Complete Worm by Wildbow - T - Original Urban Fantasy

Title: Worm
Author: Wildbow
Rating: T
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pairing: None
Fandom: Original Universe
Chapters: about 300
Words: Approx 1,680,000
Updated: November 19, 2013
Published: June 11, 2011
Status: Complete
Link: Here, Beginning of the story
Author's Summary: An introverted teenage girl with unconventional superpowers, Taylor goes out in costume to find escape from an unhappy and frustrated civilian life. Her first attempts at taking down a supervillain see her mistaken for one, and things snowball from there.

The story, titled Worm, takes the form of a web serial, posted in bite-sized reads in much the same way that authors such as Mark Twain would release their works one chapter at a time in the days before full-fledged novels. Worm started in June 2011, updating twice a week. It has (as of mid-February 2013) reached a total exceeding 960,000 words; roughly 9-16 typical novels in length. The story updates on Tuesdays and Saturdays, with bonus chapters appearing on the occasional Thursday.
---
This story possesses the twin virtues of quality and quantity. Both the style and tone of the writing have dramatically changed, and the setting now seems to be taking an apocalyptic turn. The world and the characters within it are fleshed out and well-utilized, and callbacks to something that occurred hundreds of thousands of words ago aren't unheard of. The protagonist suffers realistic setbacks, and Wildbow pulls no punches when it comes to traumatizing his characters. In short, read it. To not do so would be doing yourself a disservice.



Checked by Minion, January 26, 2014
Updated by Palindrome, February 21st, 2016

 

It's fantastic. I've been reading Worm since last year. I've loved every chapter. Characters, plots, twists, all excellent. Wildbow is just fantastic. 5/5

 

I spent 8 hours straight just reading the first seven parts of this yesterday. This story is really well rounded. Solid, distinct characters who are realistic and relateable, a plot that's interesting and well split between short arcs that fit into long arcs which, from what I'm starting to see, are part of an overarching storyline, as well (as far as I've seen) perfect grammar. Easily 5/5.

 

Yeah, Wildbow is willing to go back and make changes when readers point out grammatical errors and other inconsistencies; that kind of responsiveness is rare in an author.

 

This is very interesting easily a 5/5. The pace feels good, and the initial world building is interesting enough that I'm hooked. Feels very comic book origin story.

 

Solid 5/5. I'm not anywhere close to be finished this monster but holy hell is it well written and interesting. Sometimes Taylor's internal thought processes are a bit long winded but whatever. Still interesting.

I almost wish I had something more to criticize. I don't. Fuck.

 

Now, I'm not saying that this is the best thing I've ever seen linked off DLP, but goddamn it's up there. 5/5. There's the occasional part of the world building and character development that somewhat irritates me, mostly just how it tends toward being comic booky in that the protagonist villains for the most part tend to almost be less villainous than most anti-heroes and that the moment a gun comes out on a powered hero it's an oh my god moment. Basically it's this incredible fairly real feeling world and then you get jarred out by how non-violent everyone wants to be. Sure there are some reasons but they tend to feel flimsy. The story also tends to sometimes err from the sweet spot of main character being just the right amount of importance, but it's within an acceptable deviation. That said I'm incredibly engrossed by the tale and will be adding it to my regular reading schedule once I'm caught up.

 

Is there any way I can get it in one go? like how you can use fanfiction downloader to get all the chapters at once.

 

Not that I'm aware of. I'm pretty sure it's only on wordpress.

 

I used HTTrack to copy the whole website so I could read it while traveling.


Also, it's a pretty great story, although I have to agree with Mutton that some of the super hero tropes get annoying when the story tries to be more serious.

Like no one ever dies from blunt force trauma or people rarely use guns and if they're used, they always miss unless the hero/villain is immune to them.

Spoiler up to Arc 11 (I think)

Spoiler

Some of Taylor's decision seem to be ridiculous. "I have to rescue Dinah and the best way to do that is to work for her kidnapper and try to be his best employee!"
... really?

 

Been reading this over the past couple days.

It's excellent- 5/5.

One complaint- the cast of characters and relevant stuff is really large, to the point where it's hard to keep track of everything. I often feel like there's a piece of backstory or context that I'm missing for some of the side capes, or I don't know what their power is (and it seems everyone in the story knows and doesn't think its worth mentioning). It's GOOD that the author avoids being too info-dumpy, but too often I find myself feeling like I'm in the dark. I'm fine with that when its intentional, but I wish there was an easy way to look up minor details (like right now, I'm wondering who Genesis is and what is her power) without spoiling things for myself. The "cast of characters" page on the site has a bunch of spoilers, and I accidentally read some of them.

 

This isn't the usual thing that I like to read, but I decided to give it a chance after seeing the rating of it, and the fact that there hasn't been an HP fic I've liked in months.

I'm not sure how far in I am, to be honest. I've just started the second part, and judging by the fact that it's 960,000 words, I guess I'm like 5% into it so far (if that), which is good. That means I'll have something to read for a few weeks - but I am curious as to an author's motivations for writing a million words of original fiction, without trying to publish it?

