#Ward spoilers

[elcuervoborracho]

So, was asked to draw New Wave as they were during their Brockton Bay Brigade Days by Polar Potato and I thought it was a good time to make some of my own designs for them!

[dsserted]

[lizardinkart]

More wips - Ward Edition

That one scene with the almost-touch

[heyitschartic]

I would have really loved to see what would happen if String Theory had survived Gold Morning. What do the Wardens even do with her running around except appeasement? There are a lot of countries getting close to war with Gimel, and she is essentially a nuclear detterant all on her own. No one wants to kick the country with a woman who can boil your seas. Permanently moaning, complaining, and insulting Dragon, except this time, she can't just ignore her since they're working together. More importantly, the second she got out of lockup, she'd go hunting down what happened with the egg Lab Rat had, and I'm sure she'd manage to find Chris.

Cannot imagine how horrible she would be as a bitchy aunt, there to permanently rub it in Lab Rat's face that she survived and all he has left is this teenage sorta-clone. They would absolutely despise each other. Would be a much more interesting conversation when Vicky goes to investigate his living situation though.

[riverkingmarley]

I can’t believe there are trolley problems in Ward. Taylor’s not even there. What’s the point?

I bet Victoria doesn’t kill a single baby and if that’s not proof she’s a worse person than Taylor I don’t know what is.

[sweaterregrets]

march on little sister 🫡

[byronvera]

you ever hear a song that fits so well you disappear and come back with an amv a month later. well anyway! i love the capricorn interludes

(youtube version)

[comradegoblin]

Shout-out to Theo in Ward who was like "nah though Victoria it was based as hell when you beat the shit out of those Nazis, it made me realize that we sucked and everyone hated us. You should not feel conflicted about those actions in particular."

[lemurlord]

Victoria, reading Chris's interlude, scraping her teeth in anger, adding "Stranger 1" to Amy's character sheet.

[spindle-girl]

Some fun Heartbroken trivia:

There is an older Nicholas and a younger Nicholas and they may have the same or similar powers

“He did.  Guillaume and Nicholas... Nicholas just wallops you with pants-shitting waves of terror...” ... “...I would’ve done it even if my big brothers weren’t coming for me, but I joined the Nine.”

Worm 11.g

...the younger Heartbroken in line.  Flor, Nicholas, Amias, Candy, and Darlene. ... ...the young ones, but Nicholas and Amias weren’t that into this particular game.

Ward 10.x

“You guys were busy helping Nathan after Nicholas got mad and terror-waved him.”

Ward 10.z

Older Nicholas and Guillaume aren't mentioned again after Cherie's interlude in Worm and Guillaume is only mentioned once in Ward

By the time he had her, he was bored enough with children that he didn’t pay her much mind.  You broke that ground, he got bored because he paid that attention to you.  You, Cherie, Jean-Paul, Valentina, Guillaume.  Trying to break you, trying to make you trigger.  Trying to make you soldiers.  Or just the days he was an asshole who wanted to hurt someone and you were the first person he saw after the impulse crossed his mind.

Ward 20.e2

There may have been a fifth sibling with powers who, by the time Cherie escapes, are (most likely) dead and Alec doesn't know

“...I was his fourth kid to show powers...”

Worm 7.1

Alec knows that Nicholas and Cherie have powers, so it goes: Unknown, Cherie, Nicholas, and then Alec. In Cherie's interlude...

“But it didn’t happen.  Time passed, he never made a push for it.  Guillaume got his power, you know.  Ten or so of us kids, and three of us could control people one way or another.  Four if we count you...”

Cherie mentions Guillaume having a power like it's news to Alec. Taking both Alec and Cherish's words together the order should be: Unknown, Cherie, Nicholas (these three can be shuffled around), then Alec, and lastly Guillaume.

Cherie doesn't seem to count Unknown among the active kids, keeping the count to four same as Alec, implying that Unknown died in between Alec running away and his encounter with Cherish in Brockton Bay.

Also, just for fun, the ages of the five seem to be: Nicholas and Guillaume as the oldest (20+ in 2011), Cherie as the next (20 in 2011), and then Alec (15 in 2011). Unknown is unknown so throw them anywhere. Maybe between Alec and Cherie to explain the five year gap between them.

