[HALP] me! (WORM quest)

After ten thousand years, I'm finally free! Time to conquer Earth Bet!

[X] Keep the last turn and finish up the chapter-in-progress?

As much as I'd like to use the time travel nonsense to justify redoing the last turn, it's time to progress the plot. So I can write new Omakes.
Speaking of which, I really do not want to write the Kelly Omake, so someone, please, stop me.

Really, there's a lot about Worm that kind of just leaves me confused. For example, apparently Browbeat and his Shard get along so well, the Conflict Drive is either inactivate or ignored when it comes to him. Like his forgettableness is kind of such a meme, despite how amazing his power-set logically should be plus the whole Unusual Host/Shard Partnership.

In point of fact there are a lot of Shards who have low enough conflict drives they can be ignored, as given in Gold Morning when Taylor starts tapping all the people who are neither Heroes, Villains, or Rogues. The Everymen who had powers, and said "Fuck it," to the Cape lifestyle and did their own thing in secret.

Although given the fact the Cycle was supposed to last a few hundred years, it's likely they were supposed to start weak and ramp up, like on Aleph, and that Bet and other Parahuman-Heavy worlds were a result of Cauldron and vials fucking up the schedule by having people trigger and ping of more powerful Shards and thus ramp up their own power.

Then there's the Cauldron Vials, I'm kind of convinced they're more Artificial Buds- those ratios shouldn't make sense if they're a direct connection with a single Shard. Granted, Wildbow both kind of implied The Butcher was originally a Cauldron Cape, but also would have existed regardless so...

They don't. In fact, sometimes they're not even a single shard. I'm convinved a lot of Case 53s and broken triggers were screwed up Grab-Bag events because they were just pulling liquid that connected you to Shard willy-nilly from a non-Euclidean mass of flesh and hoping for the best.

It has been so long, and re-reading would take a long time- did this involve bodyjacking Night, or was that something else? I recall something where Night got her body taken over by the MC that's a Shard, with the logic she's basically a non-person? Right, somewhat unrelated, how is Rune/Tammi being handled? Cause I've seen some QMs insist she's Purest Evil, despite canonically having a sincere heel-face-turn and having only aligned with the E88 because Worm is a hellhole and being a Teenager thought they were a Necessary Evil cause far as she could tell nobody else was really doing anything useful.

There's a 50% chance she's a catgirl on the run from the Nazis and looking to join the ABB.

There's a 50% chance she's not.

We can't be sure until it comes up in story. And I'm sorry. It is my fault.

Also, wasn't Tammi (I always want to call her Tammi Lynn now) originally a member of the Herren Clan and came to the E88 with Victor and Othala? So how could she thing they were a 'necessary evil' when she didn't even joined them, but joined another, associated white nationalism movement after breaking out of juvie? I find it much more likely she didn't want to go back to juvie, or worse, having now gained powers, and joined the Herrens and thus the E88 entirely out of a want to protect herself and avoid teh consequences of her actions, and anything she says later is justifying her actions in a further need to protect herself and avoid teh consequences of her actions by distancing herself from her past.
 
So nice to see this active! My personal opinion is that you do whatever you want with the Worm lore. If you can write something more compelling than canon do so. Mind you, i dont like canon to begin with.

[X] Keep the last turn and finish up the chapter-in-progress?
 
originally a member of the Herren Clan and came to the E88 with Victor and Othala?

Worm is weird, my best understanding is that she didn't really want the E88- she was a Stupid Teenager making Dumb Decisions, and at the Start of Canon she is only 13. She's barely any older than Vista. Honestly, I am confused why nobody in-universe throws a fit about how the Obviously Evil White Supremacist group is actively deploying at least one Child Soldier- in Brockton Bay, where you got a Serial Suicide Bomber who would have zero shame murdering a child, and obviously being E88 she'd have higher than normal risk of such.

Honestly, I'm kind of convinced Worm is just meant to be a horrible place where Suffering & Evil trump logic.
 
Honestly, I'm kind of convinced Worm is just meant to be a horrible place where Suffering & Evil trump logic.

Basically. I mean, look at what Cauldron is doing.

They have access to how the enemy thinks, but it won't work on the enemy. So instead of using it to test their plans against and attempt to simulate the enemy's plans. . . they blindly follow it.

They're a bunch of people who got amazing powers mostly from vials while having backgrounds of illness, a med student, and a kid from a pre-industrial world.

And do they try to pull in any intelligence specialists or anything? Nope, they're sure they have it sorted.

Worm is, really, the Dunning-Kruger effect writ large on a superhero setting. No one with intelligence pulling it back or course correcting, just people with enough information to think they have mastery fucking everything up with an unwarranted assurance in their own excellence.

Look at Legend, he shows social improvement. He's moved forward LGBT rights a lot. It doesn't mean anything, though, because Capes are pushed to violence and any hopes of using powers for society are stymied.

Eidolon thinks he's the Superman of the setting, but has secret power loss issues and the big threats he can't go toe-to-toe with even though they're sandbagging.

And Alexandria is supposed to be the figurehead hero, the trope namer for flying bricks, who secretly leads the PRT. And she's a shadowy manipulator who gets killed by a teenager because her ability to read the room fails her when she doesn't have her power propping her up. Because for a supposed bastion of wisdom and powerful thinker, she's not thinking, just using her power to get answers.

Worm sucks, because most people just use their powers to do things instead of thinking.
 
Second step is noting the trend that replies have noticed that I'm not Ward compliant. There's a lot to unpack there, but the cliffs notes is that I don't find Ward compelling in any way.
And why the hell should you give a shit about that fuckload of other shit?

