So, I stumbled upon this deleted chapter.

Since I'm new to Worm I was wondering if there were any other such deleted chapters that not nixed while Wildbow was writing.

I was wondering what happened to Shatterbird... Her fate was so confusing in the story.

 

Wow, never read that before. That was pretty interesting.

 

Yeah, I read that one when it was first posted. It was just not a good plot point, and would likely have convoluted the story beyond saving if it wasn't handled soon.

 

I think that was the only chapter that was pulled. I don't remember the contents of it, other than it being very negatively received. He removed it really quickly.

You do have to realize that Wildbow actually started writing Worm 8+ years ago, so there's probably way more deleted content we just never got to read. He basically talked about on his blog how the story went through several iterations before coming out as it did. Originally, Rune was the protagonist. Glory Girl/Panacea were considered as 'duogonists', too. I wish Rune had been given a little more fleshing out, but I'm definitely glad Glory Girl got put on the sidelines. Panacea being a bigger focus of Worm wouldn't necessarily have been bad either, but she'd need her ridiculous power set and angst toned down some.

I still can't believe we were going to have Aegis as the protagonist after Leviathan. That would have been so stupid. I'd rather read more about Emma Barnes than Aegis of all people.

 

Would have loved to have seen more of Rune.

I liked the way Panacea was handled. More interludes may have been good, but her angsty tragedy and how she comes out of it was one of my favourite bits of Worm. Couldn't really do that if she was a protagonist.

 

I think faultline was the first protagonist, not rune.

 

7.9 also got rewritten, but I've never seen a copy of the original chapter:
https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/buzz-7-9/#comment-942
No other chapters were deleted that I know of, but Wildbow posted a few pre-Worm drafts on his blog:
https://wildbow.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/snippets-drafts-of-worm/
Other than those, you have the masses of WoG, some Weaver Dice material that touches on canon stuff, and the joke Worm/HP snippet.

 

I could have sworn the original draft was about Glory Girl and Panacea. There was also a draft centered around Circus.

 

There was Guts and Glory, the Panacea and Glory Girl stuff.

I think one of the reasons as to why Worm works so well is that so many of the characters had been intended to be main characters at some point and had sufficient planning and depth prepared beforehand. As such, when they became secondary or tertiary characters, Wildbow had a great handle on them.