[f1rewalk3r]

i think a lot of the problems Amy Dallon has come not from her powers, but rather from being Panacea. this is a statement that could apply to pretty much every parahuman, so let me elaborate.

Amy is Shaper. she’s not Healer, she’s not Fixer, she’s Shaper. to be Panacea, the cure all, i think goes against the fundamental nature of her shard. it’s theorized in wormfic (not sure if canon or WOG) but i wonder if the horrific burnout she experiences is in part, due to being The Cure All rather than The Shaper. i mean, leet’s shard fucks with him, right? is it possible there’s something similar going on? at least by late-ward with Hunter we see that she’s Very Obviously failing to be The Cure All.

but she wants, so desperately, to be The Cure All. this is due to the structure of The Dallon-Pelham Torment Nexus being that perfect american aryan (yuck.) nuclear family. (obviously it’s fucking not. and only Carol wants it to be. but work with me here.) thing is, The Shaper doesn’t fit in with this perfect family image. The Cure All does. so all told, most of Amy’s problems originate from being Panacea, rather than being a Lavere.

Where am I going with this? Simple, of course. Observe:

amelia lavere riley davis swap au is this anything

[findingoblivion]

Best Worm character that like didn't get done right in the series? idk ive had worm on the brain all night

okay i'm finally answering this sorry for the delay

but it's OBVIOUSLY amy. like it's so fucking amy. it could not be more amy. yes rachel is a huge dyke and got done so fucking dirty by wildbow in so many ways. even taylor got done dirty to some degree. and then there's alec and brian too of course and plenty of others

but it's amy.

like full stop.

the homophobic lesbian trope that was in the 50s and 60s about how gay people would try and drag you into their lifestyle and influence you and even Good Christians could fall to their dirty tricks and be almost hypnotized?

pure amy.

how disgusting incest is, even when they're not blood related in any way?

yep.

retconning victoria's power so that it doesn't affect everyone unless she wants it to

leaning in even harder to the sexual assault stuff with amy in ward, character assassinating her and acting like she was a disgusting predator the entire time, always intended to assault vicky, and got off on it and not a scared child who warned vicky and tried desperately to prevent her from crossing her boundaries in the most stressful moments of amy's life?

like by far the most universally hated and reviled character in worm is probably amy. yes sophia is up there but do you know how many people forgive sophia for everything she did and write her as a hero with a redemption arc compared to Amy? It's not close.

There are literal servers that will ban you if you defend amy or act like she's a victim at all and don't just immediately and completely condemn her. there are fanfic servers where ANY writing about amy as anything but a horrible villain is condemned and considered toxic and against the rules

all because wildbow wrote a homophobic caricature of a lesbian and then tried to pass it off as him writing a villain and then retconning everything that made her story good until she was a shadow of her former character and then still tried to profit off her arc in ward by making her this even stupider caricature

wildbow is like the worst narrator ever and ward was so much more boring and didn't have any of the things that made worm good, but all of the things that made worm bad

worm itself is flawed because wildbow was (and still is) but is otherwise a great story

victoria dallon i love you but the phone down or text and call me this hate isn't you

amy dallon i am looking directly into your eyes and telling you that i love you and that it's going to be okay, you made a mistake but you didn't meant to, you didn't intend to, it was a moment of weakness that you deeply regret, and you've suffered so much for that. you deserved to be held and loved and improved, you deserve to be shown how beautiful and amazing you are, you deserve to not just be judged solely for your mistakes but for everything you have done. my heart breaks for you and i would like nothing more than to take care of you and love you and hold you tight and close and protect you like my own daughter, you never received that warmth and love and you deserve it perhaps more than anyone else in the world

[lizardinkart]

Clearing out the wips- Sveta Trans Real!!! :D

Also playing with the hc that Sveta was yoinked from a different earth and ended up in Russia…. Russian-speaking territories extend into Central Asia…. What’s more colonial than forcibly displacing kids from their homes and depositing them in a different place and making them forget everything from their homes… there’s no reason why she couldn’t be not white is all I’m sayin—

I’m not normal about the Russian empire’s (and later Soviet Union’s) effects on the peoples and territories they used to control, so Sveta gets that lobbed at her cause she’s cool

[junebugtwin]

68 - I want to eat space just intuitively fits really well with ward-era Victoria in my mind, id love to see that

Victoria Dallon, the train crash you can't look away from

[chevaliersnumberoneguy]

I just finished Ward and was inspired by a friend to make a review about it here so uh here is my semi-non formal review of Ward.

