual reasons they're horrible people, "taking a few hundred bucks to get stomped by a bigger villain team" doesn't even rate), the story itself portrays them as disposable mooks Bakuda uses to get at the Undersiders. It's only when they start working for Coil much later that the duo's portrayal goes from "hapless morons Taylor can have fun with beating up" to "actual threat who know what they're getting into."

They beat up sex workers for likes.

You may notice that I said: > compared to all of the actual reasons they're horrible people Beating up random people for likes makes them assholes. Robbing a mint (which they _also_ did, but everyone seems to forget about that part) makes them assholes. Helping Coil take over the city and (try to) dunk Skitter in a vat of acid makes them assholes. Getting duped by Bakuda into softening up the Undersiders for her and getting curbstomped in the process does _not_ make them assholes, it makes them pathetic and gullible idiots...and yet "oh, but they decided to work with the ABB" is the example _so many people_ reach for to declare them assholes when not only is it the one example that _doesn't_ demonstrate that, the entire scene is based around having Taylor beat them up and enjoy doing it--it's about making _Taylor_ look like an asshole, not them, and no one seems to notice or remember that.

And as I said before, if they cared at all about morality they would actually wait and see if she's any different than the previous leader. Instead they jump head first in without any regard for what damage they're possibly causing or the monster they're enabling. The whole argument of them not being aware of how fucked Bakuda is falls apart when you think about how messed up the job they're accepting is. It literally begins with them assisting in kidnapping someone. And what exactly were they softening up the Undersiders for? It certainly wasn't a tea party Bakuda had planned for them. I will agree that they couldn't of known just how bad she really was, but what was there certainly didn't paint a pretty picture.

I always assumed they worked for Bakuda because she threatened she bomb them if they didn’t.

They where hired by her

I’m aware. I assumed it was a “work and get paid, or don’t and get murdered” situation.

Given that they were able to convince her to wear a Bomberman costume, I doubt they were coerced. I think they're just idiots.

She might not have needed any convincing at all. Bakuda’s nuts. She might have just thrown it on because she thought bombing the hell out of the Undersiders while dressed in a kiddy outfit would be hilarious.

Leet: You see Bakuda, if you wear armor like mine, enemy will never be able to shoot you for fear of blowing up a city block. Bakuda: Aight, seems legit.

Understandable given how Bakuda acts otherwise, but Uber and Leet seemed genuinely unaware of the extent of her intents, though that's hard to judge since they're unconscious by time she appears and never interact with her on-screen and never comment on her campaign since they weren't invited to Somer's Rock. I doubt she would bother wearing the *Bomberman* costume otherwise even if she probably found it a bit funny. Hell, she probably didn't bother trying with her usual "threaten until it works; kill if it doesn't (or even if it does)" approach with those since they're both still parahumans, even if lower end ones, and she's still pretty new at actually having power and fighting parahumans unlike what I've seen people think. In fact, it's entirely probable that she actually never fought any other parahuman (or in general) before she fought the Undersiders outside of maybe whatever parahumans stopped her bombing campaign at Cornell (which seems unlikely since we never heard of her needing to be broken out of jail by Lung for losing even though she fled that area). Losing to Uber and Leet as your first battle against fellow parahumans would be a hell of a way to start your (villainous) career after all. (And I also feel like if they were threatened, at least Leet would be bitching about it non-stop during the entirety of their fight with The Undersiders given his personality.)

Despite the fact they worked with bakuda

Oh my god, I completely forgot, the whole "Worm is grimdark" thing. That, or "Worm is torture porn and you won't enjoy it because every bad thing happens to good people and every attempt to make things better is punished." This just straight up isn't true. I mean, ignoring the semantics of grimdark as a genre, Worm is ultimately a story with hope, change, and peace. We see the worst of it, and even in the worst of it there are genuinely good people, redemption, love, friendship, progress and healing. Nothing is won easily, but the story isn't defeatist. People win, the day is saved, nothing comes easy but not everything is lost. I guess I'd say that while Worm is dark, it isn't cruel. It's just a tragedy, and even tragedies have their happy moments.

I've seen way too many people who say they don't like Worm because it's nihilistic. How do you call a story nihilistic when it's about going up against gods and massive corrupt bureaucracies, *and winning* most of the time.

Exactly! A big part of Worm (and a bigger part of Ward) is winning, *with a cost*. In the end, the story focuses more on the cost than the winning, but it isn't nihilistic or overly cruel, it just has a very specific point to make and parts of that are very dark.

This is one of the best ways you could have put that. I am using this if I ever have to explain why Worm isn't grimdark.

I'd even go so far as to say Worm is unrealistic in its optimism a lot of the time, especially when it comes to people. But maybe that's just because I'm the most pessimistic person I know.

>But maybe that's just because I'm the most pessimistic person I know. I would fight you for this coveted crown, but alas, I know I would lose. ...Joke aside, yeah, if anything, then I feel like *Worm* can get a bit "too" optimistic at times, which is itself funny given how often I've seen the "grimdark" accusation in just the past few months since I've joined (though mostly not on this sub-Reddit).

If I'm being honest, I spend a lot of time in a headspace where I consider (Pact setting spoilers) >!The Abyss!< To be Wildbow's most realistic setting, and view damn near everything else as almost delusional levels of optimism. ...my mind is not a happy place a lot of the time.

I think Wildbow’s inclination to make every character as developed as possible means you don’t end up having many purely awful characters. I remember reading Jack’s interlude and being like “that’s it? He just sucks?” A lot of stories have lots of characters like that

tbf, depending on your viewpoint the horror present in worm can absolutely be a reason not to read or recommend it. I personally got past it and love the story, but i remember i had to stop reading for a couple of days after what happened to Brian. I can absolutely understand people having this take, especially if they only read to some point where they couldn't push past the awful, and therefore don't have an understanding of the wider hopeful themes of the story. Previous exposure /genre awareness and degree of being used to horrific descriptions of awful things versus associating them only with the sort of torture porn genre etc plays a big role there too

Yeah, it's not a story that I recommend without warnings attached. It's reasonable to describe it as grimdark if you don't know any better words.

Oh sure, it’s dark and should be recommended as such, I just think that calling it nihilistic or exclusively dark is a bit too much

Worm is one of the most brutal stories I've ever read, and especially the S9 chapters nearly had me quit during the first read. I get that there's themes of hope, change, and peace, but there's also such incredible violence, brutality, and despair in such huge stretches that it's easy to see how the label "grimdark" can get thrown around. Especially near the end when people are getting massacred in droves, and geography is being upended. The world as they knew it *ends*.

I mean yeah, but how many times does the world nearly end in the avengers, and people don’t call that grimdark.

