Hazing, Heroism, and Hatred - Let's Read Worm!

Cat · Aug 27, 2015

What is Worm?

A web serial by Wildbow, totaling at 1.2 million words or so, Worm is the story of a girl who wants to be a hero but becomes a villain. A tale full of twists and turns, not heroes and not villains, Worm has many, many fans on both SB and SV, appealing to the baser nature of "what if though?" and a main character whose power seems useless at first.

Who am I?

Depending on where you're reading this, I'm one of two things - a much reviled, legendary shitposter or some idiot on a forum. However, I have read Worm about two and a half times, up to a certain point. I've read enough of it to really understand its themes, and know more about it then any normal person would ever want to know. And lord of lords, do I hate it.

But it's so good though!

It's certainly a decent web serial, but it's not a good narrative work. I'll explain why around Arc 20, which is 300,000 words into this clusterfuck of nonsense.

Rules of Engagement:

1. I will read Worm.
2. I will post about reading Worm.
3. Spoilers are not only allowed, they are encouraged.
4. Mockery is the name of the game, because Worm is not very good.
5. You are allowed to respond to my complaints! Please try to word them in such a way outside of "lol ur dumb + gay", because that is not a response, that is just saying something and expecting me to understand it.
6. Mercy Ruling: If at any point, I look like I am enjoying Worm, I must stop reading Worm for at least a month.

And now, let's get this show on the road.

Brief note from the author: This story isn't intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass.

Remember that if you are the type of person who enjoys happy events at all, you should probably not read Worm. Nobody in this is ever happy.

Class ended in five minutes and all I could think was, an hour is too long for lunch.

I find it to be rather short, to be honest.

Since the start of the semester, I had been looking forward to the part of Mr. Gladly's World Issues class where we'd start discussing capes. Now that it had finally arrived, I couldn't focus. I fidgeted, my pen moving from hand to hand, tapping, or absently drawing some figure in the corner of the page to join the other doodles. My eyes were restless too, darting from the clock above the door to Mr. Gladly and back to the clock. I wasn't picking up enough of his lesson to follow along. Twenty minutes to twelve; five minutes left before class ended.

He was animated, clearly excited about what he was talking about, and for once, the class was listening. He was the sort of teacher who tried to be friends with his students, the sort who went by "Mr. G" instead of Mr. Gladly. He liked to end class a little earlier than usual and chat with the popular kids, gave lots of group work so others could hang out with their friends in class, and had 'fun' assignments like mock trials.

I will say this for Worm; Wildbow knows how to burn words. But he does so in a very, very clever way - its a trick of first person. You can use 250 words to say what 5 would, and justify it with "She's a smart and intelligent character!"

He struck me as one of the 'popular' kids who had become a teacher. He probably thought he was everyone's favorite. I wondered how he'd react if he heard my opinion on the subject. Would it shatter his self image or would he shrug it off as an anomaly from the gloomy girl that never spoke up in class?

He's also very good at writing an angsty teenager, but that's never a positive.

I glanced over my shoulder. Madison Clements sat two rows to my left and two seats back. She saw me looking and smirked, her eyes narrowing, and I lowered my eyes to my notebook. I tried to ignore the ugly, sour feeling that stewed in my stomach. I glanced up at the clock. Eleven-forty-three.

Characters introduced who are irrelevant to the narrative despite all that indicators saying otherwise: 2.

"Let me wrap up here," Mr. Gladly said, "Sorry, guys, but there is homework for the weekend. Think about capes and how they've impacted the world around you. Make a list if you want, but it's not mandatory. On Monday we'll break up into groups of four and see what group has the best list. I'll buy the winning group treats from the vending machine."

There were a series of cheers, followed by the classroom devolving into noisy chaos. The room was filled with sounds of binders snapping shut, textbooks and notebooks being slammed closed, chairs screeching on cheap tile and the dull roar of emerging conversation. A bunch of the more social members of the class gathered around Mr. Gladly to chat.

Me? I just put my books away and kept quiet. I'd written down almost nothing in the way of notes; there were collections of doodles spreading across the page and numbers in the margins where I'd counted down the minutes to lunch as if I was keeping track of the timer on a bomb.

Unnecessary paragraphs, and a style that seems far more suited to Omniscient Third then First? Worm always knows how to really grab the reader, by having the first chapter be nearly 3,000 words and having the balls and gumption to tell us all about the excruciating minutiae of an angsty teenager's high school life.

Madison was talking with her friends. She was popular, but not gorgeous in the way the stereotypical popular girls on TV were. She was 'adorable', instead. Petite. She played up the image with sky blue pins in her shoulder length brown hair and a cutesy attitude. Madison wore a strapless top and denim skirt, which seemed absolutely moronic to me given the fact that it was still early enough in the spring that we could see our breath in the mornings.

I wasn't exactly in a position to criticize her. Boys liked her and she had friends, while the same was hardly true for me. The only feminine feature I had going for me was my dark curly hair, which I'd grown long. The clothes I wore didn't show skin, and I didn't deck myself out in bright colors like a bird showing off its plumage.

Guys liked her, I think, because she was appealing without being intimidating.

If they only knew.

If only more people were like our main character, who is pure and delicate, like a flower in the sun. Truly she is both noble, honorable, and the most amazing person who ever walked the face of the Earth.

As soon as there was a free stall, I let myself in and locked the door. I leaned against the wall and exhaled slowly. It wasn't quite a sigh of relief. Relief implied you felt better. I wouldn't feel better until I got home. No, I just felt less uneasy.

It took maybe five minutes before the noise of others in the washroom stopped. A peek below the partitions showed that there was nobody else in the other stalls. I sat on the lid of the toilet and got my brown bag lunch to begin eating.

