#parahuamans

lmao yeah fair. So it's a web serial by Wildbow, an author whose main distinguishing features are a) writing more in a month than I managed in my entire university education and b) exclusively using titles that are four-letters common nouns. Like unilateral disarmament but for SEO.

Anyway! the mad idiot god that is tumblr's search engine smiled upon me, so was able to dig up the last few times someone asked this. (...not being passive aggressive, truly don't mind the ask! Just posting the links so I have an easier time finding them from now on).

Reading them over I think this is probably the best description I gave

Worm (Posted June 2011-November 2013, 1.68 million words). A superhero (or, well, -villain) story in a world rather worn out and hard done by by the sudden appearance of powers in the ‘80s. Starring Taylor Hebert, a horrifically bullied 16-year-old girl who gains the ability to flawlessly control all bug life within a couple blocks radius. Primarily set in Brockton Bay, a fake city in the NE United States, which has the privilege of hosting the country’s largest gang of super-powered neo-nazis, a man who turns into a dragon when he’s angry, and [spoilers]. Depending on who you ask, it is either about bullying and trauma, utilitarianism, the point at which institutions become illegitimate, how sudden escalation and terrifying violence can solve most problems, or the dangers of texting and driving. Wildbow’s most popular work by a significant margin. Generally agreed to properly pick up around Arc 8 (which is kind of like saying ‘the series really picks up around book 3′, granted). Content warnings for…well, everything?

but also

Elevator pitch: Bullied teenage girl gets extremely unphotogenic but incredibly exploitable power to control all bugs within a few blocks, on her first night out ends up accidentally saving a team of supervillains from their rival and convinces herself that it’s a good idea to join them ‘undercover’ to find out what she needs to turn them in.

Read if you like: Creative and creatively used superpowers, a deeply cynical view of power structures and structural violence, incredibly well drawn and believable characters, generous servings of body horror and ultraviolence, and a plot that can be summarized by the 'well, that escalated quickly’ gif repeated for ~1.7 million words.

Character ask meme

favorite thing about them: Her whole, like, thing -sacrificing her identity and anyone she might ever have grown up to be on the altar of necessity, spending her whole life following the plan in her mind's eye to Save The World, no matter how many atrocities it requires and how much blood she has to wade through, wondering how much of herself there even is, when she's spent so long living with the prostheses of her power, always aware exactly what to do and say to achieve the reactions and results she's decided she wanted at some point in the past. And in the end, as everything falls apart, wondering whether any of it ended up doing any good at all.

She's both a great foil to Taylor and a really compelling tragedy of a character in herself imo.

Also, aesthetically, 'character in neatly tailored suit carries out perfectly executed and almost artistically precise violence, defeating people who should be able to turn them to paste seemingly effortlessly' is just perfect.

least favorite thing about them: All the crimes against humanity that happened to affect other characters I like, I guess.

favorite line: Honestly don't have any by her saved, so going to go with the header quote from her wiki article of 'Everything was easy now. It was disorienting.' Which IS a good line imo.

Cheating, but semi-relavent, my favorite line from Doctor Mother is 100%

Why? Because we decided in the very beginning that we don’t want to be left wondering if we could have done more, in the moments before humanity ceases to exist.

brOTP: Number Man

OTP: ok her Shard but I actually mean it this time.

nOTP: no one really comes to mind, sure as I am that there's some cursed fanfic out there that would change my mind if I stayed up to date on it.

random headcanon: Not my headcanon but given her relative lack of screentime/emoting in canon I entirely accept her personality in Terminus as accurate and definitive.

This stuff

unpopular opinion: Look I am simply not spending enough time on discord or the right web forums to know what the current popular and unpopular takes on Contessa and Cauldron are.

song i associate with them: Nothing super comes to mind, sadly :(

favorite picture of them:

She's such a great protagonist.

Don't forget everyone being so dead certain that Kanzie was a terrifying monster who'd replaced her parents with robots!

Not much recently, I'm afraid. But uuuh off the top of my head (all except Terminus are complete)

-The Countess - Worm/Count of Monte Cristo Fusion. It's, uh, hard to describe except 'the cast of worm in restoration-era-France with superpowers, Taylor is the Count". It's good!

-Terminus - Taylor's confrontation with Alexandria after she turns herself in goes according to Alexandria's plan, with Skitter disgraced, in custody, and busted out of transport en route to the Birdcage for a new life as a Cauldron operative. Dead, but, like, there's 70k wordsof it, and it's really well written. Has my favorite take on Contessa.

-It's Cold Out There Every Day - by tumblr's very own @brocktonbay! Timeloop fic, Vista and Imp, really sweet and also funny. Also the only worm fanfic I've actually read this year,I think.

Rachel/Taylor

What made you ship it?

uuuh one sec-

-that.

And, you know, thematic parallels and contrasts - both almost casually violent, often brutal people, because of the bone-deep conviction that it's the only way to get the world at large to listen, but to a very real degree defined by having no real people to rely on at their most vulnerable, and as a result both desperately needing emotional connections as they move forward and struggling with being, uh, bad at making them.

Also, y'know, fun contrasts, visceral versus detached, dogs that are lovingly raised, cared for and grieved versus insects expended by the thousand without a second thought, instinctive versus intellectual, etc, etc.

What are your favorite things about the ship?

Going from basically getting into fistfights on sight and rubbing right against all of each others jagged edges to implicitly trusting each other with their (and also other people's) lives, of course.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

You know, you might be the first person I've ever known whose read Guide but never even heard of Worm? Usually the pipeline goes in the other direction.

But anyways, yes, it compares really well, I think! Taylor (the protagonist of worm) has notably similar problem solving instincts to Cat ('Think outside the box. Beat the enemy with the box until they stop moving'), anyway. They've also got similar sorts of 'well-intentioned but end up as villains for reasons of circumstance and politics, may be just a little bitter at the heroes for refusing to be reasonable with them' situations. Though I mean, 'solid attempt at making gritty superhero tropes realistic' versus 'justifying high fantasy tropes by giving them in-universe significance and effectiveness', so that does end up looking a little different in practice.

Worm's got basically none of Guide's whole metafictional layer though and, well okay, there's not no jokes, but it's nowhere near as comedic as Guide. There are a decent number of cute character moments, but not nearly as many of those as Guide has, either (Taylor is also just incredibly less horny than Cat).