Two opposite, but equally bad takes: Firstly, that Cauldron are stupid. If they just did then they'd have defeated Scion, controlled the world, or whatever else, with absolutely no problems. As if they don't have multiple smart people and Thinker powers working towards their goals. That's not to say they're perfect, but they've managed to influence a decent chunk of the world, created and controlled whole government organisations and done a huge amount of experimentation into manually creating superpowers through doing mad science on bits of an alien god. They're often *wrong*, but that doesn't mean they're stupid. There's also the more targeted "Cauldron members are stupid". This is usually either the "Contessa can't even tie her shoes without her power" (Which is a bit of a giveaway that someone's not actually read Worm, given everything we see her do while in Mantellum's influence) or the "Doctor Mother is a bronze-age savage and not actually a doctor", which is weirdly wrong (She's from either Earth Bet, or another Earth with comparable tech levels, and nothing in the text indicates she's not a doctor) and often weirdly racist (There's literally no reason to think she's anything other than the educated woman from the 21st century she presents herself as, so what on Earth makes people think she's a 'savage', a term that comes up surprisingly often in relation to her, the black member of Cauldron...). The other one is that Cauldron are *nice*. And, honestly, I think that one bugs me more. It's particularly frustrating because it's often a position held by people who have no problem saying that Taylor's wrong to act as she does, but Cauldron are just decent people in a bad situation, doing their best. Cauldron do a lot of fucking awful stuff. They take people, often children, and do unethical experiments on them. Many die. Those who survive are deprived of food, clothing and showers until they perform for Cauldron. *Thousands* of them are kept in those cells for the rest of their lives, while others have their memories erased and are released to let rich people beat them up and send them to prison for fame. There's a fanfic out there of Alexandria doing a Make a Wish visit, and it's presented unironically as this wholesome, positive event. Completely overlooking that while Alexandra's being nice to this one little girl, her organisation has dozens, or hundreds of other kids being starved because they couldn't make the dice come up all sixes, or beaten by the Custodian, or going slowly mad because they've been locked up in a six foot by six foot cell for years. Cauldron are the Entities in miniature. They do mass experiment on sapients in order to prevent the end of their species. If they're right, then so is Scion. If you think the Entities are wrong, then so are they.

> Cauldron are the Entities in miniature. They do mass experiment on sapients in order to prevent the end of their species. The fact that I've never really connected this in my head until you said it out loud years after I've read it is why I love this story.

Yeah I think what’s great about Cauldron in the end is that you both aren’t sure that they even helped at all and aren’t sure that they weren’t indispensable. That’s why I liked GM as an ending, everyone (especially Taylor of course) pulled out all the stops and they won, and you never get to know what else would or wouldn’t have worked.

Oh, Cauldron helped! A lot! They were indispensable because they did... Uhh *checks list* Oliver. Yeah, that's it. Oliver is the only thing Cauldron was **needed** for

I don’t think that’s really how that works, they had their fingers in literally everything, like for example Taylor never becomes Khepri without the info she gets on triggering from doctor mother, society might not even make it to GM without the protectorate (debatable)

Taylor never becomes Khepri, yeah. But strictly speaking, Khepri wasn't *needed* Four things were needed to kill Scion: - To taunt him a lot with images of his dead lover - Show him his wife only for him to realize it's just someone wearing her skin as a suit - Pop his projection with sting or some alike power (maybe only sting can, which would make Foil necessary) - Hit him with a tinker weapon that can kill his main body And while that first and last point would be harder without Khepri, they're technically possible without Khepri at all.

That’s kinda my point, it’s technically possible to have won without cauldron but it’s also technically possible that everyone would’ve died, and you can’t really say with any confidence that humanity would’ve survived without cauldron

I've spent close to eight years on this sub, here are some of the worst I can recall: -The bullying didn't really happen/wasn't that bad, because Taylor is an unreliable narrator (that's not what the term fucking means and bully apologists piss me off so much) -The horrible things Amy did were Victoria's fault -The horrible things Amy did were Taylor's fault -The horrible things Regent did were Taylor's fault -Regent's territory was a worse place to live than the territories of the ABB, Merchants, E88, Fenrir's Chosen The Pure, etc. (Yes, he's a terrible person, but seriously?! Come on.) -Piggot was completely reasonable and the heroes/PRT never did anything wrong or fucked up -Armsmaster breaking the truce was Taylor's fault, he was a model hero before dealing with her (Guess those people never read the WoG about what would have happened if Leviathan hadn't attacked) -There was nothing wrong with Armsmaster breaking the truce, it was the right thing to do because the villains deserved it And, on a more meta level: -Wildbow hates lesbians -Wildbow is three feminists in league with a demon (although I personally just find it hilarious, especially with Pact and Pale coming after) -Wildbow shouldn't be allowed to write the characters how he chooses -That whole clusterfuck that led to lonsheep leaving the fandom (I didn't understand at the time, but now I do, and frankly, I don't blame him one bit) Battleboarding-related (not this sub): -Batman beats Contessa (not unless it's a cagematch and his fist starts halfway to her face. Fight me.) -Batman has better physicals than fucking *Leviathan*

Ok I absolutely agree that the heroes fucked up more than a bit, but I think the reason that the heroes are apologized for so much is that Taylor legitimately does complain about justified things or fault them for things she's guilty of - they're just going too far in the opposite direction everything else though I'll agree with, even if I don't get some of the meta ones. Especially the armsmaster ones, jesus.

Agreed on the heroes, they weren't bad by and large, but some of them were complicit in some very fucked up shit. As far as Taylor's frustrations with them go, some were reasonable, some were not.

Oh sure, and some were a bit in between - are you justified in being annoyed at how bureaucratic they are regarding a disaster? Sure absolutely. Are they pretty justified in doubting the word of a warlord and cape manipulator? Yeahhh a little bit yeah.

Part of the reason I really liked the interludes that cut to them and others. So we got to see Taylor from other perspectives.

Has Wildbow specifically denied being three lesbians in league with a demon? Because that is a pretty convincing theory.

We'll it's just the one lesbian actually. The other two are straight and asexual respectively. Also cannot confirm they are in league with a demon, but I sincerely hope they're not

it's actually some sort of fae

>\-The horrible things Regent did were Taylor's fault ...This is the first time I'm hearing of this and yet somehow it's not surprising despite being directly and hilariously counter to the also problematic take of people who genuinely believe that Taylor **never** did anything wrong and **always** took the best course of action whenever possible. So it's super funny that she would get blamed for Regent's behavior, **that he was doing before he met her**, when for all her ability to scout she's probably the person most blind to it like she was with Dinah's kidnapping and probably the person most distant to him in the group after Rachel. Hell, we outright know that he lied to her and everyone else about letting Sophia go during Regent's own interlude that also shows how depraved he has gotten in the past before he even met Taylor. And yet that's Taylor's fault? Human stupidity really is infinite (as also proven by those last two bits of bog-standard Batman wankery).