I, er, mean. you know. It's Wildbow. Why the fuck would you care, all he cares about is fucking over everything you might ever possibly like.
 
I feel like this is getting a bit aggressive. Worm is… Worm, but this is a Fanfic or however you'd actually title such a Quest. We can just push for a more enjoyable experience, and it isn't like Worm is terrible conceptually.

Also we've been in the Prologue for ages, it should totally be possible to influence things. Overall, while making this Comic Book level Super would make it Not Worm, just toning down the oppressive cynicism & seriousness should be doable.

Plus, we could try dealing with major problems- Obviously some are clearly late game stuff, but surely it shouldn't be too hard justifying QA(?) from hacking Broadcast or something.

One of the biggest menaces is just Jack Slash & Broadcast. In a vacuum they're kind of underwhelming, but being able to convince bigger fish to do things is a serious issue given his personality.
 
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Also we've been in the Prologue for ages, it should totally be possible to influence things. Overall, while making this Comic Book level Super would make it Not Worm, just toning down the oppressive cynicism & seriousness should be doable.

I agree in the general sense that I don't like a lot of the story beats in Worm, although I do find Wildbow's worldbuilding is generally good, or was before Ward.

On that note I didn't realize that Worm was YA fiction until well after reading it, so some of the head-scratchers might be intentional (or otherwise genre-compliant).

As far as the "Prologue" thing, well, this quest is old enough that I guess I can reveal that if you're interested:
I originally thought that Taylor would get powers in the first few chapters. That... didn't happen as quickly as I'd thought.
 
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Also we've been in the Prologue for ages, it should totally be possible to influence things.

I'm fairly certainly Vhal said at one point the fic was supposed to start with giving Taylor powers, so, really, that's kind of on us.

I have to admit, I kind of like the idea of going through the entire Quest and completing it while still technically in the 'Prologue,' only to see that Vhal will have to do now that the story has actually started.

Mostly because you know he'll still try and one-up it somehow.
 
Uh, what? Worm is categorically terrible. It's only the fanfic that rescues it.

I literally said "conceptually", that is not at all me claiming base Worm is good. I do not understand why you felt the need to pretend I was championing Worm.

I agree in the general sense that I don't like a lot of the story beats in Worm, although I do find Wildbow's worldbuilding is generally good, or was before Ward.

There's definitely interesting stuff, though admittedly some of the Cut Content / WoG / Whatever (like Whitelisters) would probably just complicate things if brought in.
 
[X] Keep the last turn and finish up the chapter-in-progress?
Yay, one of the fanfics that I was still checking after all this time :)
Ward can die in a ditch ;)
 
[X] Keep the last turn and finish up the chapter-in-progress?

Given the trend, I'm mostly voting to make it clear that I still care about this quest.
 
[X] Keep the last turn but allow new votes?


she is only 13. She's barely any older than Vista. Honestly, I am confused why nobody in-universe throws a fit about how the Obviously Evil White Supremacist group is actively deploying at least one Child Soldier
The main issue is that the only people who really can complain sre the PRT, who also use a child soldier who is even younger.
 
[X] Keep the last turn and finish up the chapter-in-progress?

Maybe modify some things, cause time, but no point in throwing away perfectly good content.

The main issue is that the only people who really can complain sre the PRT, who also use a child soldier who is even younger.

The Wards function rather differently though? I've seen a lot of fics that involve Vista complaining about how she's not really allowed to do anything of real value. Given she probably could go all Gate of Babylon, I can certainly understand the frustration.

It just seems weird they would pretty much ignore Teenage and Child villains. Far as I understand, the only time they ever did the obvious thing was some narrative excuse to have Purity go full bat guano.
 
it's quite nice to hear that this wonderful story will be back
and my vote would be for
[X] Keep the last turn and finish up the chapter-in-progress?
 
The Wards function rather differently though? I've seen a lot of fics that involve Vista complaining about how she's not really allowed to do anything of real value. Given she probably could go all Gate of Babylon, I can certainly understand the frustration.

It just seems weird they would pretty much ignore Teenage and Child villains. Far as I understand, the only time they ever did the obvious thing was some narrative excuse to have Purity go full bat guano.

The Wards are supposed to function differently but regularly see more combat than they should in Worm. For example the bank robbery, where almost all of them showed up without much if any adult oversight. There is also the that there are dozens if not hundreds of children employed by the PRT that are way too young to be legally employed, and they really don't want to be the one who starts the parahuman age issue.

Also, Vista is far less powerful than she or fannon think she is.
 
Also, Vista is far less powerful than she or fannon think she is.

Worm is so confusing to me, I honestly can't tell if that's correct or not. Just in general, I have seen wildly different takes on what is possible or whatever. The most neutral answer I have ever gotten was just "It depends on the author", which isn't really all that useful for establishing objective fact when one (or rather 50) would claim Sophia / Shadow Stalker is so meaningless the PRT wouldn't care if she dies despite how that logically shouldn't make sense.
 
Also, Vista is far less powerful than she or fannon think she is.

My understanding of Vista's power is "it depends". Specifically, it depends on her skill (at the moment) of how close to a living creature she can cleave her ability.

Now, the answer to the question "how well can she bend space, anyway" is never clearly answered in Worm. Might be a WOG out there but I generally don't trust those.
 
My understanding of Vista's power is "it depends". Specifically, it depends on her skill (at the moment) of how close to a living creature she can cleave her ability.

Now, the answer to the question "how well can she bend space, anyway" is never clearly answered in Worm. Might be a WOG out there but I generally don't trust those.
Imma gonna quote MPPi: "My power is line of sight. You know what's in line of sight from here? _Half the universe_."
 
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