#Worm Web Serial

[worms-in-my-head]

Parahumans characters but in Hermitcraft/ life series context - concepts for Taylor

Designed her in a way I thought the hermitcraft/ life series fandom would run with her design

I think she’d mostly like the pvp aspect of the game

[innominaterifter]

Ah, hello! Late at work? I'm looking at your family photos: they look great, so soulful!

[majimarts]

Imp - Worm (webserial). Commissioned by a friend.

Me when worlds most incomprehensible graffiti.

[reyuriwalker]

taylor hebert from worm is a great protagonist because she wanted to be a superhero her whole life, started an intense workout routine to prepare herself, endured horrible bullying because she wanted to keep her powers a secret, made herself a superhero costume using spider silk, but the first night she goes out in costume she almost gets murdered, "necroses" a notorious villain's penis, forms an alliance with the shadiest "hero" there is, gets mistaken for a villain because her costume is too edgy and gets invited to join a supervillain team. all this in the first arc. i love worm.

[victoriadallonfan]

Challenge: Create a tech related power that ISNT a tinker powers

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

Okay, I've Read Worm: A Retrospective Part 5: What Was I Fucking Surprised By?

So, as you may remember, I got into Worm thoroughly spoiled by the wiki and Wormblr and r/parahumans and r/Wormfanfic and actual Worm fanfic. I knew pretty much all the basic details of all the plot twists. And yet, of course, there are things I didn't expect, things the fandom or the wiki mislead me about, etc. Things I was surprised by.

So let's talk about a few:

Taylor Hebert: As I've said, I kind of worried, before reading Worm, that I'd find Taylor insufferable. The sort of character that tries to be a hero and then convinces themselves to do all sorts of bad stuff while telling themselves they're still a hero/good person/etc is hard to write well without being really unpleasant to read/watc/etc. Self-righteousness in general is hard to enjoy for me. Taylor, honestly, stops thinking of herself as a good person partway through the post-Levi period, in most ways, and she never gets self-righteous about it. So Taylor was much more sufferable than I thought. Which is good, because I would have dropped Worm like a hot potato if she'd been insufferable as the main POV.

Eidolon & The Endbringers: (Sounds like a band name). The whole 'you needed Worthy opponents' thing, and the way people talked about Eidolon (seriously, this fandom as a whole is hugely unfair to the guy, istg) really gave me the impression of like, this vainglorious piece of shit guy who wants adulation and doesn't care how he gets it. And like... I don't get that impression from his Interlude at all? He doesn't seem to give two shits about fame, just about knowing what he did mattered. And he knew that well before the Endbringers. Obviously, he subconsciously created them, and then [High Priest] got all goddamn malicious in his compliance but he's not the vainglorious asshole who charges off to face Scion in single combat or w/e the way the fanfiction gave me that impression. Also, like, maybe it's just me, but I define 'Worthy Opponent' as 'something the person could have a reasonable chance of defeating in a solo fight'. So for me, a worthy opponent would be a rowdy 12 year old with maybe a white belt in karate. the Endbringers are not solo-able opponents for Eidolon. So absolutely not doing what he actually wanted. I really think the fandom is unfairly hard on Eidolon.

Interlude 15.x: Look, at the risk of starting discourse - I'm sorry. I've read 15.x Backwards and forwards and there is just Nothing pointing towards rape in the text, even looking for it as I was. I really expected I'd see some line, some implication, some fucking hint and there's just... absolutely nothing. The text of Worm as written, whatever Wildbow claims he meant and whatever he did mean, does not support a rape interpretation of events. And that sure as fuck surprised me.

Extinction 8.6: The way people - and even some fics - talked about the scene where Amy messes with Taylor post-Leviathan made it sound like Amy straight up ripped off Taylor's mask or something extreme like that, and then Taylor sees unmasked Sophia while trying to run and hide after being unmasked. What we got was Amy being a bit of a bitch, deliberately refusing to answer a question Taylor asked because she knew not answering would upset the girl (not cool), Amy's bedside manner being shit, and Taylor's own paranoia (and the godawful choice of the heroes to handcuff her to the bed) filling in the blanks. And this absolutely tepid-ass shit is pointed to by people as proof that 'Amy was a bitch the whole time'.

The Leviathan Fight: It was a lot shorter than I expected. I enjoyed reading it in ways I was worried I wouldn't.

Cauldron: Now, here's the thing. Characters that do bad things, knowing they're bad, but in pursuit of a greater good? That shit is my goddamn jam. I fucking love characters like that. They're my catnip! And I went into Worm sympathetic as FUCK to Cauldron. and I come out of Worm going 'Jesus Christ what a bunch of fucking idjits!' Their shoestring illuminati was run by a bunch of teenagers who never grew up and a college student who's a worse control freak than Taylor. Their incompetence appears to be the whole point (until Wildbow's WoGs turned everything into Cauldron social engineering and he went out of his way to make a big thing about how Cauldron was totes necessary for making things better. Man just cannot shut up). They try for decades to put some final fight against Scion together, and they fail epicly. No groundwork, no real success, and they turned to ACCORD for their post-apocalyptic plans. And apparently had no plan for a mass Case-53 breakout/attack. Which is... sure a choice. Dumping the Case-53s the way they did. The choice of which Case 53s to dump (Sveta sure was a choice of who to just... let out into the world. Like, not an issue with her personally, but you don't release that kind of uncontrollable murder tentacle out into the world, maybe? Just maybe?). I went into Worm thinking I'd be on Cauldron's side, at least a little, and I came out just... god no, you people are stupid.

Amy's Birdcage Arc: I really thought we'd see more of Amy's time in the birdcage, but 16.z really was all we got.