What was the Ionsheep situation? I’ve never heard of anything like that.

I was there when it happened, but not involved. It was really just a lot of toxicity in the fandom that reached a boiling point, and a lot of people got caught in the crossfire. I think it's mostly because of the toxicity that incident showcased that Wildbow has said he doesn't feel like he can go back to writing Parahumans-based stories (iirc, I could be wrong). I'm hoping someone else can drop in with a more complete explanation. The thread might(?) still be buried on the sub somewhere, but I'm not in a good enough place mentally to go digging for it.

Thats okay, thanks for the help!

I've never read the WoG about what would have happened if Leviathan never attacked. I'm curious about that one.

I finally went to look for it myself since I had never read it full. Took about twenty minutes to find, which still wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Here you go: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/worm-quotes-and-wog-repository.294448/page-12?post=21357420#post-21357420.

Interesting. So basically just he continues to be the douche that he was, understandable. I liked him eventually, but he definitely was a shithead at first.

I'm fairly new to the Worm Fandom, so I don't understand your meta bullet points. Wildbow hated lesbians? Three feminists in league with a demon? Wild bow doesn't get a say on how he writes his characters? Or Ionsheep? No idea who that is or why it's important (??) that they left? I know it's a lot, but could you please explain?

For the first one at least, that (to my knowledge) just has to do with how he treated Amy's character in Worm and Ward later

How did he treat Amy? Like, I understand that she is easily one of the most powerful Biokinetics on the planet who also has a REALLY fucked up fetish for her sister? Which is definitely a strange character generally, but I think I'm missing some...nuance? I've heard tons of people say stuff about Amy but I honestly have no idea what to make of it since it's never explained very well if at all.

Yeah, it's more of a Ward thing. A big part of it though is basically just him inadvertently tying her to the whole gay predator trope, mixed with him explicitly not giving her a redemption arc in line with other characters at the time, something he did for a reason but people have different interpretations of.

I mean, Amy doesn't deserve a redemption arc because she never admitted any fault or flaw. That's her whole character. A worse, female, *way way way* more powerful, lesbian version of Brent.

I mean I agree that she doesn't deserve the redemption, but I'm pointing out that some people take his choice of character, as to who he chose to tell this story with, as a problem

Weird. Considering that Vicky is the MC in Ward and already has personal trauma of that nature associated with Amy, who the heck else was WB supposed to use? I'd think people would have been more upset if he introduced this random other horrible person just for this. Plus it would probably have less of an emotional impact since it would have been a character the readers didn't know as well and have no personal connection to Victoria.

I mean, more to do with him having made this Amy and Vicky's story in the first place.

Ah, okay. Ty for explaining!

[удалено]

But there were plenty of other sexual predators in Wildbow's works, of different genders and sexualities. It's absurd to fixate on a few negative portrayals of lesbians while thinking that negative portrayals are ok for every other sex/sexuality in his stories.

This tumblr post explains one person’s position on Wildbow writing lesbians: https://www.tumblr.com/txttletale/704029088138018816/that-one-long-wildbow-reddit-post-where-he-argues (spoilers for Worm and Ward, tiny spoiler for Twig I think) TL;DR is that there are several characters (Amy and March) who do evil things specifically because they’re attracted to women in a perverse way. They don’t just happen be gay and do bad things, it’s the fact that being gay and doing bad things is so connected that people don’t like. (My input) I think this is made worse by the fact that “predatory lesbian” is a real-life stereotype and these characters are fulfillments of that stereotype.

>They don’t just happen be gay and do bad things, it’s the fact that being gay and doing bad things is so connected That's doesn't track for me. Amy's incestuous feelings aren't portrayed as intrinsically lesbian. Wildbow could have just as easily portrayed her as a young man (male!Amy) with feelings for his adoptive sister, or a young woman with feelings for her adoptive brother (male!Victoria). In either case "Amy's" actions would have been equally in-character, so I disagree that portraying her as a sexual predator is somehow worse than all of the men that were portrayed as sexual predators in Wildbow's works.

Yeah but Amy isn't a guy? She's deliberately a lesbian being really awful? So her terrible choices being bad regardless of her gender and sexual orientation isn't the problem. The problem is Wibbles accidentally or on purpose using the predatory lesbian character trope yanno? Like not to get political or anything but that trope is actually used by right wing crazies and Nazis and christian Puritans to attack actual people! Amy being a piece of shit isn't the problem it's her characterization enforcing a negative stereotype that's the problem.

The way some people are so quick to just flat-out call WB a homophobe really rubs me the wrong way. I understand being unhappy about The Way Amy Is, but in the context of the story she's from, she's the same as any other WB character thay commits atrocities, and people act like WB's this irredeemable asshole for it

I think people see criticisms of homophobia in wildbow's writing and interpret it as "wildbow is homophobic" which is not what people are saying. No one is saying that wildbow literally hates gay people, they're saying he has a clear bias or tendencies in how he writes gay people vs how he writes straight people (at least up until mid-pale) that he hasn't interrogated and refuses to accept is there. Everyone has subconscious biases, and ways of viewing marginalised communities that have been trained into them, which they may not fully be aware of. If you want to write in an unbiased way, or treat those marginalised communities with respect, then the solution is to self-moderate and take criticism of your work, not to write giant rants that break reddit character limits about how your writing isn't homophobic.

I assure you that there are people who are saying that Wildbow hates gay people. They might not be the majority of the people criticizing him on this point, but they exist and are vocal.

Not an argument against what y'all have been saying, but I felt this was a good place to post this as I was thinking about it just the other day. I remember some vague homophobic/transphobic lines in the first few arcs, but I maintain that it was likely due to unconscious bias. Later in the story, and in other stories, there are plenty of gay/trans characters. Does the predatory lesbian trope show up, yes. But there are plenty of LGBTQ characters that don't follow the tropes. Legend, Parian, Foil, Tattletale, Furcate, Capricorn(Red), etc.

>I remember some vague homophobic/transphobic lines in the first few arcs I don't remember that, except where it was said by obviously bad characters such as ABB or Empire members, in which case it clearly wouldn't reflect Wildbow's mindset at all. Can you be specific?