Lunch on the toilet was routine now. Every school day, I would finish off my brown bag lunch, then I'd do homework or read a book until lunch hour was over. The only book in my bag that I hadn't already read was called 'Triumvirate', a biography of the leading three members of the Protectorate. I was thinking I would spend as long as I could on Mr. Gladly's assignment before reading, because I wasn't enjoying the book. Biographies weren't my thing, and they were especially not my thing when I was suspicious it was all made up.

Whatever my plan, I didn't even have a chance to finish my pita wrap. The door of the bathroom banged open. I froze. I didn't want to rustle the bag and clue anyone into what I was doing, so I kept still and listened.

I couldn't make out the voices. The noise of the conversation was obscured by giggling and the sound of water from the sinks. There was a knock on the door, making me jump. I ignored it, but the person on the other side just repeated the knock.

I wouldn't mind the opening chapter if Worm was a detailed Slice of Life novel about a shy introverted girl who becomes outgoing and super cool, instead of a gritty superhero story. Because I just straight up made like a pastry maker and glazed over half of this.

"Occupied," I called out, hesitantly.
"Oh my god, it's Taylor!" one of the girls on the outside exclaimed with glee,

"She's my favorite member of the Spice Girls!"

then in response to something another girl whispered, I barely heard her add, "Yeah, do it!"

I stood up abruptly, letting the brown bag with the last mouthful of my lunch fall to the tiled floor. Rushing for the door, I popped the lock open and pushed. The door didn't budge.

There were noises from the stalls on either side of me, then a sound above me. I looked up to see what it was, only to get splashed in the face. My eyes started burning, and I was momentarily blinded by the stinging fluid in my eyes and my blurring of my glasses. I could taste it as it ran down to my nose and mouth. Cranberry juice.

They didn't stop there. I managed to pull my glasses off just in time to see Madison and Sophia leaning over the top of the stall, each of them with plastic bottles at the ready. I bent over with my hands shielding my head just before they emptied the contents over me.

I know that the high school I went too was totally okay with extensive, ridiculous campaigns against a single person. Every bullied kid at my school was naturally picked on by groups of ten or more, while everyone else watched and egged them on because that is 100% How People Act. I'll go into detail on Wildbow's creepy worldview later, because it's mildly terrifying.

It ran down the back of my neck, soaked my clothes, fizzed as it ran through my hair. I pushed against the door again, but the girl on the other side was braced against it with her body.

If the girls pouring juice and soda on me were Madison and Sophia, that meant the girl on the other side of the door was Emma, leader of the trio. Feeling a flare of anger at the realization, I shoved on the door, the full weight of my body slamming against it. I didn't accomplish anything, and my shoes lost traction on the juice-slick floor. I fell to my knees in the puddling juice.

Empty plastic bottles with labels for grape and cranberry juice fell to the ground around me. A bottle of orange soda bounced off my shoulder to splash into the puddle before rolling under the partition and into the next stall. The smell of the fruity drinks and sodas was sickly sweet.

I've read Worm before, so let me let you in on something for all you newcomers:

None of this matters at all. None of this is relevant in any way, shape, or form except tangentially. Two of the characters in this sequence aren't even nearly as important as one of them and spoilers - that one character has more effect on Taylor, despite having no relationship to her, not being the type of person to care about her, and only bullies her because THE WEAK ARE MEAT FOR THE STRONG TO EAT. Thanks Worm, I too enjoy deeply intrinsic moral characters such as this.

The door swung open, and I glared up at the three girls. Madison, Sophia and Emma. Where Madison was cute, a late bloomer, Sophia and Emma were the types of girls that fit the 'prom queen' image. Sophia was dark skinned, with a slender, athletic build she'd developed as a runner on the school track team. Red-headed Emma, by contrast, had all the curves the guys wanted. She was good looking enough to get occasional jobs as a amateur model for the catalogs that the local department stores and malls put out. The three of them were laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world, but the sounds of their amusement barely registered with me. My attention was on the faint roar of blood pumping in my ears and an urgent, ominous crackling 'sound' that wouldn't get any quieter or less persistent if I covered my ears with my hands. I could feel dribbles running down my arms and back, still chilled from the refrigerated vending machines.

This happens a lot with Worm. Characters are only vaguely described, so that you have very little of a picture in your head of what anyone looks like, at all. And for a novel about superheroes, you can imagine how fun that gets with costumes!

I didn't trust myself to say something that wouldn't give them fodder to taunt me with, so I kept silent.

Carefully, I climbed to my feet and turned my back on them to get my backpack off the top of the toilet. Seeing it gave me pause. It had been a khaki green, before, but now dark purple blotches covered it, most of the contents of a bottle of grape juice. Pulling the straps around my shoulders, I turned around. The girls weren't there. I heard the bathroom door bang shut, cutting off the sounds of their glee, leaving me alone in the bathroom, drenched.

The backpack is my current favorite character, because I know what it looks like.

I approached the sink and stared at myself in the scratched, stained mirror that was bolted above it. I had inherited a thin lipped, wide, expressive mouth from my mother, but my large eyes and my gawky figure made me look a lot more like my dad. My dark hair was soaked enough that it clung to my scalp, neck and shoulders. I was wearing a brown hooded sweatshirt over a green t-shirt, but colored blotches of purple, red and orange streaked both. My glasses were beaded with the multicolored droplets of juice and soda. A drip ran down my nose and fell from the tip to land in the sink.

I think I made Taylor once when I was playing Morrowind.

Using a paper towel from the dispenser, I wiped my glasses off and put them on again. The residual streaks made it just as hard to see, if not worse than it had been.

Deep breaths, Taylor, I told myself.