As for what I've read so far, I'll rate it a 5/5. I don't give out that rating lightly, but this story is pretty damn good. it's compelling, intriguing, fascinating etc, etc. I look forward to reading more.

 

I don't quite agree with your spoilers, but that may be colored by the fact that I'm further in than you.

One other big issue I have is that you can tell when the author has really given though to a powerset, such as the main character or the bone guy later on (even if it's really just for an interlude). There are quite a few characters however that have exceptionally obvious power uses that just don't get used despite how strong they'd be. Also, some of the issue I had earlier was explained for some characters but nowhere near as completely as I'd like.

Overall though, I'd buy this if it was published. One of the best things I've read linked off DLP, damn fine find.

 

Yeah, the decision made in the spoiler is questionable from an objective standpoint, but when you think about Taylor's mentality... Things start to make a bit more sense.

Spoiler

She's turned Dinah into the focal point for all of her guilt, and feels that if she can rescue her, her actions up to that point are justifiable.

 

After reading this straight for a few days, I think it's time to give a review.
While the story starts off great, over the length of time there are certain that stop this from being great.

Don't get me wrong the grammar is impeccable. I think its strongest point is that the characters are so very human with their wants and desires. Every character has their own little metamorphosis as the story unfolds, Is it a hero wanting to be great no matter the cost? Or is someone who feels her morals slipping little by little. Like I said great characters.

The writing itself is decent, with a good pace. Though I'm not sure why everyone says "I can deal." Even people who grew up differently...

The primary thing that bugs me is the main character never seems to lose. Sure there are setbacks, plenty of them in fact some more grim than others but she still always seems to come up on top after a while.

Spoiler

One example is a lot of people die in this series, yet none of her friends ever bite the bullet, get captured sure but never any permanent damage. I would expect one of them to have at least lost a finger or something by now, since it seems every situation they find themselves in, is that they're out gunned. Another one is where she was just operated on (minor) and proceeds to beat up two supers a few hours later. Or she suddenly can go toe to toe with a big bad killer.

The world building has me scratching my head too. It starts off fine but as it gets grander I have myself wondering if the the 2x a week update schedule isn't hurting quality. It's the little things like, oh a disaster happened.. Where's the national guard and the red cross... It's like oh hey lets film it on the news and forget about it.... Oh and yes well trained soldiers can be helpful in a super battle in this universe anyway, so I don't see why the government didn't flood the area with soldiers and relief.

With something this long there certainly are other things I could poke at but it wouldn't really change my view. In the end, my score rounded up is 4/5. A good read, but nothing I'd want to reread over and over and certainly not something I'll remember for years. But that's just me, at the very least it's worth reading.

 

Actually, that's mentioned in the story several times. There is disaster relief- its even mentioned that they are too scared to go into the villain territories, so they just focus on the unclaimed regions. They talk about how there's taxes and funds set up specifically for Endbringer disasters. And their form of "national guard" is sending in capes from other cities.

Its also mentioned in-story that the government DID use soldiers (as in, no-super powers soldiers) before the Protectorate formed. They definitely should play a bigger role in the story than they do though, you're right about that.

 

Taxes and funds? I remember reading that And thinking...Where are the building projects and charities like after the aftermath of Katrina? Or Haiti? Those places got surges of volunteers and donations... and that helped the most.

Spoiler

Oh and I was under the impression that the villains controlled the whole place, the writer said it often enough anyway. So i'm saying with villains everywhere, where would the helpers, be if they're scared? Lol the reason is shallow to me, knowing that villains often venture away from there territories. Then there's the '9', That's not even mentioning groups like Doctors without borders? Who have the courage to go in situations like that. I'm sorry, I just like my details and things to make sense.

Don't get me started on the protectorate.... lol They already know they're outnumbered but instead flooding the area with help (significantly more heroes or if lacking a shit ton of soldiers, hell the army went after the Hulk often in marvel...). Then there's the so called "tinkers" who could have armed the regular Joe's better.... I do admit it be cheaper to pay a hero, but hey if you're losing the war change tactics...

All in all it's like the author is ignoring the things that could possibly help to create her morbid and depressing landscape, where things just continue to spiral downward. Not that's a bad thing, I just notice stuff.

Don't get me wrong despite all my nitpicking the story is still quite good and def worth the read.

 

Again, I think the issue is that the author is really good at going in depth when it comes to the main character but the rest of the universe seems much flatter. You can come up with a million and one different uses of bugs, but sometimes it just feels like the wit that it took to come up with said uses took away from the creativity on everyone else. Frankly these are exceptionally minor nitpicks that you could fridge logic from most any story though.

Spoiler

I did have issue with Coil's death scene though; the writing didn't flow very well once they confronted him and the climax was somewhat mediocre. The whole Travelers backstory was cool but their characterization didn't really match up all that well to what we've seen in the actual story

 

Really? I thought their tale synced rather nicely with the stuff that happened in the main story. Sundancer feeling isolated, all those references to them 'throwing money into a bottomless pit,' and so on... It answered a fair number of questions.

 

Been reading this pretty obsessively the last few days. 5/5 so far.

Are there any other original "web serials" that are worth reading?