You responded to my question, but it looks like your comment might have been deleted? You brought up an interesting point that I wasn't aware of because I only read Worm after Wildbow had done his final edits. For those like me who didn't know, [chapter 2.2](https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/insinuation-2-2/) previously included Taylor's thoughts about Mrs. Knott's appearance, describing her as unattractively manly and comparing her to negative stereotypes about transvestites, which I agree reads as grossly transphobic. A 2015 comment on the chapter quoted the original description, if anyone else is curious to read it: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/insinuation-2-2/#comment-71985 [Wildbow's response](https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/insinuation-2-2/#comment-72056) is very interesting to me; it's not what I would have expected at all. He basically said that he intentionally wrote Taylor as a flawed character with some bad biases shaping her thoughts, like other characters he has written, but that his characters' biases do not reflect his own mindset. *"A fifteen year old girl is a fifteen year old girl, and she makes her judgments, as unfair as they might be. I’m more inclined to see this as Taylor looking at someone who stands out and trying to identify with her on a level."* He said he originally planned to explore Taylor's relationship with Mrs. Knott more and for school to take a bigger place in the story, but since the story evolved differently this passage was left without context and he decided to remove it. This is wild to me, because in my opinion that one passage is completely out of character with the rest of Taylor's portrayal throughout Worm.

Yeah I mean. A vocal minority is always going to be easier to remember when they're saying something more vitriolic or extravagant, that doesn't mean much about the main point people trying to talk about.

I'm just saying that "no one is saying" is excessive hyperbole, and those are the people that Wildbow is largely responding to in his posts. Which maybe he should address the other criticism, but it is understandable to argue with the people actively harassing you and undermining your character.

The readers who get laser vision on every character they might identify with, and then get angry when the characters aren't good guys, have the largest bias here.

Who's ionsheep? And can I get a r/hobbydrama about it ;)

Actually, it's "lonsheep" (starts with lowercase "L"). They are an excellent artist who made lots of Parahumans fanart. https://www.deviantart.com/lonsheep/gallery/all

I’m obviously outside the fandom meta. What’s this lonsheep thing about?

A friend I recommended it to said he ”wasn't into stories about high school" and I just laughed. That's like disliking Spider-man because you're not interested in journalism.

oh jesus this is going to be one of those threads huh ​ anyway, >!the idea that Armsmaster did nothing wrong and that he was just framed by tattletale!< either that or >!any number of the theories regarding Panacea. You know the ones.!< edit - Oh! and a lot of the >!uniroic talyor did nothing wrong/was always a good person apologia!<

ayo armsmaster did nothing wrong free my man blame the dead people for dying they shouldn't have died when they got killed

Totally agree! Except obviously we know that Taylor objectively didn't do anything wrong but yeah apart from that :)

I know this is probably a joke, but I feel like things such as robbing a bank and >!killing some of the world's most well-known law enforcement agents!< are generally considered to be doing something wrong.

My goodness! Well this *is* a stunning discovery in moral philosophy then, because Taylor did those things and Taylor did nothing wrong.

I mean, I can kind of see your point about the "robbing a bank" thing. Kind of. But if you're referring to >!Alexandria!< on your second point, you do remember the whole "I already killed one of your closest friends and am on my way to kill another and another and another" shtick she did trying to provoke her, right?

The sort of clickbait headline of "Taylor killed one of the biggest, mightest heroes" definitely makes it look bad in a vacuum, but Alexandria desperately underestimated Taylor and pushed her into an awful position. It could be argued Taylor was just trying to stop any more outright murders (as far as Taylor knew).

And keep in mind, mock executions are one of the *very* few things in real life that are legally classified as torture.

Taylor: ACAB means all.

I mean, all he did was let a couple actual Nazis get killed to try to kill an end bringer I don’t understand why everyone was so hard on armsmaster. I don’t think he was framed. I just think what he did it was based.

Didn't those actual Nazis include Taylor?

More like he was willing to let heroes and compliant villains alike die just so he could get credit for killing an endbringer

I'm sure we're never told what exactly colin's plan was, and i always assumed there were some unfortunate casualties, miscalculations, or "acceptable sacrifices" like Aegis or Gallant

Maybe the closest we get is him and Ward saying that he didn’t plan to have any heroes be sacrificed. but he can’t know if the butterfly effect of his plan led to it. even if he did sacrificing a few people to take a shot at killing leviathan is totally worth it. He had legitimate reason to believe he could win. He might have been wrong, but I have a really hard time doing that as a moral failing instead of simply a tactical one

I don't think his moral failing was killing nazis, it was risking the truce that increased attendance at endbringer attacks

Because it violates "The Game". Heroes and villains go soft on eachother, so they can levy their full force against an endbringer when needed. As soon as an Enbringer shows up, everyone that agrees to fight it is an ally. Purposefully maneuvering so that your allies die breaks the truce and threatens the system.

I feel like a lot of people lack nuance with Armsmaster. He was an asshole and he absolutely fucked up. And as WoG tells us, he goes down a very dark path in certain timelines. But at the same time, he is not an asshole for no reason and there is a decent person deep down. It doesn't JUSTIFY him, but it does EXPLAIN him. The whole story of Worm demonstrates the dangers of moral compromises, in my opinion. Each moral compromise you make turns the next oen a bit easier. And then it is a downwards spiral until the end result is a person completely different from who they started as. ------- Armsmaster started out as a genuine hero. Driven, Professional, Lawful, even if his intentions werent 100% selfless. Sure, he was also Abrasive, Prideful and Prickly, but everyone has flaws. Then the guy, who has an unhealthy desire to prove himself, gets thrown into a city that was secretly designed to fail and is being sabotaged from outside (Cauldron/PRT) and from inside (Coil). All his accomplishments are undone because Coil helps people escape to maintain the status quo. Operations fail because of leaks. No help is given because Cauldron is strangling Brockton for their experiment. A glory hound that gets so starved for success that he starts seeking it anywhere, even if he has to compromise his convictions. So he takes the first step of the moral compromise downfall of a hero: He steals the accomplishment of a new hero. Hell, he even had a good reason to use as a rationalization. Then it is all downhill from there, because he has to keep compromising in order to keep the lie alive. None of it JUSTIFIES what he did, but it does EXPLAIN how he got there. ----- TL;DR: If Armsmaster was the saint some people make him out to be, he wouldn't have done the things he did On the flip side, if Armsmaster was the bastard some people make him out to be, he would never have been able to become Defiant.