I pulled the glasses off to clean them again with a wet towel, and found the streaks were still there.

Counting to ten is how I always recover from organized attacks on me by 12 people.

An inarticulate scream of fury and frustration escaped my lips, and I kicked the plastic bucket that sat just beneath the sink, sending it and the toilet brush inside flying into the wall. When that wasn't enough, I pulled off my backpack and used a two-handed grip to hurl it. I wasn't using my locker anymore: certain individuals had vandalized or broken into it on four different occasions. My bag was heavy, loaded down with everything I'd anticipated needing for the day's classes. It crunched audibly on impact with the wall.

"What the fuck!?" I screamed to nobody in particular, my voice echoing in the bathroom. There were tears in the corners of my eyes.

"The hell am I supposed to do!?" I wanted to hit something, break something. To retaliate against the unfairness of the world. I almost struck the mirror, but I held back. It was such a small thing that it felt like it would make me feel more insignificant instead of venting my frustration.

I'd been enduring this from the very first day of high school, a year and a half ago. The bathroom had been the closest thing I could find to refuge. It had been lonely and undignified, but it had been a place I could retreat to, a place where I was off their radar. Now I didn't even have that.

Hey Wildbow, what do you think your Superhero Novel about saving the entire multiverse should open with? A small scale fight? Against robbers or something?
:sad:

No way! A ludicrously elaborate campaign that seems more like a drug raid then anything else is the perfect opener!

Are you sure? That seems-
:sad:

You dare to question me, the creator?! Truly it is the most innovative and clever way to open it. I'll make sure that nothing interesting happens at all!

I didn't even know what I was supposed to do for my afternoon classes. Our midterm project for art was due, and I couldn't go to class like this. Sophia would be there, and I could just imagine her smug smile of satisfaction as I showed up looking like I'd botched an attempt to tie-dye everything I owned.

Besides, I'd just thrown my bag against the wall and I doubted my project was still in one piece.

The buzzing at the edge of my consciousness was getting worse. My hands shook as I bent over and gripped the edge of the sink, let out a long, slow breath, and let my defenses drop. For three months, I'd held back. Right now? I didn't care anymore.

Oh no, did she bring a gun?!

I shut my eyes and felt the buzzing crystallize into concrete information. As numerous as stars in the night sky, tiny knots of intricate data filled the area around me. I could focus on each one in turn, pick out details. The clusters of data had been reflexively drifting towards me since I was first splashed in the face. They responded to my subconscious thoughts and emotions, as much of a reflection of my frustration, my anger, my hatred for those three girls as my pounding heart and trembling hands were. I could make them stop or direct them to move almost without thinking about it, the same way I could raise an arm or twitch a finger.

Stop or direct them with a gun!?

I opened my eyes. I could feel adrenaline thrumming through my body, blood coursing in my veins. I shivered in response to the chilled soft drinks and juices the trio had poured over me, with anticipation and with just a little fear. On every surface of the bathroom were bugs; Flies, ants, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, earwigs, beetles, wasps and bees. With every passing second, more streamed in through the open window and the various openings in the bathroom, moving with surprising speed. Some crawled in through a gap where the sink drain entered the wall while others emerged from the triangular hole in the ceiling where a section of foam tile had broken off, or from the opened window with peeling paint and cigarette butts squished out in the recesses. They gathered around me and spread out over every available surface; primitive bundles of signals and responses, waiting for further instruction.

My practice sessions, conducted away from prying eyes, told me I could direct a single insect to move an antennae, or command the gathered horde to move in formation. With one thought, I could single out a particular group, maturity or species from this jumble and direct them as I wished. An army of soldiers under my complete control.

That's a ludicrous number of bugs to be here inside of a school. Also yes, Taylor can control bugs. It is the weakest power.

It would be so easy, so easy to just go Carrie on the school. To give the trio their just desserts and make them regret what they had put me through: the vicious e-mails, the trash they'd upended over my desk, the flute –my mother's flute– they'd stolen from my locker. It wasn't just them either. Other girls and a small handful of boys had joined in, 'accidentally' skipping over me when passing out assignment handouts, adding their own voices to the taunts and the flood of nasty emails, to get the favor and attention of three of the prettier and more popular girls in our grade.

I was all too aware that I'd get caught and arrested if I attacked my fellow students. There were three teams of superheroes and any number of solo heroes in the city. I didn't really care. The thought of my father seeing the aftermath on the news, his disappointment in me, his shame? That was more daunting, but it still didn't outweigh the anger and frustration.

I'm pretty sure the phrase "Organized Attack by half the student body" means that you'd probably be justified, and get let off with a warning. Like, 200 hours of community service.

Except I was better than that.

Lies told in this chapter: 12.

With a sigh, I sent an instruction to the gathered swarm. Disperse. The word wasn't as important as the idea behind it. They began to exit the room, disappearing into the cracks in the tile and through the open window. I walked over to the door and stood with my back to it so nobody could stumble onto the scene before the bugs were all gone.

The weakest power.

However much I wanted to, I couldn't really follow through. Even as I trembled with humiliation, I managed to convince myself to pick up my backpack and head down the hall. I made my way out of the school, ignoring the stares and giggles from everyone I walked past, and caught the first bus that headed in the general direction of home. The chill of early spring compounded the discomfort of my soaked hair and clothes, making me shiver.

Skipping school is okay as long as you are the target of a bullying campaign, and the most noble and heroic person of all time, ever, forever.

I was going to be a superhero. That was the goal I used to calm myself down at moments like these. It was what I used to make myself get out of bed on a school day. It was a crazy dream that made things tolerable. It was something to look forward to, something to work towards. It made it possible to keep from dwelling on the fact that Emma Barnes, leader of the trio, had once been my best friend.

