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I actually think the ending would have been better with her dead to be honest.

 

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Wildbow is attempting to make the outcome ambiguous, so either could be possible. It may get further clarification in Worm 2, but I expect it is a thread he'll just leave dangling.

 

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Personally, I think she's dead. I didn't catch it at first, but the first time someone mentioned it things just clicked in my head. She died and got to reconnect with her loved ones in the afterlife. There are no powers there because you don't have a passenger when you're dead and it's sealed off from the world not because of tinker tech, but because it's not the real world.

Think about it. Taylor got precisely what she needed to recover from what happened to her. Peace.

 

I think the ending is left open to our interpretation, for precisely this reason. There are any number of possibilities, and we are free to choose the one we feel suits us best.

 

Either way, I think Taylor's story is about as finished as it can get. If there's a Worm sequel, I strongly doubt that she'll be present at all. People might talk about Khepri maybe and that would basically be it.

 

What I'm curious about is what will happen with the Endbringers now that Eidolon is dead and Teacher has reawakened the Simurgh. Cape powers are going to be interesting too, given that there's a decent chance of Case-53 reactions happening to anyone who triggers now (this assuming they're even able to control their powers), which have the potential to give hilariously powerful abilities. All powers will be limited by the lack of a living Entity to draw from, if they can't steal from others like Eidolon or Glaistig Uaine.

I'm thinking there'll be four types of cape in Worm 2:

1) Capes who trigger from the bud of a pre-Golden Morning Shard. These will be like regular triggers, with all the limitations that were imposed on the originals still present.

2) Triggers from Scion's main shards that have no limits, including those that would safeguard the host. Powers like turning into fire but still feeling the pain of burning alive would be prominent, but the powers would also be without the limitations imposed by the Entities.

3) Cauldron capes created with formulae from Scion rather than Eden. Potentially a new Path to Victory cape running around, as well as someone with Scion's wavelength shard (though given that Eden's version of that shard ended up giving Hero his tinker powers it may not be so obvious). PtV would be bad, but useful if another Entity shows up.

4) This is a big maybe, but I'm thinking Abaddon (the Third Entity from Contessa's interlude) would turn up and do his thing with Earth, taking those shards that made up Scion and Eden.

There's an interesting theory that all of Worm, from Eden's crash land to Taylor becoming Khepri, was part of Abaddon's Path to Victory in order to take all of the other Entities' shards for himself, without it being unduly risky. Not sure if it's true or whether I'd like it if it was, but it's interesting nonetheless.

 

Is there even anything really left of Zion's body to harvest? The shards were already sent out and are "waiting" for new triggers and what not, but I thought Defiant & Dragon's weapon pretty much obliterated Zion. With Eden, it was more of a case of her being brain dead as opposed to her flesh actually being destroyed.

 

Zion died because he was hit with Sting, not because his body was destroyed in its entirety. Remember that his body on Earth-Bet was an avatar, same as the Endbringers'. The only problem at this point is that those shards are walled off from regular dimensional shenanigans by Scion's block. You'd need a shard able to breach dimensions without having any limitations attached to get to his real body.

 

Sting was used to open a path to his main body. It didn't actually kill him. Defiant then used a weapon to attack Zion's real body through the opening. Flechette's Sting shard made it possible to hurt him, but Defiant and Dragon's weapon is what finished him, or so that's how the passage read to me.

Speck 30.6

 

Yeah, Scion's dusted. There's a possibility that shards could be harvested from the "dead remains," but it could go either way.

 

Huh. I'd completely forgotten that part. Guess this means I need to re-read Worm.

 

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While that works well enough I like the idea of Contessa not having a cause thus not losing sight of the little things ending up with her not killing Taylor and going through all the trouble so that it doesn't cause problems when there is plenty of big issues to deal with far too fitting to believe otherwise.

If it wasn't for that I wouldn't care either way since Taylor's story is over.

 

This is actually quite good.

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Also, I think the Taylor epilogue was very unneccessary. Ending Taylor's story at 30.7 would have been much better. Some of the other epilogues were gold, however.

 

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It would have been a depressing ending if it just ended there, although I can agree that it would have been appropriate. Assuming the Taylor epilogue is actually happening on Earth-Aleph, that's probably the happiest ending Taylor could have possibly expected, given the series of decisions she's made by that point. Perhaps better than expected -- when I was originally reading the serial, I thought Wildbow really had killed off Taylor. (Which is still a possibility if you subscribe to the afterlife interpretation)

 

More fanart from the artist who did the Taylor picture a page back.

Bitch, Bastard, and Bentley.

Behemoth and Eidolon.

 

Annnd more fanart!

The Simurgh.

 

I'd just like to stop in here and add my voice to the chorus of accolades in praise of Worm!

Very few stories I have ever read have sucked me in like this one did. I don't often relate to female characters but Taylor is one of my favourite characters ever. Worm is also just my favourite super hero universe, easily beating out DC and Marvel.

 

So this guy posted his story chapter by chapter on a blog? And had donations set up via paypal and patreon both? Is it common to use a blog for doing that? I know that this author ended up being wildly popular, and that's not normal, but it seems like a fun idea! How did they initially get any interest though? Isn't it rare for people to just visit blogs?

I'll check out this later and read it but it looks really long!

 

It got recommended a lot online. I first read it at around arc 8, recommended by a Russian friend of mine. How he found it, I have no idea.

There are quite a few stories posted online in this format, but you're right in that most of them are nowhere near as popular.

 

Here is an interview with Wildbow where this topic is also discussed.

DLP is mentioned as well = P