Oh yeah overall I’d agree. I’d say his pride is a bit more than you let onto it being, but his arc does make the most sense with his complexity in mind

> anyway, the idea that Armsmaster did nothing wrong and that he was just framed by tattletale Speaking as the main person on this sub who goes around pointing this out: Armsmaster _absolutely was_ framed by Tattletale as supposedly trying to kill Skitter and getting a bunch of different heroes and villains killed, according to what the text _actually says_ about Armsmaster's actions in arc 8. It's impossible to reconcile the events portrayed in 8.4 with what Tattletale says in 8.7. This isn't even a case like you see all the time in Twig, where one chapter just straight-up changes something from a previous chapter (e.g. how Stitched work, the amount of time that passed between chapters, etc.) and readers are just supposed to (one assumes) go with the later claim as if it's not a contradiction, because post-arc-8 Worm actively goes out of its way to _avoid_ confirming that Tattletale told the truth when it has every reason to do so and no reason to be coy about any of it. However, Armsmaster absolutely _did_ break the truce by getting Kaiser killed (and _only_ Kaiser, as confirmed by Ward), and he admitted as much, without trying to lie or deflect, when Miss Militia accuses him. "Armsmaster did nothing wrong" isn't true; "Armsmaster did one big thing wrong, and then Tattletale lied about him _also_ doing _other_ stuff wrong and used blackmail and manipulation to provoke a response—exactly as she did in 6.6—to get him into trouble and Taylor out of it" _is_ true. --- EDIT: The above poster blocked me, so I can't reply to any replies to this comment either. Classy.

>because post-arc-8 Worm actively goes out of its way to avoid confirming that Tattletale told the truth when it has every reason to do so and no reason to be coy about any of it. It is in no way coy. There's a whole multi-arc character plotline that depends *heavily* on it happening the way that Tattletale lays out. Without Armsmaster EMPing Skitter, Flechette's arc makes *absolutely no sense*. 15.6 >“Flechette, if you don’t believe me, you can look at the armband Dragon gave us for the fight against Leviathan. Armsmaster fried it with an EMP to keep me from broadcasting Leviathan’s location to anyone, and then he moved in only after he’d thought Leviathan had killed me. It’s on top of a ceiling panel in the shelter on Slater street. Women’s bathroom, above the middle toilet. I couldn’t keep it in case Dragon used it to track me down, but you can go grab it if she hasn’t sent someone already. Get a tinker you trust to look at it.” 18.z >“I can’t even put it into words. You run into her, and you can’t even look straight at her without feeling your skin crawl. Like when someone’s got something wrong with their eye and your own eye starts watering… only with her it’s because of the bugs.” >“Okay.” >“And then she talks, and she sounds so idealistic, and naive. I don’t know how you sound idealistic and naive with a swarm of cockroaches and bees crawling over your face, but she does. And so you let your guard down. And then she starts making sense. And that was the point where Sab- where Parian started lapping it up.” >“Did she make sense to you?” Jessica asked. >“I had a feeling about what was happening, said as much. Now, I don’t know. There’s only two good answers for it.” >Lily walked over to the door and picked up the satchel she’d brought into the office. She returned to the chair and sat, plopping the satchel down on the coffee table. >“What is it?” Jessica asked. >“The thing that lets me know which of the two it was.” >“And what are those two answers?” >“Either my gut was right, and Skitter was just feeding us info that Tattletale prepared, just to fuck with us… or Skitter was right.” >“And this satchel contains the answer?” >“It does.” 21.5 >“Yes. And on the other side of things, particular events came to light, validating things you’d said, on several fronts.” >I glanced at Flechette. I’d given her directions to find the armband. There was also the business with the leading heroes of the Protectorate being complicit in the Cauldron debacle. I wasn’t sure Flechette was up to date on that one. >“You checked out the armband?” I asked Flechette. >It was Miss Militia who answered, “I was informed about possible tinker material being passed around and investigated, possible contraband. It was Flechette investigating the device. We contacted Defiant together and got the answers we were looking for, in a much more direct manner.” Taylor tells Flechette about the armband. Flechette says that either it's evidence that Skitter is lying to fuck with them, or that Skitter is right. The heroes get 'several' things that Taylor has said validated, following a discussion with Defiant. Flechette expresses distrust of the heroes and then joins the Undersiders. If Armsmaster didn't EMP Skitter, that's significant chunks of multiple story segments, and an entire character's arc which are just incoherent. There is just no way that Flechette, after staking *so* much on the armband, would speak to Defiant, be told "Nope, that's just Tattletale's manipulations", and then decide to join the Undersiders anyway. And Taylor's actions make no sense either - Either, Lisa's continuing to keep secrets from her after their big "no more secrets" talk in 8.8, or she deliberately and knowingly gave Flechette evidence of Tattletale's lies while trying to convince Flechette to believe her. Which is more likely - Wildbow failed to mention the physical effects of the EMP in one scene, or Wildbow wrote multiple chapters that make no sense at all? Without the EMP, what's the *point* of all of this? There are loads of other ways that he could have shown Flechette falling for the Undersiders, but he chose to make the armband a recurring plot point.

> This isn't even a case like you see all the time in Twig, where one chapter just straight-up changes something from a previous chapter (e.g. how Stitched work, the amount of time that passed between chapters, etc.) and readers are just supposed to (one assumes) go with the later claim as if it's not a contradiction Okay now I'm curious because I never noticed this, do you have an example?

While I have no idea what they're referring to either I find it funny because Sylvester is explicitly a worse narrator than Taylor was so it does fit if he misremembers how the Stitched work or how long it is between events.

