VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
So turns out that there isn't a Worm general discussion thread, and considering how often threads derail into general canon discussion this is a bit of an oversight. So here is the general thread.
-
For all readers and writers
After much ado, our new tagging system is here and being rolled out to the userbase. Read more here!
Worm General Thread *spoilers*
- Thread starter VolantRedX
- Start date
-
- Tags
- worm
What do you mean when you say a worm general discussion derails into a general canon discussion? Canon is one of the few things we don't have much of an argument about, there is no EU, just anything Wildbow writes or says.
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
A lot of fic threads break out into fights about canon characters or just general questions on what is canon or fanon.
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
I'm moving the discussion here since it's not about Firebird any more.
Frankly stating anything as true with the Wards in normal situations is hard since we see them in a normal fight once.
Well then you're reading it wrong. He's escaping the scene of the crime, the way it's phrased heavily indicates that.
Actually WB had a recent WoG on this, and it's not just age that gives someone the position, it's also based on personality and fieldwork. Plus we only see them go after the Undersiders, minor no bodies at that point in the story. They're like the perfect target to see how the Wards handle things solo.
Frankly stating anything as true with the Wards in normal situations is hard since we see them in a normal fight once.
- Location
- Patriarchova
Rough draft:
Basically. Despite the clearly accessible work there's a lot of argument about what's fanon and canon. I just had this discussion in the Wile E story thread.
Which leads me to ask here: where did this idea of being "pressganged into the Wards" come from? Can someone really give some canon basis for this or did it just spring out of the ether?
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
Depends on what people mean by "pressganged." It's standard practice to try and get minor criminals and over-zealous vigilantes off the streets by offering them conditional parole in the Protectorate, as is the case with Assault and Shadow Stalker.
Pressganged as in fanon!Taylor is afraid of dealing with the PRT because of this.
We don't need to get into how minor Assault is again. But I think we can agree that there's a difference between "years upon years of prison or Birdcage vs probation" and some random independents being hoovered in...because.
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
Yeah, there's nothing to say that the PRT and Protectorate try and force the issue. It's likely that they push hard for it. Which makes sense given that it's acknowledged by most people that Parahumans work best as a team, and even Taylor, after joining the Wards tells people outright that her life is far safer and more stable within the system. But there is a difference between bringing it up when the hero and indy interact and say trying to manufacture a charge to force an otherwise heroic cape in to service.
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
So I was rereading the scene where Taylor kills Tagg and Alexandria, which I mark as the point where I actively stopped enjoying Worm and I tried to work out why, and then it hit me. That was the point where it became really obvious that Taylor is a Mary Sue. Or at least has many Mary Sueish qualities. Let's break it down.
Taylor never really fails. Sure Taylor gets hurt, she bleeds, but I can't remember any moment storywise where she failed outright, and I thought that when Alexandria showed up it'd be a great moment to take the story back to where it worked best, Taylor and the Undersiders fighting for scraps. There's a reason that I think most people like the "street-level" moments of Worm even when that part only takes up a small portion of the story. It's because it places Taylor in a position of real vulnerability. That it's a lot more compelling than reading her tear through everyone that steps up.
Her success is unrealistic. The rate in which the Undersiders reach the peak is unreal. They go from nobody street punks to the greatest supervillains ever in like 5 months all thanks to Taylor. It'd be like someone getting a job as a janitor at a local McDonalds and being CEO six months later. No one could look at that and think "yeah that makes total sense."
She's constantly painted as the underdog despite always wining. After Levi hits it seems like the major fights in Worm break down into a rather predictable pattern. Bad guy shows up, the story tells us that they're super powerful. Taylor decides she has one and only one shot to take them down. Then does, while the bad guy just fails to make any headway against her. Before Levi fights had a lot of back and forth struggle with both sides trying new ideas as the situation changed and that often it seemed that Taylor had several ways out, and if she failed to beat them running seemed like a good option.
So while Taylor isn't the worst offender at the protagonist centred victories, she's up there. Look at the heroes. As soon as Taylor joins she is pegged as the one that will turn everything around and in a few missions totally reverses the downward trend of the heroes. It's annoying to see the story bend over backwards to show how cool and tough she is.