So to provide a bit of context I became a Parahumans fan back in 2019 and read alongside it with a veteran Worm fan and it easily became one of my favorite pieces of fiction. After a decent break I began reading Ward on and off again for a little bit (not because of the quality I’m just weird when I dedicate time for reading) and after about 3 years of reading it over work breaks and doing a last hail mary sprint for the final couple arcs I feel as though Ward is an amazing follow up to Worm. I know that may be a hot take since I have heard from a friend that general sentiment on Ward isn’t all that positive, but I found myself enjoying it quite a lot.

Wildbow in my eyes managed to expand upon a lot of things I like about Worm and answered a lot of questions I didn’t think would be answered.

Let’s start with a big thing first. I think overall Victoria was a fantastic pick for the protagonist to follow along for this adventure. Not just because she is overall very well written, but out of all the existing characters Wildbow could’ve picked, Vicky was probably the best one for orchestrating the main message of overcoming trauma and learning to love yourself in Ward. It was very fun and satisfying the overall arc she had in Ward.

Breakthrough as a whole was also full of extremely well written characters with all of them enamouring me with their backstories and character arcs in their own way. I didn’t come to think Chris of all people would become such an interesting “minor” antagonist until the Simurgh reveal.

Overall Wildbow has has gone forth and continued to have shown his great ability to present mysteries or seemingly random moments/information and manage to paint it in a completely different light with a massive reveal later on in the story. Chris is a pretty big example of this with all of his behaviors and relationship to his tinker power being weird at best to making a lot of it make sense in retrospect with the reveal that he was more or less created by the Simurgh to help her out in her grand plan. Another example of this is all of the hype and build up to the reveal of Shardspace and the Cracking as a whole.

Now I’m willing to admit it isn’t perfect with all of the Wildbow moments and pacing at certain parts of the story, but I can really appreciate it for what it is at the end.

The parts that got me loving it the most is the expansion of powers as a whole. I’ve always been a nut for eldritch content and Ward managed to satisfy me with that in dividends when it showed us Shardspace, the Titans, the Agents, the conclusion of Entity cycles and actually giving us a full description for the Entities appearance as well. 

All of the cluster stuff was thoroughly enjoyable as well. I loved every second of Rain and his story that was in the spotlight. Easily provided some of my favorite arcs in all of Ward. It was just so fun to watch him develop as a person as well as watch the dynamic he has with his cluster. Cradle in my opinion stole the show being the antagonist of the group. Everything he did was appalling and I loved it. Whether it was him chopping up people with whips or manipulating people in the dream room it was all great to watch play out.

Also god all of the Titan stuff was amazing as well. From the early preview of it from Dauntless becoming one, to all of the build up to this massive event in the Teacher arcs and finally the beginning of the end when Fume Hood second triggered and started the Cracking off as a whole it was all amazing. Then we get into all of the fun combat with the Titans just showing off how formidable of a threat they are, the reveal that if they win everything is over and that this event may never be over, to all of the exploration of Shardspace it was all so well done and great to watch play out.

Another thing I loved was the Teacher stuff as well. I always knew he was going to play a massive part in Ward ever since his epilouge arc in Worm and boy I wasn’t disappointed (mostly). From the disinformation campaign to the assault on his complex it was all fantastic. The arc as a whole did a great job at planting seeds for what would happen in the future. My only real disappointment about him is how he really didn’t play much of a part during all the Titan stuff, but eh it’s whatever.

I thought the ending as a whole was a satisfying conclusion to the story and tied up a good amount of loose ends while still clearly leaving the door at least ajar for Parahumans 3.

Overall, while not perfect I think Ward as a whole was an amazing follow up to Worm and I look forward to reading Wildbow’s other works.

Anyways thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

[sweaterregrets]

V IS FOR VICTORY