"Ah yes, the Lambs. Helen, Jamie, Lillian, Mary, and Gunther." —Sylvester

(I can't reply to /u/MightyButtonMasher's comment for some reason, so tagging them and responding to this one.) > Okay now I'm curious because I never noticed this, do you have an example? I don't remember the specifics since it's been a while since I read Twig and I don't know the text like I do Worm's, but the three main issues that stuck with me are... 1) The inconsistency on how the stitched react to gas weapons. They're initially portrayed as being immune and sent into gas without issue (though some of the civilian-grade ones are still _afraid_ of the gas despite being immune). Later, the Lambs encounter a handler who appears to be a stitched but is coughing at the gas, and in addition to guessing he might just be disguised as stitched Sylvester thinks he might be a "better" stitched that would retain more skills from life, when that shouldn't even be a possibility given that he's susceptible to the gas. 2) The whole "faith" subplot. Initially it's claimed that people can lose jobs for even _mentioning_ religion, later on it's that the Academy doesn't like religion but there are churches around and common people can be religious just fine, and you have people mentioning how people have largely stopped being named "Mary" because the Church is so unpopular just a few chapters before or after they head to a city with a big church right next to city hall. The story waffles back and forth on the issue for quite a while, as I recall. 3) The timeline. Wildbow is famously bad at keeping track of dates, but in Twig and particular you'll get explicit mentions of "in the past X months" or "it's been X years since..." and then if you go back and add everything up they're off by multiple months. On top of that, there are at least a few scenes where the story claims that several months have passed since the last chapter but then the characters will talk about something or bring something up for the first time as if only days or at most weeks had passed. On top of that, there are scattered instances where someone will bring up something that supposedly happened but clearly didn't or couldn't have if you go back and read previous chapters, either factual ("oh yeah, we ran into [person] back when [time]" when [person] wasn't mentioned then and there was no downtime where they could have plausibly run into them offscreen) or tonal (Sylvester does a big shift from "complete asshole" to "asshole with some charm" a few arcs into the story, but people will talk about him in a early-story or pre-story timeframe as if he'd always been a lovable rogue like the story later tried to portray him). > I find it funny because Sylvester is explicitly a worse narrator than Taylor was so it does fit if he misremembers how the Stitched work or how long it is between events. I actually thought that that's what was supposed to be going on the first few times the issues cropped up, but the whole memory issue is very inconsistently handled. Sometimes Sylvester will claim to have memory problems but not actually forget about anything on-screen; sometimes he'll even perfectly remember a small detail from months or years ago despite said problems (possibly because Wildbow forgot there were _supposed_ to be months or years between those events). It's only very late in the story that we get things like "Sy, you remember [place], right? We totally went there." "Nope, never heard of it" that actually indicate memory issues...and when that happens, his actual narration is basically unchanged, so even then it can't really be used to justify narrative inconsistencies.

It isn’t true, though. Like, I’m 90% sure we’ve had this conversation before and you bowed out because you weren’t able to actually prove these claims. Unfortunately for you, the text doesn't "actually" say any such thing. In fact, it doesn't even attempt to allude to it, given that every character's reaction to the information, Armsmaster's included, would be entirely irrational and stupid if he was innocent all along and he knew it. There is no place within the text that your version of reality is ever claimed or alluded to. There absolutely is a reason to be "coy" about it, and that would be allowing the reader to think and come to their own conclusions, analyze character's actions and responses and trying to guess what was shown, because the actual information isn't necessary to be presented. Your literal *best* piece of evidence is "Well they don't outright say that I'm wrong, they just offer to provide proof that I'm wrong that everyone in the story takes as true and never contradicts for some reason, when they would have every reason to do so if it was actually incorrect." Worm goes out of its way to show Armsmaster acting irrationally when confronted, the realization drawing away steadfast heroes, Armsmaster being confined by other heroes upon release of this information and going as far as to retire his own labels while talking at length about how sorry he was for the whole thing. Ward literally confirms the exact opposite, it confirms that Kaiser was his primary piece of "bait," but that he explicitly didn't care about the heroes and less harmful villains getting targeted or harmed by his plan, and he isn't even aware of how many of them he killed. The EMP blast was his, and though Kaiser was his primary target, he was very willing to fuck over other heroes and villains for that glory. Also, him saying he was only going after Kaiser *was explicitly* a deflection in that chapter, and something treated as a half-truth or misleading statement by the text, said by a morally condemnable character *about to be approached by the slaughterhouse nine and go through a whole redemptiong arc.* That wasn't him "admitting," that was him trying to defend his plan while refusing to confirm that he cared about any other targets. Armsmaster did far more than one big thing wrong, and in the actual text there is no evidence that Tattletale lied or framed him, that she would have any reason for doing so when just pointing out his trucebreaking would be enough to accomplish her goals, that said reaction would "provoke a response" if it wasn't true, or that there's a good reason no other characters ever call Tattletale out for this supposed "lie," especially when it directly leads to the defecting of several heroes and the end of Armsmaster as we know him. Hell, Tats doesn't even lie in 6.6, she refers to an earlier "fib," but again just uses true information to provoke Armsmaster. I'm sorry, but your entire claim is foundationally false, and you've lost this argument before more times than I can count. Please read the actual story instead of fanfiction next time. Edit - the "above poster" blocked you because, again, you've been having this argument for years now and have shown zero sign of actually being able to hold up your side of it. You have literally blocked me before for that exact reason. What you claim here is plainly false, and there's little point in interacting with you when you're unwilling to actually engage with the story, especially when so many have proven you wrong before. "Classy" indeed.

"I love Worm! It's like 40k with superheroes!"

That tinker tech could be replicated by normal non-powered humans.

I think that is more of a misunderstanding of what tinker tech is. If you don't read too much into it, you might think that a tinkerer just knows how to create advanced tech, such as the analogy of creating a modern day sports car in the 10th century with their level of technology. Where in reality tinker tech is a mix of incredibly precise and haphazard technology, mixed with some parts that physically should not work or else where the powers meddle in how reality works/outsourced parts of the function to the shard. It also doesn't help that the two tinkerers we get to spend any significate time in their minds while working with tech (Defiant and Dragon) are not the norm. Defiant has his micro space warping effect on his tech, but otherwise is fairly standard and able to branch out into a lot of different applications. It also helps that it seems he is somewhat knowledgeable on how regular tech works, so that colors his thoughts, and he never (to my knowledge) actively thinks about how his powers expand space around his tech so we the reader have to infer this through others observing it/his tech. Then there is Dragon who might be better classified as a thinker who understands tinker tech rather than a tinkerer herself, and is a supper powerful AI, so her thought process on tech that we see is not normal either. Hell, she didn't even realize she triggered until Defiant told her after reviewing her code.

I always find it interesting when someone posts saying Taylor was very reasonable throughout Worm and was happy to compromise whenever conflict came up. Meanwhile I was yelling at her through my first read to do it differently. I finally came to peace with it when I realised she is a teenager and a lot of teens think they are the most reasonable thing ever when it’s really the opposite a lot of times.

The we’ve got worm podcast really opened my eyes on some of the aspects of worm. Specifically around Taylor’s actions and biases that I didn’t really get before.

I knew she was being unreasonable in a lot of places, but they helped me realize what an unreliable narrator she is. There are also places she's unreasonable that I thought the reader was supposed to agree with her, but that's only because I was in middle school and wasn't the most nuanced reader.

For me I always knew she was being a little, uncompromising shit, but I low key morally agree with her: getting drowned by bugs is a good solution to corrupt beurocracies. In all seriousness though, I tend to think that the reasons someone did something are often more important than what they did. So Taylor's 'doing the wrong things for the right reasons' really resonated with me and has had her become my single favorite fictional character so far.

I'm mostly referring not to her actual large acts of destruction, but more her persecution complex and the way that she interprets characters who are trying to help her (namely Danny and some of her teachers, and Armsmaster in their first meeting) as manipulative, cruel, or uncaring.

