(If you listen to the audiobook version of Ward? I swear the music for the last arc has notes from the choral bits of You Can't Always Get What You Want in it, and that's super appropriate.)
So I'm (finally) on the end of Ward. It's been a horrible slog 95% of the time, but there were good moments.
I've considered writing up a cheatsheet for this story, so people can choose which chapters to get a synopsis of from the wiki (which I have not read) and which chapters to actually read (almost entirely the ones with Imp, Tattletale, Kensie, or the Heartbroken in. If those.)
We've all encountered a fair amount of disappointing sequels; a five star book has a three star sequel.
Or in this case, 1.5. : / Even the "epilogues" feel like a hit piece.
Time to listen to e.end and...then maybe I'll do something that brings joy. Or maybe I'll check out Seek. Dang I'm glad I read Pact after Worm so I didn't give up on WB before I got to Pale.
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Imagine how fucking great and not a slog Ward would be if only Victoria had died before the first page!
...
You might wanna opt out of the rest of this post, which is both negative and has spoilers for Worm and Ward (hence the tags), so here's your chance.
I'm usually capable of being pretty forgiving and generous with authors and their work, but I'm coming right off of being tortured by this story that just rubs your face in awful and then keeps rubbing and rubbing and rubbing with contrived excuses to make it uglier and uglier. And I've been getting mad about this for a bit (and unlike a book--which I can throw across the room or set down and take a breather, I'm showering or driving; the audio just keeps going (a feature and a flaw))
Long unplanned-for weekend now, so I'm gonna be quiet a bit longer, but when I'm showering or driving I'm listening to Ward.
It's my second go-through. The first was a while back, and I remember it was a bit of a slog, but I don't remember...
Hey, here's something I wrote as a rant a chapter or two back. It's mean-spirited and heartfelt:
Taylor eventually embraced bullying, because it was necessary to save the world. And then she stopped, and said she regretted the lengths she'd gone to. She worked willingly with and forgave those who wronged her even when they were not trying to be better, so long as they'd cooperate and help with the bigger picture.
Victoria embraced bullying foes from day one and regularly exceeded the law in doing so. First she was rescued from consequences by her sister. Then she joined the police. Then she graduated to bullying her old enemies even after they swore off wrongdoing and tried to become better. She never forgave. She never held the moral high ground. [Edit: since writing this, I had to endure Victoria doing MORE bullying and also bullying Dot. She's also shitty to Kensie in her head] Her friends became worse people by association with and loyalty to her. She's only marginally a better person than Sophia was at her worst.
(At least up through Arc 14 of Ward. Maybe this changes later, but I'm not counting on it. She's the most immoral and unlikable Wildbow protagonist and yes I've read Claw. I think I'd like Ward 10x more if Amy weren't shoehorned in there for Victoria to bully, and 20x more if Victoria weren't there to spout her hypocritical cop rhetoric about former villains.)
And seriously, I very much want to know; can I look forward to Victoria becoming less of a shitheel?
I have a friend who reads a LOT of asian romance comics and translated webnovels, and who has a huge amount of hate for the trope of someone eventually becoming lovers with someone who tortured or raped them. Full agree. Not angling for that.
But gods damn it. Amy fucking leaves the planet and Victoria follows her to shout her down and tell her "you don't GET to not talk to me and also you don't GET to talk to me you don't GET to eat butterscotch ice cream and you don't GET to decide you're not going to punch yourself in the face and you don't GET..."
Victoria isn't just a piece of shit when she's bullying Amy though. She's ALSO spending half her time yammering about how everyone who has ever done anything bad is permanently bad.
Fucking cop.
If WB was a silent recluse and all we knew about his stories was what was IN those stories, I'd wonder if this was high art and we were meant to understand that Vicky is an unreliable narrator and that we were intended to deduce that she's an awful pill of a person.
A quote from this same chapter, even:
“If you heal thousands of people and you mutilate twelve or so, you’re a healer who mutilates people. [...] Bonesaw and Swansong will always be ex-Slaughterhouse Nine. Precipice will always be ex-Fallen. [...]”
This isn't even close to the first time she's ranted along these lines. Earlier she made the same rant about Victor and Rune. ...and before that plenty of times.
For all that earlier Teacher's minions forged a diary that made her look machiavellian, if she actually KEPT a diary
V's literally trying to come up with justification to give Amy life in solitary confinement.
Gods I wish Amy would just flip V both middle fingers and then walk away from her and never look back.
I wish Vicky had died to Crawler, or to Gold Morning.
I loved meeting Kensie and Byron and the Heartbroken and even Swansong. Seeing grown-up-some Vista is great. ...or pretty good. ...I think I've stopped liking Sveta much because of her association with Vicky right now, and that's rubbing off on Vista too. ...but Imp? Lisa? Even Foil and Parian. (My ambivalence is because anything we revisit also gets a fresh rubbing of dirt.)
Vicky is of course morally pure and doesn't get judged by her own zero-historical-defects-allowed criteria. I think the people she's nearly killed but for Amy's help have all been rewritten to be racist child abductors to help justify that, but that's not how I remember it in Worm.