I like to refer to Emma as "not narratively relevant".

CornyBones · Aug 27, 2015

Oh lord, this is actually happening....

FriedIce · Aug 27, 2015

Didn't you, at one point, write Worm fanfiction?

Cat · Aug 27, 2015

FriedIce said:
Didn't you, at one point, write Worm fanfiction?

There have been dark times in my life, yes.

Speckled Burd · Aug 27, 2015

FriedIce said:
Didn't you, at one point, write Worm fanfiction?

It's not unreasonable for someone to write Fanfiction for a setting that has elements that they like even if they don't like the work as a whole. Familiar of Zero has scores of fanfiction from people who at the same time decry anything and everything about it after all.

It's also not unreasonable for someone to enjoy reading a work initially and then have the entire thing collapse in on itself after having time to analyze it fully. I initially enjoyed Worm as well after essentially speed reading the entire thing over the course of a few weeks, but after having enough time to actually consider a lot of the themes, the worldbuilding around the themes, and taking some time away from the bandwagon I came to the conclusion that I didn't like Worm very much either.

Shockz · Aug 27, 2015

FriedIce said:
Didn't you, at one point, write Worm fanfiction?

Judging by how much time he's spent talking about it on IRC, I'm pretty sure Cat's relationship with Worm is much like my relationship with To Aru or SAO.

Which is to say, he wouldn't hate it nearly so much if not for the tiny little corner of his brain that loves it.

Or, more concisely, tsun tsun~.

Thor · Aug 27, 2015

Cat? Reading and commentating on all of Worm for the world to see?

dis gun b gud.

Who? · Aug 31, 2015

I've tried to read Worm, but I could never get past the first chapter honestly. It just dragged on and on. I'll be interested to see this.

Cmdr Stoat · Aug 31, 2015

You missed a really great opportunity to put heroism in quotation marks on the title there cat.

Jcogginsa · Aug 31, 2015

So if i understand the first post correctly, you're basically just gonna waste our time until Arc twenty?

Who? said:
I've tried to read Worm, but I could never get past the first chapter honestly. It just dragged on and on. I'll be interested to see this.

I recomend checking out Doc Mod's read through for a more even handed take on it

ngreennz · Aug 31, 2015

Hey, someone else who feels the way I feel about Worm! I made it as far as Canary's interlude before I nope'd the first time, and was dragged back into it until after the Leviathan thing when the pace slacked off and I could mostly put it out of mind. Just... damn, it felt like it sucked the color out of the world.

Egleris · Sep 1, 2015

Cat said:
5. You are allowed to respond to my complaints! Please try to word them in such a way outside of "lol ur dumb + gay", because that is not a response, that is just saying something and expecting me to understand it.

Challenge accepted.

Cat said:
I find it to be rather short, to be honest.

I kinda think that's the point, you know? If you're a normal kid who enjoys spending time out of class and being free from any supervision, then it's too short. But if you're a bullied teen who sees it as the time when you can be subjected to far heavier "pranks" due to the lack of supervision, and have to spend it in hiding, then it's far, far too long.

Cat said:
I will say this for Worm; Wildbow knows how to burn words. But he does so in a very, very clever way - its a trick of first person. You can use 250 words to say what 5 would, and justify it with "She's a smart and intelligent character!"

He's also very good at writing an angsty teenager, but that's never a positive.

...his writing style is meant to convey you the character, and it's wordy because it reflects her thought processes. How is being able to properly convey the character he wants you to read about not a positive? It's a skill, one most people don't have, which automatically makes it a plus - the story allows us to get Taylor's personality just by reading. Showing rather than telling; there's published author who don't manage this half as well.

Not sure why that should be something to dislike.

Cat said:
Characters introduced who are irrelevant to the narrative despite all that indicators saying otherwise: 2.

Well, that's opinable; I don't think that there are "indicators saying otherwise". These are minor characters who appear in, I think, a total of five chapters or so - they are meant to be background characters that give substance to Taylor's backstory. They were never meant to be important characters, the story never tries to fool you about that - it's a story about superheroes, and these people aren't superheroes. If anything, it's a point in his favour that he spends time fleshing out even minor character so they are less of a cardboard cutout than they could be.

Cat said:
Unnecessary paragraphs, and a style that seems far more suited to Omniscient Third then First? Worm always knows how to really grab the reader, by having the first chapter be nearly 3,000 words and having the balls and gumption to tell us all about the excruciating minutiae of an angsty teenager's high school life.

Well, some people like to call that characterization - you know, explainig the character's mental state. Which these paragraphs do, by showing the contrast between the other people's and Taylor's reactions to class ending.

Cat said:
If only more people were like our main character, who is pure and delicate, like a flower in the sun. Truly she is both noble, honorable, and the most amazing person who ever walked the face of the Earth.

She's not. She herself doesn't think to be. Other people, even her friends, when she later gains some, don't think she is. The narrative itself often points out very starkly when and how she's wrong and often hypocrital. So... I don't get what you're trying to say here.

Cat said:
I wouldn't mind the opening chapter if Worm was a detailed Slice of Life novel about a shy introverted girl who becomes outgoing and super cool, instead of a gritty superhero story. Because I just straight up made like a pastry maker and glazed over half of this.

So you only like characterization in slice of life stories, but you don't like it in action stories? I guess that'd explain why you dislike Worm. Having said that, disliking the type of story is not the same as the story being bad, you know? It just means it's not to your tastes; you're allowed to dislike it, of course, but saying that the story is of low quality simply because it isn't a genre you like is not really fair.

Cat said:
"She's my favorite member of the Spice Girls!"

