#ward wildbow spoilers

[germesthegenie]

This idea was revealed to me in a dream and a sleep deprived conversation with a friend

[estavionpira]

so like. ward-era parahumans definitely had some kind of khepri-romanticization kink subculture right. like there had to have been a genre of PHO capefic written by capes who were controlled by her and all of them are like "as i felt her control washing over me, i knew i was hers. just meat for her to use." and then they write 700 chapters of vaguely autobiographical vaguely pornographical noncon gold morning fight scenes. that moment when taylor dropped ash beast on scion written with jealousy that taylor chose it to sacrifice to her golden foe and not them.

[rainof5]

The rest of the series of old art I never posted, with bases by MagicalPouchOfMagic!

[sweaterregrets]

march on little sister 🫡

[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."

[radish-club]

So yeah, Arc 30 was really good. Likely the best of the book. One criticism though.

The Dragon death scene shouldn't have been a fake-out. This is definitely the Taylor-finally-gives-in-and-becomes-an-actual-monster Arc and killing a pseudo-mother figure would have really driven that home. Represented another big line that was crossed.

It would have also represented a betrayal to Defiant, a character who alternatively she has been trying to earn the trust of or who has been trying to earn her trust since Arc 1.

Apart from that, just really fun and exciting stuff. I'll go over this more in my "what I know about worm" thread but I knew going in she was gonna be universe hopping to recruit help in the final arc but I didn't realize she was forcible taking control. I liked the fact that it touched on how scared many of the folks were as they were fighting and dying.

Also, it never says directly but I like to imagine the reason she is getting so weak and thirsty and that people she is controlling are having strokes and shit is because this is all taking place over the course of days, not hours. Like no breaks, just constanting fighting. Who knows if she even allowed for bathroom breaks (if this was Pale, there definitely would have been a few instances of heros pissing themselves).

And (assuming Cody was still in the Yangban) we got a Traveler's reunion!!! (Except Oliver but, much like Taylor, I don't really care about him). I'm sad that Trickster died before they were released from control because it would be hilarious if while everyone was celebrating Scions death you just have the five of them (or at least the 3 boys) trying to absolutely annihilate each other.

I'm also sad Trickster died because I liked him as a character. He was such a dirtbag, it was great.

I liked the scene of Taylor slowly making her exit through the portal Glastig Uaine opened to banish her, while everyone watches (I would love to see art of that scene if it exists).

The everyone working together line is a classic. Contessa killing Taylor at the end was also satisfying (fuck the Taylor parts of final epilouge though).

I could go on but I stop here for now.

[lemurlord]

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

[sistersorrow]

Back in July, I had a problem: I had finished Nona the Ninth and realised I had no idea when Alecto the Ninth would come out

I didn't feel like picking out a new novel to read every 10 days or so, so I decided I'd pick one very long book and hope it tided me over until a release date was given

So on the 19th of July 2024, I started reading Worm, and a bit over three months later, I read the final line of the final chapter on October 23rd

I have had many thoughts about this book while reading it, and since I haven't had access to the internet for the last two week, I've also had many thoughts after reading it, mainly thoughts where I was drafting this post (despite thinking about my draft for five days, now that I'm finally writing it, I can feel the whole thing fading from my mind)

TL;DR: I genuinely think the ending didn't happen

Yes, the whole "It was all a dream/purgatory" angle is very cliche, but it's a very common theory in the Worm fandom for a reason (one of those reasons being Wildbow jokingly saying Taylor's in purgatory)

For me, that reason is that Taylor is way too okay with the state of her life after Golden Morning

Throughout the book, Taylor has a consistent pattern of behaviour where she sees a problem or has a goal, decides on a means of realising that goal/fixing the problem, with anyone who attempts to get in her way being treated as part of the problem, allowing her to more easily justify using ever escalating acts of incredible violence to terrorise them into either helping her or getting out of her way

Taylor, by her own admission lives for conflict because for her things make the most sense when she has a very clear target to oppose and doesn't have to think past the near future because in the present the target is actively trying to kill her, and there are people who simply refuse to listen to her when she talks about ways to deal with the problem

Her, I dunno, ascension(?) to Khepri is just that pattern of behaviour taken to its logical extreme: the problems are Scion and people refusing to fight Scion or not working together, so she resolves the issue by resolving the issue of their free will and makes them fight in concert to bully Golden Space Jesus into killing himself

Despite the Speck arc being 174 pages of Taylor's brain being formatted by a fragment of an alien god as it remove any aspect of her personality that doesn't either facilitate acts of violence or think of new ways to commit acts of violence, Taylor has never been more herself than in that moment, hell, when she finishes scouring the multiverse for capes to turn into superpowered people puppets for her slave swarm and faces down the most powerful being to walk the earth as she realises she's beginning to forget where her mother's grave is, she stops to think about how nice it is that everyone is finally working together for once, just like she always wanted

The kind of person who does that to herself and others simply is not going to be able to adjust to civilian life, where she's going to continue to be exposed to the systemic failings that frustrated her into being Skitter in the first place only now without the tools or resources she used to effect change back on her Earth

At best, Interlude: End Taylor would be horribly depressed, and at worst feel like she's been placed in her own personal hell

For this reason, I genuinely think Contessa realised there was no coming back from what Taylor had become and decided to end her there, with the final interlude being a dying dream cooked up by her shard or something just before their connection was fatally severed, and honestly, I'm completely fine with that cause it feels like a natural conclusion for her arc, even if dream theories are always a bit contentious

[victoriadallonfan]

Art by the amazing Lina Leeze

[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.