Oh, and it goes ON and ON and ON and Amy is NEVER allowed to ...ugh
Doctorow wrote an essay recently that addressed a sci-fi story I remember from my youth, and he points out that the story makes a point but it's an artificial and contrived point because the situations in the story are contrived by the author to make that point.
I saw a fan-cut of the Predator movie once that was a what-if Arnie had died at the very start while coming out of the helicopter.
(The movie worked, but it WAS a lot shorter)
And I'd almost like to rewrite Ward but take Vicky entirely out of it. Or Amy. There's still a fair amount of slog in the book, but dang; any scene with both Amy and Vicky in it is torture porn.
I could almost credit that notional silent recluse WB character I made up with doing a brilliant villain-protagonist with Vicky, but an equally plausible explanation is that Ward is a punishment for anyone who commits the sin of liking one of his canon lesbians.
I'm not feeling very charitable right now. I loved Worm, Pact, and Pale, and I expect I'll find much to love in Twig and Seek when I (re)read them. Hell, I liked Claw up until the start of the penultimate chapter. I'm easy mode.
But damn, I hope I stop having to deal with Vicky bullying Amy soon.
And the fantasy of a story where Vicky respected Amy's wishes and didn't hug her against her will, or where Amy respected Vicky's wishes and let her fucking die?
God damn that'd be a better story.
And a more pleasant one.
Hokay. It's bedtime and I got that out of my system and there are probably more rants I want to say (it's an ADD thing; I write long things because I am worried I didn't say everything I wanted to. This is not a good strategy. ...but writing a shorter thing takes a lot more time editing and planning and I'm not going to do that about Ward I kinda hate Ward right now. ...but I' gonna finish rereading it because I don't remember it well and I want to hope that maybe it gets better. Sincerely, a "fan cut" of the story might really rescue it. Just...can't cut out all the Vicky parts, unfortunately, but maybe I can cut all the Amy-being-forced-to-be-pathetic-by-[as-far-as-I-can-tell]-the-author parts.
Hoo. I need a palate cleanser.
At the time of this reading, I could not recommend a read of Ward to anybody. I'll finish it and maybe it'll improve. And maybe it won't, and maybe I'll do that heavily-cut version that omits all the 100% unrewarding sloggy character-bullying scenes so that fellow Worm fans can at least enjoy the [relatively] good bits and get a synopsis of the rest. (...though arguably, even the good bits are potentially character assassinations.)
Time for go to bed.
Thanks for reading? Sorry you had to read this? Take care. I'm taking a break.
someone reblogged this post with commentary from me but then blocked me sooooooo time to pick their answer apart like this:
The point is, everyone talks about Ward’s wrongdoings. There is literally not a person in this fandom, including the majority of his fans, that do not acknowledge his wrongdoings. There is nobody giving him a free pass and letting his bad behavior slide, unless of course they’re delusional
Really? There is no one letting Ward’s bad behaviour slide? What are the Ward stans doing who
claim that Ward is not a traitor?
pretend that Ward did not threaten to rape Daisy?
claim that he did not take advantage of Kara Palamas?
argue that Ward dropping Fitz and Simmons’ containment unit was not attempted murder?
claim that Ward having sex with May while pretending to be someone he wasn’t to subdue/neutralize her is anything but sexual abuse and manipulation ?
Sorry, but that is textbook “letting someone’s bad behaviour slide”
It’s alright that they tricked Ward into killing Kara, someone that he cared about, and it’s totally awful he wanted revenge for that,
WARD WAS NOT TRICKED INTO KILLING KARA OMFG
Ward turned a corner, saw someone who looked like May and shot her without thinking of the fact that while yes, the real Melinda May was on the premises, his partner was able to take on May’s face. That’s on him, not on the team.
but now that Coulson’s two-week bootycall died at Ward’s hands it’s totally okay that he wants revenge, and that he killed a man in cold blood to get that revenge.
1) There have been plenty of fans who have criticized this story line who aren’t SWWers, sorry.
2) The fact that Rosalind died may have kicked Coulson himself into action, but Coulson had been supporting people who tried to kill Ward for a loooooong time before that. He wanted Ward dead long before he killed Rosalind and he didn’t want Ward dead only for killing Rosalind - he wanted Ward dead to stop him from hurting any more people. That’s different from Ward reviving HYDRA to punish the team because he shot Kara.
Ward right now is being painted as a villain. Therefore, he displays villainous behavior. That makes sense. However, it doesn’t make sense to see our heroes displaying the exact same villainous behavior, especially while the narrative still makes a point to act like they haven’t done anything wrong.
Except the heroes don’t display the exact same villainous behaviour? Context matters. Motivations matter. Coulson kidnapping Ward’s little brother while not harming a hair on his head to stop Ward is different from Ward kidnapping people at gunpoint because he needs them for his own precious power trip. And even if the good characters like Hunter act in immoral ways, the rest of the team as well as the narrative as well as significant parts of the fandom criticize them for it.
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