I know that the high school I went too was totally okay with extensive, ridiculous campaigns against a single person. Every bullied kid at my school was naturally picked on by groups of ten or more, while everyone else watched and egged them on because that is 100% How People Act. I'll go into detail on Wildbow's creepy worldview later, because it's mildly terrifying.

Assuming this was sarcastically speaking (ie, you said it because it wasn't how things went in your school for real) then you were very, very lucky growing up.

When I was thirteen, one of my classmates almost pushed me down a window - we were on the second floor, if i hadn't grabbed the frame, I'd have fallen through. This happened in the classroom (it was lunch-hour, but our school didn't have a garden nor lunchroom so we had to all eat in class), in front of all of my other classmates (nearly 20 people), and nobody tried to help me. If the window's glass han't been shattered by how I'd been pushed through it, I don't think i'd have been believed - and even with that, all that happened was that my classmate got a warning.

And this is but one instance - I witnessed a number, I was on both sides of it too, but these things happen for real. Wildbow mentioned that all the bullying incidents he used in the story (yes, even the trigger) were based on stories that he was told while working in a support group for bullied children - and that he toned a lot of them down. I have no trouble believing him.

In short: yes, the bullying in this story is extremely realistic. If you were in one of the good schools where bullying didn't hapened, then lucky you; that doesn't make the thing any less believable.

Cat said:
I've read Worm before, so let me let you in on something for all you newcomers:

None of this matters at all. None of this is relevant in any way, shape, or form except tangentially. Two of the characters in this sequence aren't even nearly as important as one of them and spoilers - that one character has more effect on Taylor, despite having no relationship to her, not being the type of person to care about her, and only bullies her because THE WEAK ARE MEAT FOR THE STRONG TO EAT. Thanks Worm, I too enjoy deeply intrinsic moral characters such as this.

There is a slgihtly more nuanced reason than you're making it look like behind why this happen. Since spoilers are allowed, I'll tell the newcomers that both Sophia and Emma get a capter each written from their point of view, eventually, and if you read those two back to back, what happened to Taylor and why becomes very, very clear.

I will agree that these girls are not deeply moral characters, and what's more, I also agree that there wasn't a particular reason the (slightly) more important character between the two of them would care about Taylor - it was the other character who had the reason to care and who pushed the more important one into it. So, there was a reason for the more important girl's actions, which had not very much to do with the (admittedly silly, which is par for the course since she's a teenager too) "life philosophy" she aders to.

As for why these happenings, and this chapter in particular, matter (and they matter a lot, not just tangentially): Taylor (spoilers from chapter 2) had had her power for three months here, and she was just dallying and doing nothing with it. This is the moment where she finally decides to start using it for real; this is the event that sets the story ito motion - which is why this is where the story begins. It is necessary that the story start here for it to make sense, so yes, this chapters and what happen in it is just as important as the rest, because without it, Worm woud not have happened.

Cat said:
This happens a lot with Worm. Characters are only vaguely described, so that you have very little of a picture in your head of what anyone looks like, at all. And for a novel about superheroes, you can imagine how fun that gets with costumes!

While this is true, you are somewhat exaggerating - the descriptions are minimalist, but they're enough to give us ways to distinguish between characters who appear more than once. And the costumes themselves are usually decribed to some extent - it's usually the more mundane looks of unmasked people who are kept very, very short.

Cat said:
Counting to ten is how I always recover from organized attacks on me by 12 people.

First of all, here it's only three people attacking Taylor, not twelve - exaggerating to make stories harder to believe is one of the things bullies bank on to avoid reprisal. I ask of you, please, do not support that behaviour.

Second, while that trick doesn't work for everybody, sometimes it does; it's just a matter of how much control you have on your insticts. Taylor, in particular, is very good at keeping herself in control, so it fits that such a system would work for her.

Cat said:
That's a ludicrous number of bugs to be here inside of a school. Also yes, Taylor can control bugs. It is the weakest power.

Every day when I clean home, I have to kill something like a dozen spiders. Everything else also seems like things I'd find in my garden (which is a 12x5 meters area), except for the bees. I see nothing unbelievable about these numbers of bugs being in a school, either - if anything, assuming she's called up every bug in the entire school, I'd think those are a bit less than I'd expect.

As for the power being weak: only Taylor thinks that, nobody else in the story does. At one point, she's talking with an hero who's speaking of how some people have really minor, weak powers, and Taylor says "like my own?" to which the hero answers by looking at her funny and saying "no". Taylor likes to self flagellate, but that's just it, self-flagellation. The story expects the reader to realize this, to understand that Taylor finds herself more comfortable if she plays the victim. We're not expected to take everything she says at face value, and in regard to her power in particular, she's quite obviously completely wrong; her power is incredibly strong.

Of course, and here's a spoiler: Taylor actually has two powers, not one. The first, most major and devastatingly useful one is her ability to concentrate on hundreds of simultaneous tasks and coordinate them with perfect precision, as well as correctly interpreting and processing informations from millions of different sources at once. Controlling bugs, while still pretty amazing by itself, is really secondary, and without the primary power of unlimited multitasking, it wouldn't be nearly as effective as Taylor makes it look like it is.

Cat said:
I'm pretty sure the phrase "Organized Attack by half the student body" means that you'd probably be justified, and get let off with a warning. Like, 200 hours of community service.

If you truly are that sure, then you're pretty wrong: turning a potentially deadly weapon (which Taylor's power is) on people who have done nothing more than provoking you with insults, emails, and vandalism is absolutely NOT fine - indeed, I don't think you would even get any reduction since your assault would be premeditated. Or do you think you're allowed to shot at anybody who says demeaning things to you? And besides, assuming the bullying could be proved (whichit cannot be, of course), the lawful thing to do woul be to turn to the authorities, not to assault your bullies; psychological violence is funny that way, it's treated differently by the law from physical one. Than again, I'm no lawyer - maybe somebody who is can give a more expert opinion on the matter.

