Team. Therapy.

 

No.

Spoiler

It might be just me. I like Victoria, but she has no reason to be the protagonist of this story. She has no stakes tied into the success or failure of her team, and Hollow Point seems like an afterthought of the city. Does anyone in the team actually live there? I honestly can't recall. Victoria is just so distant to the events, I'd rather a different teammate to be protagonist. Not to say that she's a bad character as she does have an arc, but blah.

The story doesn't have an identity. It's mind-boggling to me that the team's team name and most of their superhero names were held back for seven arcs until they were legitimately forced to choose. I don't care about this team. I care about the characters individually, and they are somewhat interesting, but it's not enough to base a story around.

I would like this better if a) the story was Victoria on her own and the team was an independent entity she wasn't part of or mentoring, or b) Victoria isn't the protagonist.

And yeah, the story's slow. Every time an interlude ends, I'm clinging to the last sentence, trying not to be dragged back to Boringville, but alas. Therapy and living mentally well is a wonderful thing in real life, but I'm not interested in reading it.

 

I got bored of this too. It seems aimless at the beginning. Does it get any better after the first couple of arcs?

 

I like a lot of the chapters. But it is rather aimless.

 

I've been holding off on reading Ward until it gets further in, but I'm debating giving it a go now.

For those following it, without spoilers do we see a lot about characters we actually care to hear about? Im thinking Undersides, Dragon, Defiance, Lung, Contessa, Shadow Stalker, probably others I'm forgetting. I know Taylor isn't in it at all, but the most compelling thing about a sequel to me is learning about her impact on the world after Golden Morning. Do people fear her, worship her, or generally dont think about her?

If none of these characters or features are in it yet, I might hold off a bit longer especially considering the lukewarm reaction its received so far.

 

I'm a few arcs behind, but we've seen the Undersiders a fair amount already, especially Tattletale and Imp.

 

Dragon and Defiant have been involved as well.

 

I’m finally caught up to both the story and the podcast.

Ward is awesome. It’s a shame Wildbow chose Rain to be the first member of the team to get focused on. His arc is the least enjoyable of the bunch by a mile.

I think the guys on the podcast got it right when they said it’s hard for readers to really take in the story when so much attention is drawn to the mystery of ‘the team’. You can’t really bond with the characters when you don’t know any of their motives and are explicitly told you can’t trust the motives you’d normally infer. It’s probably for that reason that Ward doesn’t really hit it’s stride until arc 7. It just gets better and better from there though. Honestly, the last couple of arcs were better than Worm ever was, and it’s a shame Ward isn’t talked about more around here anymore.

 

Yep, Wards been great for the last while. I used to wait a few chapters and then read through it all to keep up but around when the Lookout drama first started is when I think it really hit it's stride in terms of consistently being engrossing. I prefer Ward in that it has better pacing in some parts, and that it doesn't drag on in action.

Spoiler

With the Chris mystery, I definitely didn't see the Lab Rat reveal coming, I thought he'd just be a lab experiment/non-human like Dot. Which is a bit confusing, was he a clone of Lab Rat from one of the boxes or a human kid that got taken over? Speaking of Chris, someone totally called it out a while back on r/parahuman which is pretty cool. I feel like now that most of the team's 'mysteries' are uncovered the plot can move forward. I def liked all of the other team member's arc over Rain but Weld and Sveta's drama is promising to be a bit more boring then Rain's.

I think Ward is definitely at a point where if you haven't been following it already, you should catch up because the payoff is worth it and judging by his past serials this is getting to the midpoint and main plot of the story. Personally, I hope there's a bit more world building and more inter-world differences that can be shown. For instance, one of the best interludes of Ward showed what a high level tinker 10-12 looked like.

 

Think it’s 131 proper chapters as of right now. Makes for an even 140 if you read Glow-worm first. Next chapter will be 11.11 assuming it’s not an interlude.

 

Worm had a much more engaging protagonist and a big mistery to unravel. Compared to that, Victoria is nowhere nearly as interesting (her lines often seem to me based on psychology self-help books, which may be justified, but boring) and, whatever the main plot ends being about (not one in sight after a hundred chapters), it will hardly have the same universe-building impact.

Lately I find myself skip-reading new Ward chapters, I find hard to care about the situation or the characters (who the heck again was this random parahuman #4567 from 40 chapters -five months- ago?) Maybe I should quit now and binge down the whole mammoth when it is complete, so everything is fresher and I can keep up a sense of continuity. Serial format doesn't mesh well with convoluted plots and huge character casts.

 

Man, this is a hard one for me. I only read worm once, was holding off the reread until the edited version came out. However, that now looks unlikely anytime soon.

Could I jump into ward with only vague memories of worm, or should I continue my endless wait for the revised version of worm?

 

There's a very brief chapter summary somewhere on SB. Honestly, Worm is so colossal (and, roughly written especially in the beginning chapters), just read ward.

 

I honestly think it might be better to read Ward without a clear memory of Worm's ending. Worm left off with a huge post apocalyptic situation, and some big question marks about a lot of characters. If you really care about seeing those threads tied up or expanded on, Ward's pacing feels glacial. Ward is a more character driven story, but Worm's ending doesn't set that up well imo.

 

Wildbow going all GRRM over Ward's cast. I can sympathize, he has to be sick of all the little shits, too.

Also, finally an interesting development and perhaps a hint of a main plot, if I have parsed it correctly (which is very doubtful, since I am not paying much attention to the story anymore):

Spoiler

Shards are somewhat sentient, are dying without an entity to support them and are not too happy about it. Hijinks ensue.

 

Maybe put your first sentence in the spoiler as well. I have yet to read yesterday’s chapter, and <name> is kind of synonymous with, well...

 

I was referring to events in 12.all and all that chopping before, haven't read 12.5 either, yet.

 

Well, Ward keeps being meh at characterization. But damn, does Wildbow have a knack for trippy cosmic horror! Some really powerful imagery during this arc (Sundown).