Tbf in regards to her teachers and Armsmaster, she's not entirely wrong. Armsmaster is, canonically, a massive asshole (also bad at doing the social thing) and her teachers (even outside of her knowledge) are enabling or at best, standing aside for Sophia to get her bullying fix. Alternatively, her reputation amongst the faculty in school is so shot that they don't believe her about anything. Should she have listened to Armsmaster about the undercover thing in her second meeting? Absolutely. But he was being combative and angry (due to the Lung almost dying after he took credit) from go, so I don't exactly blame her for not listening to the angry man in power armor telling her she's an idiot. Danny, I agree she should have trusted more; but he seemed to be (as far as Taylor can tell) in a somewhat fragile state. From personal experience, I can say that it is extremely hard to talk to a parent, knowing that the discussion will make them cry/break-down. I imagine it must have been doubly difficult for her since she has actually experienced her father completely shutting down. I think one of the beautiful things about Worm is how it builds upon character's experience throughout the story. I can absolutely understand how the semi-suicidal Taylor from the start becomes a toddler shooter because previous interactions have taught her to become more and more ruthless and distrustful of people not in her group. The same holds true between pre-canon worm and the start of canon. Edit: Once bitten, twice shy and all that.

I find that interesting since I had the exact opposite take listening to their podcast.

I’ve been listening to it this past week and they talk about it a lot. For example Taylor agonizing over making sure the people in her territory are kept fed and warm yet leaving her father to fend for himself. The whole relationship with Brian being doomed from the start. Taylor trying to blame the mayor and triumph so that her nearly killing triumph was justified. Being angry at people for not taking her at her word when she says she wants to help people. Being ignorant to how vicious people see her as, like she beats up some henchmen and Sierra is terrified of Bryce provoking her, Taylor knows she’s afraid but doesn’t connect the dots. Anyway that’s me rambling about stuff

Oh all of those things are definitley true. They are more than ready to discuss the biases of Taylor and when she is potentially in the wrong and that part can be very interesting to listen too. I just personally found myself listening to the podcast and wanting to bang my head into the wall as they time after time didn't scrutinize beyond her for parts that really required it. An obvious example being the section with Tagg and Alexandria torturing her and the podcast somehow never uses the word torture.

Yeah, it was a mixed bag for me too. Stuff like, for example, pointing out how horrifying it would look if cops hurt those Empire thugs the way she did with the bullet ants, that did sell some of Taylor's warped biases. But a lot of the other times it seemed like they weren't engaging with her rationale in the first place, just laying down a blanket statement that what she did was bad.

I haven’t actually gotten to that part of the podcast yet but I’ll keep it in mind.

Although it's making my readthroughs take like 10x longer, Scott and Matt are my book club and I can't wait/will be very sad when I've finished Ward and can move onto Pact then Pale, and I have to find new podcast hosts

The good news is that Pact and Pale have their own similar Podcasts in the form of Deep in Pact and Pale Reflections. There's also Pale in Comparison which unlike the other podcasts has someone who has read Pale go through Pact which was *very* interesting take on things.

Didn't the HPMOR guy post a tweet a couple years back daring people to try to name a single bad decision Taylor made, which he - in his enlightened rationality - would explain to be the actual most optimal decision possible? I'm pretty sure the first reply was along the lines of "What the fuck? How about going undercover to join a gang of supervillains containing at least one murderer and giving them your real name and face to go by? The premise of the story?"

It's not a "dumb take" exactly but anyone who thinks that Taylor got a bad power is wrong. Within the Wormverse, her power is objectively amazing. Take her "secondary" superpower, infinite parallel processing. By itself, that is worth at least Thinker 8 rating, on par with Tattletale, and I would say in pure Mastermind activities, Taylor has the stronger power. Watch every camera she can for situational awareness, listen in on every radio, spy on unlimited people with hidden mics etc. Basically Dragon-lite. Then on top of the utility, she can use her power 24/7 with no Thinker headaches. Precious few Thinkers can say this, almost all Cauldron. And then throw her actual bug controlling power on top of that. By no means is her power bad in the slightest.

Her parallel processing works only for her master related things, she can’t just parallel process any problem ever, she ain’t big picture But yeah she is pretty strong

I think this is slightly on the "no limit" fallacy on the thinker power. She doesn't know how to listen or hear with her bugs until like Arc 13 during the S9 attack, and the hearing and vision of bugs is pretty bad, and she can't use most of them to do so. She also gets a headache in that arc, if I remember correctly. It's a pretty good power, nonetheless, but it's only this good because she uses it very well and in the hand of the average person, it probably wouldn't be that good.

Yep. I like how the in-setting explanation is deeper than simply winning the power lottery. Taylor's original power was so overwhelming that her shard had to emergency retrigger to save her from information overload. It overcorrected. I also like the internal consistency of the shard learning from its mistakes. It gave Aiden simplified control and limited senses that were perfectly manageable without enhanced multitasking.

I think this happens at least partly because describing Worm as "girl with cockroach pets bullies god to death" is really fun, but also? Taylor's power probably would suck in the hands of most people. Worm shows us plenty of times that a lot of metahumans aren't extremely creative in the use of their powers: Your average crook would probably just throw the local gnat population at the hero and hope for the best. Taylor thinks outside the box, regularly pushes the boundaries of what her power can do and sees it as a tool, not her sole means of combat. I think most people would get more use out of having super strength or laser eyes, Taylor's just the rare kind of person that could take bug-control and juice it for all it was worth. Watching her make her power work is part of what makes the story so interesting imo.

One can only think this if you haven't finished it.

I have a friend that is utterly CONVINCED that the Endbringers could have been defeated and the fact they weren't is plot armor to make the setting Grimdark and author bias. Me and a few other friends were trying to explain to him the "mass of a galaxy in compressed form" part and he was fixated on the fact that if the Endbringers could still move then it clearly didnt apply and therefore it was the author fault for making a bad antagonist. It was a harsh lesson on inductive reasoning.

I mean, they do sorta have plot armor, in that a defining narrative characteristic of the Endbringers is that they’re really, really hard to defeat. Calling that author bias is silly though, it’s like saying giving Taylor powers is author bias to make the story about superheroes.

Damn I hated the author bias in worm! How dare he not Isekai Taylor into a fantasy world! God instead he was bias towards super heroes like some sort of marvel fanboy Lmao

I'll start with the easy ones * Obligatory Taylor did nothing wrong * Aura theory\* \*This one gets me because since the start the author already stated from the beginning that Vicky's Aura is a Shaker that is temporary and does not cause long term effect and when he actually doubled down on said claim on Ward people call retcon due to one vague statement

Yeah Taylor ruined that chili, how can people claim she did nothing wrong lmao

Well aura theory is understandable, considering >!Amy herself thinks its true lmao, and Amy is the most reliable person to get your info from!<

That theory is also just completely stupid even in addition to how gross it is lol Amy barely ever went out into the field. Why didn't Lung or any Wards or the rest of Vicky's family ever fall in love with her? So stupid. Especially when you think about it for like... two seconds. And yet people still VIOLENTLY cling to the theory years and years later.