Cat said:
Lies told in this chapter: 12.

I do hope that is a typo, because otherwise, you're exaggerating again. Also, this is not a lie; Taylor thinks of herself as better than her tormentors because she doesn't snap at them.

Now, this can be right or wrong (I belive there's a Worm morality thread somewhere dedicated to debating exactly that), but as far as she is concerned, it is true, she believes it to be so. So, no, it is not a lie, it is merely Taylor's opinion. If you disagree with it, that's good; I honestly think she's better than her tormentors but not nearly as much as she likes to think, but to each their own interpretation.

Cat said:
Skipping school is okay as long as you are the target of a bullying campaign, and the most noble and heroic person of all time, ever, forever.

Eh, not really; the narrative surely doesn't paint it that way, as it will become clear later. I'm really not sure what you're trying to convey with a comment like this one; sure, Taylor thinks she's justified, but she's not always right - in fact, I'd say about two out of three times, the narrative actually wants you to realize that Taylor is doing the wrong thing. There's even a caption in the title somewhere, about how Taylor does the wrong thing quite often - and I do mean wrong as in "she should not have done it", not any of the other possible interpretations of the word. Taylor makes a lot of mistakes, and the story doesn't want you to think she doesn't make them - the story wants you to realize that she's doing them.

Cat said:
I like to refer to Emma as "not narratively relevant".

I suppose you think the same of the group of terrorists that start the plot of the first Iron Man film; they have about the same narrative relevance as Emma does here - minor character(s) who push the protagonist into changing their life and using their ability to the fullest they can (plus, minor connections to a later antagonist). That might not be "narratively relevant" to you, but I personally think that it is actually quite important for them to be in the story - they help us readers to understand the protagonist's psychology, and to see the protagonist before their transformation. It's a very useful narrative device, in my opinion.

Cmdr Stoat · Sep 2, 2015

Hey Cat, would you be interested in reading past arc 20?, i think there's some material that would be interesting to see you comment on.

Cmdr Stoat · Sep 2, 2015

LordYam said:
I think the person who made Sophia simplistic was making her pathetic. As in fundamentally she's rather weak rather than the strong badass she paints herself as. Honestly, Cat seems like either a.) an idiot who can't comprehend the plot or b.) a troll

Why is it not okay to mock this?. Is it some sort of sacred text or genre saving work that should be venerated for ages to come and i missed a memo?

LordYam · Sep 2, 2015

No its because the arguments Cat used is demonstrably false. If someone were to say Worm was overly dark at times is right. Hell Polokun's statement that Worm could use more levity is one I don't dispute.

NonSequtur · Sep 2, 2015

LordYam said:
No its because the arguments Cat used are demonstrably false.

Presumably you can demonstrate their falsehood, then.

LordYam · Sep 2, 2015

Egleris did a good job. Also Taylor herself is repeatedly willing to admit her flaws. I never said it wasn't okay to mock Worm. If you're going to critique stick to things about how the story is uneven or overly dark at times.

Cat flat out stated that Taylor is meant to be seen as a perfect character when the text itself makes clear she's in the wrong. Cat also claims that the portrayal of bullying is unrealistic; Egleris described a similar situation where he was almost pushed out a window and the teacher let the bully off with a warning and that wildbow based the stuff in the story on toned down versions of stories he'd heard as part of a bully victim support group.

Cat · Sep 5, 2015

However, I have read Worm about two and a half times, up to a certain point.

My favorite part of this thread is when people do not read what I wrote and then try to explain things to Worm about me like I have not read it all before.

e - Because of that, I must go back into the deep, dark pit that is Worm Arc 1.2 - In Which Taylor Is On A Bus And Nothing Happens.

Tempera · Sep 5, 2015

Egleris said:
...his writing style is meant to convey you the character, and it's wordy because it reflects her thought processes. How is being able to properly convey the character he wants you to read about not a positive? It's a skill, one most people don't have, which automatically makes it a plus - the story allows us to get Taylor's personality just by reading. Showing rather than telling; there's published author who don't manage this half as well.

There's a fairly simple answer to that; something doesn't automatically read well just because it reflects a character's thought processes. Furthermore, showing how much someone thinks doesn't mean cluttering the narrative with words. Brevity is a skill, although Wildbow seems to disagree.

Not a whole lot happens in the opening chapter of Worm, despite the ridiculous wordcount of it. The wordcount could be trimmed to a quarter the count and still work exactly as well as it did. Hell, you could drop the opening fucking segment- the entirety of 1.1- and still convey the tone, atmosphere, and all the relevant information during a scene a fifth the size later during the narrative.

"Show, don't tell" is advice you give to a twelve year old when they first begin writing, not to someone attempting a 1.7 million word saga. A vital skill in writing is knowing that at times, you're going to have to tell the audience things rather than show them so you don't end up with ridiculous word bloat.

Figuring out when you should show instead of tell is one of the ways professionals distinguish themselves from amateurs.

Cat · Sep 5, 2015

Arc 1.2.01 - In Which Taylor Is On A Bus And Nothing Happens.

So I'm going to cut down on the reading bit because Worm is awful and there's so much of it.

My thoughts were on Emma on the bus ride home. For an outside observer, I think it's easy to trivialize the importance of a 'best friend', but when you're a kid, there's nobody more important.

Friends are pretty cool. I wish Taylor had some.

Emma had been my 'BFF' from grade one all the way through middle school. It hadn't been enough for us to spend our time together at school, so we had alternated staying at each others houses every weekend. I remember my mother saying that we were so close we were practically sisters.