Alexandria's Death: I don't quite know what I did expect, but I didn't expect Alexandria's death to be so goddamn Darwin-award worthy. The woman died like the biggest of CHUMPs and that was much funnier than I expected.

The Drugs are Fantastic line: I knew it was being taken out of context, but it wasn't quite in the place I expected, I'll be honest. Not sure what I did expect.

Taylor's Weaver Arc/The Timeskip: I expected... I dunno. Less of an abrupt transition, I guess? I thought the timeskip would be like, a series of small scenes skipping ahead over two years between them? Instead, right in the middle of Arc 25, it just jumps ahead two years without ceremony. Did not expect that. At all.

Slaughterhouse Nine: I was not prepared for just how goddamn boring the Nine were. I don't think I read any spoilers about how Jack Slash being boring af was the point until I'd already started the S9 arc, but I especially didn't expect how pathetically bland as characters Manny the Kinless and Burnscar and Crawler and Sibby the Friendly Neighborhood Cannibal would be. Cherish managed to be interesting by being such a failure, and Bonebitch, to my eterntal frustration, managed to be funny, but the rest? Also, I thought Manton would die in the Bay, rather than be killed unceremoniously offscreen while in Boston.

The Butcher: For a character who appears in all of two chapters, the Butcher has a much larger presence in the fandom. But that is Worm for you, because groups like the Elite and the Fallen also show up more in the fics than their presence in the main story merits (Though the Fallen have more of a presence in Ward, even if I gather Ward kinda sorta retcons like half the details or at least presents irreconcilable visions of the organization)

Empire 88: They were way out of focus, compared to how much they appear in fics. But it is fun in fics to see Nazis get beat up all the time, so this is valid. But also, like, even their post-Levi remnants were weaksauce af. Someone in a server the other day said that taking out Marquis took out an entire faction, and that Levi proved that taking out Kaiser (or Allfather before him) doesn't stop the Empire, gesturing to the Aryan's Chosen and the Pure as proof but like... lbr. Both groups were pretty damn pathetic in the post-Leviathan bay. Regardless, I expected to see more of the Nazis getting beat in Worm itself, and we really didn't. But this is one time where I don't care, because as I said, seeing Nazis get beaten up over and over again in the fanfic is fun.

Ward: I was worried reading and finishing Worm might make me want to read Ward. Thankfully, it did not. *whew*

Now, there are probably others, but nothing else as major. But there are also some things I just plain wasn't surprised by.

Amy Dallon: I went into Worm expecting her to be my blorbo, and that didn't change. She's definitely my character type. I feel the same about her storyline in Worm as I did going into it.

Tattlebitch: I expcted to hate her, and I stayed hating her. Lisa sucks. Like, she has her redeeming moments and features, but overall, I still hate Lisa.

Carol Dallon: My Sympathy for Carol remains about as theoretical as it always was.

The PRT/Protectorate: I suspected the PRT/Protectorate was not as useless and incompetent and ACAB as a lot of fics painted it and... I was right.

My Ultimate Opinion: I went into Worm thinking it wasn't really for me, but that I'd probably find it well written and that many characters would be engaging. I figured it would have massive gaping plot holes and that I would never find it to be the 'amazeballs perfect wonderful' that some people seem to find it. And yeah, I was right about that too.

[cat-boy]

werm

[redtailfins]

i fear my friend who has read worm is giving me a skewed impression on what worm is about

[notalittleatall]

i think important thing to note in worm is that Cauldrons plan fully succeeded. It wasn’t a very defined plan, but i think it’s worth mentioning that Scion was eventually stopped by Taylor (1) , who lived in the USA on earth Bet (2), who was a supervillain (3) for the first few months of her career, joined the Protectorate(4), was modified by Panacea (5) and managed to become incredibly powerful through her synergy with Clairvoyant and Doormaker (6), and defeated Scion using an army of every cape in existence (7).

(1) A character who was raised in a society indoctrinated with heroic values by cauldron)

(2) A society that only exists because of constant active intervention by cauldron

(3) A stable position in society that only exists because it was artificially created by cauldron for non conforming capes

(4) An organisation founded and maintained by cauldron

(5) An inhabitant of the birdcage, which was created by cauldron to store powerful parahumans in case their abilities could be used for situations like this

(6) Two very powerful capes specifically created by cauldrons human experimentation

(7) Several thousand of which only exist because of Cauldron directly

Like, there’s often a perception especially with new readers that Cauldron were incompetent and committed a bunch of human rights violations for no reason, until Taylor had to step in and use her mega cool powers to show them how it’s really done. But that’s just not accurate, because it’s not accounting for how much of the setting is directly tied to Cauldron. Without Cauldron, Taylor grows up in a post apocalyptic world, where capes have no expectations of using their powers to help others, and live even shorter and more brutal lives than in canon. Cauldrons plan was to maximise their odds of a bullshit power interaction being able to defeat Scion, and it worked! Everyone say thank you doctor mother right now

[octakiseron]

WALL MYSELF IN.

[joysuscreation]

Woman of many words

[lemurlord]

The Avaricious Amy Dallon (she asked for a bit more crumbs from the dinner table)

[worms-in-my-head]

Paraphrased but yeah

[tisinoodle]

She’s serving Contessa

So this Halloween I realized I owned or could borrow all of the things to make a passable Contessa cosplay, except the hat. Finally had an opportunity to take pictures.

[victoriadallonfan]

I think Lisa cannot help but help others, despite how much she grouses.

I think she’d organize soup kitchens like she did as civilian cover in Worm, maybe go into Child Protective Services

Really depends on what avenues she can actually afford without a power

[senviva]

undersiders !