Trivia / Worm

• Development Gag: Imp's claim in Sting 26.1 that the cloned Slaughterhouse Nine villain "Nice Guy" is impinging on her schtick has a deliciously ironic edge to those aware of the author's prior comments about the original inspiration for Imp.
• Development Hell: Part of the reason minor characters are so fleshed out is that the story is the result of years of failed drafts. For example Panacea and Glory Girl were originally planned to be the protagonists and already had a story arc plotted out.
• Mutually Fictional:
  • Weaver Dice is offhandedly mentioned in one chapter of Pact by Blake (Pact's main character). Maggie Holt (a secondary character in Pact) is the protagonist of a YA novel series in the Wormverse mentioned in Alexandria's Interlude. Given that both universes exist in the same multiverse, the implications are interesting.
  • Within Twig, both Worm and Pact are referenced in the form of dime store novels with the titles "Doll Man and the Revenge of the Swarm Queen," "Doll Man and the Song of the Moon," and "Barber John and the Dark Forest Monster" respectively.
• Reality Subtext: Winslow was based on the high school that the author went to. Right down to the Locker Incident. The only difference is that, thankfully, the bulled girl didn't get locked into the locker.
• Schedule Slip: Completely averted by the author, who puts out an amazing word count every Tuesday and Saturday and even finds the times to do bonus Thursday interludes for donations.
• Shrug of God: Wildbow has suggested three different interpretations for the final epilogue: Taylor's alive with her father, Taylor's in a coma, or Taylor's dead and in the afterlife. He advises readers to take whichever interpretation they'd prefer.
• Teasing Creator: Wildbow isn't above playing with his readers, as the comments to Interlude 26b show.
  endgame: Out of curiosity, wildbow, can Gray Boy deactivate the time loops around people he has frozen? Or are they just stuck there forever?
  wildbow: Yes.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Wildbow has said that Panacea and Glory Girl were the original protagonists of the story when he was first developing it, under the original title of Guts and Glory. Both the Travelers and Faultline's Crew were also the protagonists of their own stories before they were folded into Worm as well. At one point, Lisa's code name would have been Deduce and she would have been a fellow student at Taylor's school. These earlier snippets are now available on Wildbow's blog.
  • In a beta draft of the story, Taylor's cape name was "Myriad" rather than Skitter.
  • Quite a few interludes exist only because of reader donations. It's easy to imagine them never coming to pass had things fallen short of the quota.
  • Word of God is that the author rolled dice during Leviathan's attack to see who survived, including for Skitter. If she'd died, the new protagonist would have been Aegis.
  • There was also a bonus chapter with an evil version of Tattletale created by Echidna, which was removed from canon shortly after being posted due to fan response and the author's dissatisfaction with it.
• Word of God:
  • Wildbow occasionally gives a few info dumps about the world and various topics in the Wormverse. Past attacks by the Endbringers, clarifications on powers and unseen characters, etc. One compilation can be found here, and another here.
  • Despite Worm being finished, Wildbow continues to answer questions about the story on some forums and on the Parahumans Reddit. Mostly, these are clarifications about disputed issues of Fanon.
• Write What You Know: The author was bullied in school.
  I started writing when I was in middle school. I was the unholy trifecta of geek, nerd and Cloud Cuckoolander, a disabled kid, and I was miserable. For me, writing started out as a way to vent, like some people hit punching bags or scream or go running. I was inspired by Buffy, so I started out writing modern supernatural stuff and it was basically me writing the most messed up stuff I could.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants:
  • Wildbow makes a point of this as one way of making the writing process more interesting for himself. Virtually every chapter was written in the day or two immediately before publishing, often finishing shortly before the midnight deadline, and he had set himself a minimum-length of 6000 words. Over the course of the story's run, he missed the target time of an update only twice — both by mere minutes, and both times due to technical issues.
  • Wildbow literally rolled dice to determine who would live and who would die in the battle against Leviathan. Had Skitter died, he'd have rendered her a Decoy Protagonist and introduced a Ward as the new narrator, completely changing the direction of the story.