I have friends from first grade right now. I've know them for 13 years.

A friendship that deep is intimate. Not in the rude way, but just in terms of a no-holds-barred sharing of every vulnerability and weakness.

"She'd piledrive me with a secret and I'd retaliate with an armbar of vulnerability."

So when I got back from nature camp just a week before our first year at high school started, to find that she wasn't talking to me? That she was calling Sophia her best friend?

Why did Taylor go to nature camp? From all that we've learned of her she seems far more suited for space camp, or computer camp, or a camp that didn't involve lots of activity outside.

Discovering that she was now using every one of those secrets and vulnerabilities I had shared with her to wound me in the most vicious ways she could think of? It was crushing. There's just no better way to say it.

"I had to get an assist to give me the Chair of Perpetual Sorrow."

Unwilling to dwell on it any longer, I turned my attention to my backpack, setting it on the seat beside me and sorting through the contents. Grape juice had stained it, and I had a suspicion I would have to get a new one.

You can use a stained backpack as long as you let it dry out, Taylor. It's not like the stains impede you from throwing stuff in it.

I had bought it just four months ago, after my old one had been taken from my locker, and it had been just twelve bucks, so it wasn't a huge issue.

Why didn't you report it to the school?

The fact that my notebooks, textbooks and the two novels I'd shoved into my bag were wet with grape juice was more troubling. I suspected that whichever girl had been holding the grape juice had aimed for the open top of my bag as she poured it.

I'd forgotten for a brief, glorious moment that I'd needed textbooks in high school. It was wonderful.

I noted the destruction of my art project – the box I'd put it in was collapsed on the one side. That bit was my fault.

"It is hard being as glorious and amazing as me."

My heart sank as I found the notebook with the white and black speckled hardcover. The corner of the paper was soaked through with as much as a quarter of each page stained purple. The ink had diluted and the pages were already turning wavy.

That's actually some nice detail, cheers.

That notebook was – had been – my notes and journal for my hero career. The testing and training I'd done with my powers, pages of crossed out name ideas, even the measurements I was using for my costume in progress.

You control bugs, Taylor. Just call yourself the Arachniac or Hivesmind. You can have catchy lines like "Buzz off!" as your catchphrase.

After Emma, Madison and Sophia had stolen my last backpack and stuffed it in a wastebasket, I had realized how big a danger it was to have everything written down like that. I had copied everything over into a new notebook in a simple cipher and wrote it bottom to top.

"After they nearly uncovered my secret identity once, I knew there was nothing I could do but bring it to school again. Except this time in code."

Now that notebook was spoiled, and I was looking at having to copy some two hundred pages of detailed writing into a new notebook if I wanted to preserve the information. If I could even remember what was on all of the ruined pages.

Yeah, I'd hate to forget that I'd nearly decided my superhero name was AntAgonist. That's one for the history books right there.

The bus stopped a block away from my house, and I got off, trying to ignore the stares.

You're a high school girl roaming around at like, noon. Of course people are staring.

Even with the gawking, the knowledge that my notebook was ruined and my general nervousness about missing afternoon classes without permission, I felt better as I got closer to home.

It felt worlds better to know I could drop my guard, stop watching my back and that I could take a break from wondering when the next incident would happen.

I let myself into the house and headed straight for the shower, not even removing my backpack or taking off my shoes until I was in the bathroom.

I stood under the stream with my clothes on the floor of the tub, hoping the water would help get the worst of the juice out. I pondered.

That's all you ever do.

I don't know who said it, but at one point I had come across this notion about taking a negative and turning it into a positive. I tried to take the day's events and turn them around in my head, to see if I couldn't find a more positive twist on it.

"At least I left school early."

Okay, so the first thing that came to mind was "Yet another reason to kill the trio."

Noble and delicate.

It wasn't a serious thought – I was angry, but it wasn't like I was going to actually kill them.

Like a flower.

Somehow, I suspected that I'd hurt myself before I hurt them. I was humiliated, frustrated, pissed, and I always had a weapon available – my power.

But it's so weak, Taylor! How will you be able to kill three girls with a power that covers several city blocks!?

It was like having a loaded gun in your hand at all times.

I knew she brought a gun school.

Except my power wasn't that great, so maybe it was more like having a taser.

The weakest power.

It was hard not to think about using it when things got really bad. Still, I didn't think I had that killer instinct in me.

I'm saving that line for future reference.

No, I told myself, forcing myself back to the subject of positive thinking. Were there any upsides?

When you can't think of anything nice, just remember that at least you're trying.

Art project wrecked, clothes probably unrecoverable, needing a new backpack… notebook. Somehow my mind fixated on that last part.

It's almost like you brought it to school despite that being a terrible idea or something.

I cranked the shower to off, then toweled dry, thinking.

Taylor's thought process is the most boring thing in the world. It's like watching paint dry, except the paint is of bugs and superheroes.

I wrapped the towel around me, and rather than head to my room to get dressed, I put my wet clothes into a laundry hamper, grabbed my backpack and headed downstairs, through the kitchen and into the basement.

I went to the basement would have sufficed.

My house is old, and the basement was never renovated. The walls and floor are concrete and the ceiling was exposed boards and electrical cords. The furnace used to be coal fueled, and there was still an old coal chute, two feet by two feet, where the coal trucks used to come by to unload the winter's supply of coal for heating the house.

This story has about as many interesting elements as coal.

The chute was boarded up, but around the time I was copying my original 'superpower notebook' over in code, I had decided to play it safe in all respects and start getting creative with my privacy. It was then that I'd started using it.

Nobody ever checks the basement when looking for something.

I removed one screw and removed the square wooden panel with the peeling white paint that covered the low end of the coal chute. I retrieved a gym bag from inside and put the panel back in place without screwing it back in.