[abemussercutupwhiletalking]

(Spoilers for all Wildbow stories)

I think Wildbow needs to do more evil clone/hybrid/mirror showdowns with his protagonist. Blake and Rose’s dynamic is the heart of Pact, and Sy and Evette is probably one of his bolder writing choices at a larger scale (not to mention the Humors), but the other stories really fall down on that front. All the mirrored archetypes are too subtle, too diffuse. Give me more miserable fused mockeries of the protagonist and their closest allies. More warped reflections of their lives and relationships and powers.

We’ve got, what, a few paragraphs each of the trio Lis, Mockument clone (on second thought, maybe we don’t need more of that one), and Chitter? I’ll concede the Travelers as a solid contender, but the Red Heron kids aren’t even proper foils, far too many of them. Disgraceful. You could’ve had it all, Yadira crew.

I’m not even going to properly score Claw until I know if the Drone Guy’s underground club of military tech enthusiasts rear their heads.

[germesthegenie]

Jack was still grinning. “What would you do to people like me, then? Let’s say you got powers. Would you right wrongs, lecture schoolchildren on doing what’s right, and see bad guys like me carted off to the Birdcage?”

“People like you? I’d kill. Sir.”

Fun fact: Theo is crying in both of these scenes, it’s just covered by the mask.

I feel like Golem is one of the more underrated characters of Worm (at least if fanfics are anything to go by), probably because his part in it comes pretty late in the story. Kid with no powers managed to work up the courage to say he’d kill Jack to his face, and in doing so accidentally tied himself to Dinah’s end of the world prophecy. And through 2 years of hard work and grueling training, he got pretty close to being the hero he wanted and needed to be. He may have failed to defeat Jack on his own, but that was never in the cards from both an in universe and meta perspective. One of the few outright good guys in the series, coming pretty far from his upbringing.

[estavionpira]

the wretchhhhhh

👮‍♀️🦵💪

💪👮‍♀️

🦵💪💪

👮‍♀️

💪🦵🦵

🦵💪👮‍♀️

[half-man-half-lime]

I always get annoyed when Worm readers criticize Taylor & Cauldron without actually engaging with the premise, but there is evidence against them there. (Gonna focus on Cauldron in this post.)

There are some legitimate points to be made against them that I've probably heard most of already. There's the fact that so much of their choices stem for Contessa's desire for efficiency, and she turns away from paths that might be harder- although to be fair, there's more points of failure in, for example, telling the world's governments about the dangers of Scion.

There's the fact that when they choose who to bring into the fold, they take in people like The Number Man, a former serial killer, and that colors all the decisions their leadership makes.

There's a notion, tangential to Sveta's criticism of Doctor Mother- again, they took the easy path by dehumanizing their victims with test numbers and blocking off any sense of empathy, because they feel a need to live with themselves; even the lack of empathy clouds their judgement and their so-called objectiveness, leading them to hurt their victims more than they actually had to.

The thing that interests me though is that you can't really pick and choose which consequences count. They wanted to be consequentialist? Well, the Irregulars' raid on Cauldron HQ that hampered the fight against Scion is by definition a consequence. Acting like the Irregulars ruined a perfectly good plan is ridiculous, because if it was such a good plan then they wouldn't have been invaded.

They think the ends justify the means? Surprise! The ends include the Endbringers. There are so few Parahumans left alive by the time Scion turns on humanity that nothing Eidolon contributed could have been a net benefit. Especially considering what the Simurgh was planning near the end of Ward.

We also see some of that in Ward- all of the PR campaigns, all the cover-ups, it all comes crashing down the second the PRT is gone, and any attempt at communication is hampered by the fear of what an informed public might do. The anti-Parahuman who shot Fume Hood and set off the second apocalypse did so because he only had part of the story, and never actually had the chance to see the PRT & Cauldron's full perspectives.

[sweaterregrets]

V IS FOR VICTORY

[dw-flagler]

BLONDE WILDBOW CHARACTERS

Every wildbow character with hair color described as blonde or similar to blonde. Characters are listed in alphabetical order.

A character's category is determined by their debut appearance. Though Lisa Wilbourn appears in both Worm and Ward, she will be listed as a Worm character, and not as a Ward character.

