I finally finished Ward and my thoughts are a bit of a mess. I never thought that a book about superheroes would bring me to tears, even having read and re-read its prequel, Worm, but Wildbow is a master of his craft.
Worm is a cynical look at the superhero genre, telling the tale of a supervillain who does more good than the purported heroes, and its content reflects that: it's brutal, all guts and little glory. Every victory is pyrrhic, losses devastating. Things fall apart and life is a constant struggle. The supervillains are the protagonists, and their enemies are truly monstrous. Even the "good guys" are corrupt and abuse their standing as heroes for personal gain. Taylor rarely gets a second to rest, consistently pushing herself beyond her limits and becoming further and further away from the things that make her human. It is a book that is physically exhausting to read, as the city of Brockton Bay descends further and further into a hellscape.
But where Worm is a story about lashing out at a broken system, accepting lesser evils in a losing fight against monsters, and questioning where exactly do the ends stop justifying the means, Ward is about the struggle to heal, to start anew and find resolution amidst decay.
Ward is about second chances: for humanity, for villains, and for the most broken and beaten down heroes, the most corrupt, all are given amnesty. However, this amnesty is somewhat shallow, and mirrors the difficulty that the protagonists face with forgiveness. Each one has to learn to forgive themselves, to heal in their own way and seek redemption for their former wrongdoings.
More importantly, Ward reminds us that relapses happen, that falling backward isn't something that can't be recovered from. When you treat yourself harshly, when your very Self begins to crack under stress, you can still recover. You can still move on. Even the antagonists carry these themes: when you are unforgiving of yourself or refuse to even see that you're in the wrong, you become your own kind of monster. You cannot atone if you refuse to accept responsibility for your past.
At it's core, and the reason that it resonated so deeply within me, is that Ward is a story about hope. Worm focuses on the rot in the structures society has built, but Ward is about daring to build something new and beautiful in their place. ❧
It's honestly one of my favorite endings to anything I've ever read. It's unexpected but aligns perfectly with the themes of the story in a way that's simultaneously beautiful and devastating