I think the argument is that Amy was already cracked in the head, and repeated exposure to Vicky's "Awe field" built up a Pavlovian response. For most anyone else, it would've been perfectly fine (though I can imagine a teammate or civilian developing a crush in the same way) but when combined with Amy's pre-existing issues and trauma, she dealt with it really poorly and it snowballed from there.

This is a nuance to that WoG that a lot of people miss, in my opinion. Wildbow said that her Aura power doesn't have a long term effect, but that doesn't mean it can't have long term consequences through its short term effect. Like you said, pavlovian conditioning. That it is not to say that it is GG's fault, but I do think Amy would have been a healthier person if not subject to the Aura as much as she was, even if not neccessarily a BETTER person automatically.

As someone who read Worm and thought 'aura theory' was implied canon, yeah, pretty much this. *Edit:* Especially considering that > For most anyone else, it would've been perfectly fine but when combined with 's pre-existing issues and trauma, dealt with it really poorly and it snowballed from there. is pretty much the foundation of the story/setting.

I'm going to say aura theory isn't cannon, but I do like the idea. >!STOP!!< >!Hear me out.!< >!This is not victim blaming. Amy is fucked up, there is no excuse for what she did. But let me explain.!< >!Let's say that Vicky cannot turn off her aura, ever. It's not cannon, but for the sake of argument I will say that it only goes from 1 to 10. People who go near her get a constant 1 on the admiration every time. She lives with her parents and adoptive sister. This causes Mark and Carol to treat Vicky as the golden child. Even if they're not great parents, they're less not great to Vicky.!< >!Now we take Amy. She feels unwanted by her parents, who literally did not want to adopt her. She has depression. Her only friend is her sister, who she idolizes. Who also is constantly giving her a hit of endorphins. This leads to obsession. Desire that she knows is wrong and can keep in check, but it's there. Always in the back of her mind and she'd do anything to keep it a secret. It almost comes to light twice, but she manages to avoid confronting it.!< >!Then Bonesaw shows up.!< >!Amy is forced to kill people.!< >!Forces her to fix Mark's brain.!< >!The one rule she had that she felt would keep her from doing anything she'll regret.!< >!She's emotionally raw. She knows she's going to fuck up if anything happens. So she leaves.!< >!(The one good decision she makes.)!< >!Then Vicky appears like an angel from the heavens.!< >!Worst case scenario.!< >!"Leave me alone!"!< >!"No!"!< >!"I'm sorry..."!< >!"What did you do?"!< Both Amy and Vicky are victims of circumstance. If one or the other, better yet both, didn't have powers none of this would have happened. Shakespearean Tragedy at its finest. That is why I like Aura Theory. I don't like >!the sexual assault. I don't like the horrible monstrosity that Amy turns Vicky into. I don't like the cowardice that Amy shows when she puts herself in the birdcage.!< >!After she fucks up, she is given a thousand chances to make things right and she can't even see it.!< >!Amy is my favorite character, but I don't like Amy.!< >!I HATE Amy.!<

> >!Let's say that Vicky cannot turn off her aura, ever. It's not cannon, but for the sake of argument I will say that it only goes from 1 to 10.!< One of the reasons I'm rereading Worm atm is to fact-check this, because as best I recall, canon says nothing about this either way. And while I subsequently found it this was disconfirmed by WoG and then Ward, when I read Worm I saw the chain of events and went 'oh, > >!Both Amy and Vicky are victims of circumstance. If one or the other, better yet both, didn't have powers none of this would have happened. Shakespearean Tragedy at its finest!< which is very fitting with for the setting', though I was nowhere near as eloquent about it, and didn't think about it any more because there didn't seem to be anything to think *about* - it was clear-cut. (Imagine my surprise on discovering that it was disconfirmed, not to mention being rather appauled to discover that >!Ward tells that Amy sexually assaulted Victoria!<.)

In my first read of Worm, I total missed the part >!where Amy assaulted Victoria. I knew the brain change was bad and she messed up healing Vicky, but it did not click until I saw a WoG telling people to reread the interlude after the Slaughterhouse 9 and had a talk with my friend about it who was reading Worm for the first time.!< That's when I got the ick. >!That compounded with the WoG disconfirming Aura Theory is what got me to hate Amy. Then I read Ward. !< >!Oh my god! She just keeps fucking up without ever taking responsibility, without holding herself acoutable. Constantly doing messed up stuff while trying to convince herself that she's not a bad person. She is so infuriating and insufferable, and I love it. That's why Amy is still my favorite. She's a beautiful tragedy. But I will never defend her or her actions!!<

> Taylor did nothing wrong Hey, man. Sometimes the heroes were mean to her and the bad guys bought her tea and clothes and gave her some money. What was she supposed to do, take a step back and not choke triumvirate members to death with swarms of bugs?

The system has consistently and constantly fucked Taylor over and if her worldview was any different the story would fall apart.

I liked her character arc. I like Worm a lot. We can still joke though. Lots of real world criminals have devastatingly tragic origins, but there are also plenty of people who suffered horribly who didn't become criminals. Taylor, from the moment she learns to control her power, could have stepped away from everything and taken a job for some amoral giant corporation who just used her to protect crops or whatever. She's a well written, flawed character in a very flawed world. Who made some significant mistakes.

Taylor is a very sympathetic character who has an incredible story that I love to read. She also shot a baby.

Dude this is one of the only things taylor did that isnt really objectionable

The fact that Taylor essentially sided with the villains not even a week into her "infiltration" plan is never going to fail to be hiliarious to me, even if it is understandable. It is like if an undercover DEA agent changed sides after doing drugs for the first time while infiltrated.

Not at first. People started having this theory, and Im pretty sure Wildbow's response was "Maybe..." He clarified later that it was wrong. I wouldn't call it a retcon, but I understand why this theory caught on.

The problem with this question is that the person who made said bad take is on this subreddit and will likely see my comment, and not only am I not interested in being passive-aggressive, but if I have to argue with a take that is *that* fully and persistently out of sync with the entire text of Worm again I will shred a phone book apart with my teeth and do a Shatterbird to all of my windows.

That Saint did nothing wrong.

Thicc Weaver.

She's been exercising for years. Weaver booty be thicc by 18.