WORM:

Ashley Stillons I (Damsel of Distress)

Ava ? (Cuff)¹

Brad Meadows (Hookwolf)

Carol Dallon (Brandish)

Crystal Pelham (Laserdream)

Dean Stansfield (Gallant)

Elijah Mathers (Valefor) (Later dyes white)

Elle ? (Labyrinth)

Emily Piggot

Eric Pelham (Shielder)

Gabriel Maxberry (King)

Glastig Uaine/Valkyrie

Greg Veder (The Worst)

Hero

Hoyden

Jaager Charles (Gasconade) (Appears ONLY in PRT Quest)

Jeanne Wynn/Brown (Citrine)

Jessica Biermann (Fenja)

Katherine Oldershaw (Grace)

Kurt Wynn (Harbinger/Number Man)

Leonid(?)

Lisa Wilbourn (Tattletale)

Marissa Newland (Sundancer)

Melody Jurist (Cricket)

Mike ? (Lightstar)

Missy Biron (Vista)

Mrs. Knott

Neil Pelham (Manpower)

Nessa Bierman (Menja)

Oliver ? (Oliver)

Principal Blackwell

Riley Grace Davis (Bonesaw)

Sam ? (Prism)

Sarah Pelham (Lady Photon)

Tammi Herren (Rune/Scribe) (last name presumed)

"Tom Moss" (Acidbath)

Victoria Dallon (Glory Girl/Antares)

"White Fairy"²

Blonde Adjacent:

Alabaster (white hair)

Kamil Armstrong (white hair)

Madeline ? (Winter) (white hair)

Paige Mcabee (Canary) (yellow feathers, hair unknown)

Polka (white hair)

Scion (gold hair)

Scrub (white hair)

The Simurgh (silver hair)

Worm has: 38 blonde characters, and 8 blonde-adjacent characters, for a total of 46.

WARD

Ashley Stillons II (Swansong)

Ashley Stillons III (Damsel of Distress)

Axehead? (Presumed)³

Bianca ? (Goddess)

Harbinger V (Limerick)

Hunter ? (Mincemaid)

Jay ?

Kathlee Rosenthal (Monokeros)¹

Lachlan ?

Lionwing

Moose

Mr. Drowsing

Nate ? (Reconciliation)

Paris

Rain O'Fire Fraizer (Precipice)

Ryan ? (Cradle)

Samuel Vasil

William Giles (Scapegoat)

Blonde Adjacent:

Anita Vera (white hair)

Christine Mathers (Mama Mathers) (silver hair)

Coiffure (silver hair)

Colt (Colt) (bleached hair)

Dino (silver hair)

Egg (yellow hair)

Engel ("glowing" hair)

Enyo (silver hair)

Foggy Idea (gray dyed hair)

Nailbiter (bleached hair)

Presley ? (gray-white dyed hair)

Vince Crowley (poorly-bleached hair)

Voltrage ("pale" hair)

Ward has: 18 blonde characters, and 13 blonde-adjacent characters, for a total of 31.

PACT:

Blake Thorburn

Chloe Duchamp

Diana Thompson

James Thorburn

Joanna Duchamp

Lea Duchamp

Lola Duchamp

Paul Thorburn

Penelope Duchamp

Peter Thorburn

Rose Thorburn Jr.

Rose Thorburn Sr.

Roxanne Thorburn

Sandra Duchamp

The Briar Girl

Blonde Adjacent

Malcolm "Fell" Atwell ("light" hair)

Pact has: 15 blonde characters, and 1 blonde-adjacent character, for a total of 16.

TWIG:

The Baron Richmond

The Duke of Francis

Duncan Lambsbridge

Emily Gage

Gordon Lambsbridge(?)

Helen Ibott

Jamie Lambsbridge

Jessie Ewesmont

Lord Carling

Lord King

Lord Leeds

Marcella

The Duke of Francis

The Twins (counts as 2)

BLONDE ADJACENT

Lady Glora ("pale of hair")

Lara (white hair)

Nora (white hair)

Twig has: 15 blonde characters, and 3 blonde-adjacent characters, for a total of 18.

PALE:

America Tedd

Anthem Tedd

Avery Kelly

Edith James

Eloise Miraz

Freak (of Freak & Squeak)

Gillian Ross

Liberty Tedd

Reggie the Composite Kid

Snowdrop

The Family Man

Ulysses Miraz

Wallace Davis

BLONDE ADJACENT

Mrs. Schaff (white hair)

Crooked Rook (white hair)

Gemma Duchamp (Grey hair)

Luna Hare (white hair)

Pale has: 13 blonde characters, and 4 blonde-adjacent characters, for a total of 17.

CLAW:

"Valentina's Mom & Sister"

Claw has: 2 blonde characters, and 0 blonde-adjacent characters, for a total of 2.⁴

Notes

¹ Both cuff and monokeros are noted to have dark hair in Ward while having blonde hair in their original appearances (Worm and WD Helena respectively).

² White Fairy is Mr. Gladly's girlfriend and a prolific redditor who is seen during the leviathan battle and the PHO greg interlude. deep cut. As a mortal enemy of greg veder, please treat her with appropriate respect.

³ Axehead is never seen in ward. However, Titan Skadi (who forms from Axehead) is described as having golden hair. I am presuming that this is from axehead the human having blonde hair.

⁴ Literally 1 person told me any characters from claw. i haven't read it. there's more than 2, but i haven't seen anything.