Taylor never really fails. Sure Taylor gets hurt, she bleeds, but I can't remember any moment storywise where she failed outright, and I thought that when Alexandria showed up it'd be a great moment to take the story back to where it worked best, Taylor and the Undersiders fighting for scraps. There's a reason that I think most people like the "street-level" moments of Worm even when that part only takes up a small portion of the story. It's because it places Taylor in a position of real vulnerability. That it's a lot more compelling than reading her tear through everyone that steps up.
Her success is unrealistic. The rate in which the Undersiders reach the peak is unreal. They go from nobody street punks to the greatest supervillains ever in like 5 months all thanks to Taylor. It'd be like someone getting a job as a janitor at a local McDonalds and being CEO six months later. No one could look at that and think "yeah that makes total sense."
She's constantly painted as the underdog despite always wining. After Levi hits it seems like the major fights in Worm break down into a rather predictable pattern. Bad guy shows up, the story tells us that they're super powerful. Taylor decides she has one and only one shot to take them down. Then does, while the bad guy just fails to make any headway against her. Before Levi fights had a lot of back and forth struggle with both sides trying new ideas as the situation changed and that often it seemed that Taylor had several ways out, and if she failed to beat them running seemed like a good option.
So while Taylor isn't the worst offender at the protagonist centred victories, she's up there. Look at the heroes. As soon as Taylor joins she is pegged as the one that will turn everything around and in a few missions totally reverses the downward trend of the heroes. It's annoying to see the story bend over backwards to show how cool and tough she is.
And you think Coil's power has nothing to do with what is read for a sizable portion of the Undersiders' operations?
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
The issue is that while that fits in-universe it still reads as insanely successful. What's more after losing Coil's back up they still end up being the most power supervillain group in the world even years later. If Coil was key to their success wouldn't the second after he dies mean they started to lose more and more? Instead they just win more.
- Location
- Fabulously Rainbow Ireland
So? REALITY is unrealistic, hell Nazi Germany is the real-life equivalent of a Gary-stu given what it accomplished in so short a time is ludicrous
Then that just means that they weren't totally dependant on Coil's power and all the successes before allowed them to grown stronger and improve themselves more and more besides who the hell was really LEFT to oppose them after Leviathan and everything else after Coil died? They also weren't beholden to bureaucracy, PR, factional infighting and other stuff. I think it might be that you just don't like it because they're villains instead of heroes
Then that just means that they weren't totally dependant on Coil's power and all the successes before allowed them to grown stronger and improve themselves more and more besides who the hell was really LEFT to oppose them after Leviathan and everything else after Coil died? They also weren't beholden to bureaucracy, PR, factional infighting and other stuff. I think it might be that you just don't like it because they're villains instead of heroes
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
Except the German nation was never really an underdog in WW2. They had more industry, natural resources, military leadership, and manpower than the people they were fighting.
What I don't like is that they never seem to face any set backs. Taylor especially. Name one time she truly fails in Worm. I mean totally loses outright, everything she's worked for gets burned to the ground. Seriously name one time. And as soon as she switches sides the heroes are suddenly turning everything around. Her character is sueish because she's practically the chosen one in the way her actions rewrite the very world she lives in. She's the only hero that shifts the paradigm, the only one that seems to effect real change anywhere in the world. I know I'm not the only one that finds it annoying.
Basically the issue is that after Alexandria's death Worm feels like a fan wank story featuring Taylor.
Last edited:
Really? I thought it was the other way around? The Germans started strong but they couldn't really win against their foes, all of them being who they were and all of them dedicated to kicking them in the head.
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
Sort of, the German defeat came essentially at the hands of spreading themselves too thin and trying to fight the whole world. Germany had the resources to fight France and Britain, then before finishing that fight, Hitler had the great idea to invade the Soviet Union, whist focusing on political targets rather than military ones, and then after Pearl Harbour decided to declare War on the US despite not being under any obligation to do so, and still fighting a costly war with both the UK and the USSR on several fronts. Nazi Germany could have won the war if it wasn't run by a mad man and his cabal of sycophants. Of course it wouldn't be Nazi Germany at that point.