Aren't gym bags kind of big? Like, I only have to fit boxing gloves and shit in mine, but I mean normal ones.

I emptied the contents of the gym bag on the disused workbench that the house's previous owner had left in our basement, then opened the windows that were at the same level as the driveway and front garden. I closed my eyes and spent a minute exercising my power. I wasn't just grabbing every creepy crawly in a two block radius, though. I was being selective, and I was gathering quite a few.

I'm going to stop saying the weakest power every time Taylor does something totally ridiculous with her power. I might go back to it later.

It would take time for all of them to arrive. Bugs could move faster than you thought when they moved with purpose in a straight line, but even so, two blocks was a lot of ground for something so small to cover.

Wouldn't somebody step on them? Bugs are pretty terrifying.

I busied myself with opening the bag and sorting out the contents. My costume.

!!

Jcogginsa · Sep 5, 2015

Most of your complaints seem incredibly petty.

100thlurker · Sep 5, 2015

Cat said:
My favorite part of this thread is when people do not read what I wrote and then try to explain things to Worm about me like I have not read it all before.

Cat, you just got

Wormsplained.

Egleris · Sep 5, 2015

Tempera said:
There's a fairly simple answer to that; something doesn't automatically read well just because it reflects a character's thought processes. Furthermore, showing how much someone thinks doesn't mean cluttering the narrative with words. Brevity is a skill, although Wildbow seems to disagree.

Not a whole lot happens in the opening chapter of Worm, despite the ridiculous wordcount of it. The wordcount could be trimmed to a quarter the count and still work exactly as well as it did. Hell, you could drop the opening fucking segment- the entirety of 1.1- and still convey the tone, atmosphere, and all the relevant information during a scene a fifth the size later during the narrative.

"Show, don't tell" is advice you give to a twelve year old when they first begin writing, not to someone attempting a 1.7 million word saga. A vital skill in writing is knowing that at times, you're going to have to tell the audience things rather than show them so you don't end up with ridiculous word bloat.

Figuring out when you should show instead of tell is one of the ways professionals distinguish themselves from amateurs.

That's not the definition I would use, it is muddled and lacks in clarity. The way I see it, "professional writer" means "a person who makes their living from writing" while "amateur writer" means "a person who writes for fun but makes their living with a different job". This is the ways professionals distinguish themselves from amateurs, by getting people to pay them to write. Thus, Wildbow do is a professional writer, although to be fair, he wasn't one yet when he wrote these specific chapters of Worm.

I think what you meant was not "professional", but rather "published writer", which means somebody who persuaded a publishing house to print their writing (and that convincing can be done in many ways, of which writing interesting books is only one), and which you'll notice is the word I used in my post. A published author has the benefit of having access (if they feel like using it) to the publishing house's assets, including editors and marketing experts, and more things that help them into polishing their books, but that doesn't mean much, since a great number of published books remain bad even with all that help.

I don't think Worm is perfect, of course, and surely some editing would help it become an ever better story, but I do think it's good, and the detailed prose is one of the reason for it. Of course, my favourite book ever is "The Count of Monte Cristo", and others all-time favourites are "The Karamazov Brothers" and "Les Miserables", so maybe it's just a matter of taste, but I don't think so; I have seen books published in the last few decades which were far too bloated, and others who were far too dry and lacking in details, so I'm positive that cutting too much can be just as big a sin as not cutting anything at all.

You don't need to take me at my word though, it's easy to prove that the two first chapters of Worm are necessary, all you need to do is to have somebody start reading from 1.3, and you'll see the result: the Lung fight loses all tension and meaning, because you don't know who Taylor is, the narrative hasn't given you enough of a reason to care about her if 1.1 and 1.2 are missing. That's what the first two chapters do in the scope of the narrative, they get you to understand Taylor, symphatyze with her plight and identify with her. They attempt to create empathy.

Then again, I'm not a professional editor, Tempera, while it is my understanding that you are. So, it should be easy for you to prove me wrong: edit the first three chapters into a single one of a third, or maybe even just half, their current total length, withouth stripping away the elements of characterization that allow the reader to feel emphathy for Taylor, and it'll be clear that I was overestimating the importance they have on the overall narrative.

Cat · Sep 5, 2015

The first 2 'chapters' are 3000 words each, and 1.1 can be entirely removed without any real care. 1.2 is a far better opening chapter because it introduces you to Taylor, her way of life, what she'd like to do, her power, her costume, and paints a far better picture of her.

Also please don't try to make Tempera kill herself in such a contrived way. Cruel and Unusual Punishment is outlawed by the Constitution you know!

Tempera · Sep 5, 2015

Egleris said:
Then again, I'm not a professional editor, Tempera, while it is my understanding that you are. So, it should be easy for you to prove me wrong: edit the first three chapters into a single one of a third, or maybe even just half, their current total length, withouth stripping away the elements of characterization that allow the reader to feel emphathy for Taylor, and it'll be clear that I was overestimating the importance they have on the overall narrative.

Fuck no. I work for a living, dude, and I'm currently working a very physically tiring job. I'm willing to spend a few minutes typing up a few paragraphs about something I feel passionate about in support of a friend, but there's a pretty stark difference between doing that and spending a dozen hours or so recrafting a narrative without a paycheque at the end for a webseries I don't particularly appreciate.

Beyond that, you've misinterpreted what I was recommending anyway. While I'd certainly advise Wildbow to cut down on the word cruft, that alone wouldn't solve the problem. I was recommending that the narrative itself be restructured to remove the necessity of the plodding introductory segments, which would allow the work to not read like it was being written by Robert Jordan, minus the fascination with clothing styles.

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