No. The claim I'm talking about is the one that Adam Tooze apparently puts forward: their economy is fucked in general. It's not that Hitler just blundered by attacking the Soviets, he'd been artificially hiding the weaknesses of the German economy for a while and continued to do so during the war with looting.
It's a far more pessimistic view than the one that essentially leaves Germany's fate in its own hands. I'll try to look up a summation of that view.
EDIT: Summarized here.
Last edited:
Polokun
Dragonheart
The fact that everyone bends over backwards for her at the PRT despite the fact that she's a thief, kidnapper, torturer, bully, murderer and traitor? That says a lot there about how messed up it actually looks on the outside.
- Location
- Puerto Rico
I get what you're saying, and it only gets worse once you start reading the fanfics, especially the crossovers but i already said my piece at spacebattlers so...yeah.
- Location
- Elendel, Scadrial
Did you actually finish Worm? Despite Taylor making massive sacrifices and even abandoning her friends Jack Slash still ends the world. Heck you could sill make the arguments that everything she worked as Skitter end up being meaningless because Scion causally wrecks the city she worked so hard to rebuild in the first few minutes of his rampage.
Polokun
Dragonheart
But it wasn't her fault at all. It's no different then if just a random weather disaster occurred. Storywise, it's not about whether or not it's meaningless but just to make a super Big Bad /raise the stakes for Mary Sue to beat cause she's so awesome and super cool and always knows what's right and blah blah blah.
Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
Mary Sue? Is it 2006 again? Because nobody takes that word seriously anymore outside of the most obvious cases unless the speaker has one hell of a case to make for it.
She's a butcher! Jezebel! Vandal! Doody head! Guerrilla! Rapscallion! Dog stealer! Mad as a bad of ferrets! Coxfither! Fringe candidate!
She's a butcher! Jezebel! Vandal! Doody head! Guerrilla! Rapscallion! Dog stealer! Mad as a bad of ferrets! Coxfither! Fringe candidate!
I mean, he's right. You can complain about a lot of what Polokun says but this sort of dismissive reaction is lowering yourself to his (perceived, if not actual) level. Taylor is the sort of person the PRT wants to step on (and they would absolutely use those words to describe her and they could make a very strong case for their validity). The writer did contrive it so that they didn't actually step on her. In a discussion about her getting away with things with that particular organization it's incredibly relevant.
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
Which doesn't dispute my point, having the 11th hour be the first time a meaningful setback occurs just means the story lacked any real down moments for Taylor. I mean a good story would have several ups and downs, not just ups. Taylor rarely loses and never loses outright to the point. It's really bad by the time Alexandria dies. It really feels like WB was buying into the hype surrounding his own character at that point.
Well what would you call a character that never loses, has no meaningful set backs, has everyone talk about how cool and smart and inventive she is, is, without any training, a master strategist, as well as able to fight several master combatants in hand to hand, also repeatably punches above her weight class, and finally is the one to totally save the world?
IMO using the term Mary Sue introduces issues. I mean, go back and look for the original stories that got the name. They were far worse.
You can absolutely criticise Taylor for not losing (on her own terms) even if a Scion-rock falls and everyone dies. The fact that larger crises stand above Taylor may not change the argument that Taylor on her own was still granted far too many helping hands.
But I wouldn't say that Wildbow lost the plot to the degree that any Mary Sue writer did. Simply by keeping those larger threats he showed more restraint than 99.9% of them. The previous argument is plausible. The Mary Sue one? Much weaker.
You can absolutely criticise Taylor for not losing (on her own terms) even if a Scion-rock falls and everyone dies. The fact that larger crises stand above Taylor may not change the argument that Taylor on her own was still granted far too many helping hands.
But I wouldn't say that Wildbow lost the plot to the degree that any Mary Sue writer did. Simply by keeping those larger threats he showed more restraint than 99.9% of them. The previous argument is plausible. The Mary Sue one? Much weaker.