Worm

For the last few weeks I've been archive binging a web serial novel called Worm that I found here on TV Tropes.

It's super-hero based, which I normally don't go for, but this serial is awesome. The quality of the writing is great and I love the setting.

Our main character is Taylor Hebert, a girl with the power to control invertebrates like bugs and spiders. She plans to escape her isolated school life by becoming a 'cape', a super hero, but things don't go quite as planned. Be warned, the violence gets quite graphic.

Anybody else here read this?

edited 5th Apr '13 6:20:51 PM by LoniJay

I am. I'm still not quite caught up yet, but I second the recommendation whole-heartedly. The writing is excellent and the worldbuilding is fantastic.

Darn, and I was hoping to start this thread over in the New Media subforum. Actually haven't been reading Worm for a while now due to school stuff, but now I'm planning a nice little binge on everything I've missed over the last few months. Last thing I remember is Emma's interlude.

Yeah, it's a bit tricky to characterise, isn't it? I figure it belongs in literature because, well, that's what it is, but I'm not sure if there's a precedent set by other web novels.

(Also, thank you for bumping this thread anyway, Ive been looking for an excuse for ages )

edited 27th May '13 6:14:53 PM by Gaunt88

I thought here was best because it is a novel... just one that happens to be published on the internet.

It is a bit like Dickens' stories, published regularly by chapter and collected into a big volume later. Or at least I hope there will be a print edition available eventually.

Wildbow has stated somewhere in the comments that he/she intends to publish them as e-books at least, with paper printings being an extremely optimistic dream.

edited 27th May '13 6:53:44 PM by Gaunt88

There's always print-to-order. It's how I get most of my Tabletop RPG stuff now. Just got my 2nd Edition Ironclaw omnibus: hardcover, color, ~$60 US. I'm not giving up until Worm is on my bookshelf. Even if I have to print it out page by page!

It will be quite long though... I mean, would you make each arc a book?

The arcs should be too short to make their own books. The early arcs at least were that short. I remember at the end of Migration wildbow mentioned that the arc was over 50k words with a chapter a day for a week.

I'd probably group everything up through arc 8, Extermination, as one big book. It's more or less Skitter's origin story in full. You wouldn't make a Spiderman reboot without someone killing Uncle Ben, Batman without Joe Chill, and you wouldn't recreate Skitter without fighting Leviathan and the confrontation at the hospital.

So Book 2 then would start with Sentinel and I'd like to end it after the Slaughterhouse Nine are finally dispatched. Problem is that after that the plot starts moving obscenely fast and dips down into the really dark stuff with Coil and Echidna, which could probably make a good third book on its own but is REALLY grimdark in the execution and could be seen as a depressing standalone.

And now I'm rambling. Love talking about Worm though.

I thought that the Slaughterhouse Nine arc was where it started getting really dark. I mean, Bonesaw creeped me out way more than Echidna did.

Yeah, IMO Bonesaw pretty much trumps everyone in the creepiness department

Anyway, that book breakdown would work pretty well, although they'd probably still be doorstoppers. I'm not sure the Coil/echidna arcs would be all that bad as one book. Sure, things get decidedly grim, but there's probably enough breathing room here and there for it to work.

No no, creepy is good! I love Bonesaw (especially in chibi form).

I just think that point was edging dangerously close to Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy for the story, with things basically getting worse and worse every single chapter with no hope in sight. The Echidna arc even ended with an interlude that was the first ever to be removed by wildbow due to some sort of outcry (I didn't see it in the comments section though).

Definitely a YMMV thing though.

Creepy is indeed good. Bonesaw is a great villain.

It's odd, excessive grimness has gotten to me in other works, bad enough to drop series all together (Looking at you Game Of Thrones), and while Worm is just as bad as some of them I've never felt DIAA for it. Can't really explain why, other than "I just like worm's style better".

So... anybody want to try fan-casting for a hypothetical live-action series of Worm?

I don't really have a great knowledge of actors/actresses, but fan casting is always fun. One thing's for sure, you'd need a lot of good teen actors... of which I have even less knowledge. It'd also be hard to find girls to play Burnscar and Bonesaw, as most actresses young enough to play them would probably wind up traumatised by what their characters got up to.

Regardless, a few ideas -

• Michelle Rodriguez as Battery.

• Michael Fassbender as Armsmaster, or maybe Kaiser.

• Nathan Fillion as Armsmaster or Legend (ok, I admit I'm kind of just reaching for an excuse to cast Fillion here )

edited 3rd Jun '13 5:07:26 AM by Gaunt88

Don't know anything at all about live action actors. For an animated adaptation, I'd like Steve Blum to do Grue's darkness enhanced voice. And of course Dee Bradley Baker would voice Crawler.

And I see Loni got to making a thread long before I did.

-Casts Revenant-

Anyway, anyone read the new chapter yet?

(I'd have Johnny Depp play Jack Slash and make him pretty much Evil!Jack Sparrow.)

edited 5th Sep '13 12:07:26 AM by rmctagg09

I've been slack on Worm lately... uni assessment's hit pretty hard. Last I read was the chapter after Scion's interlude, so if you want to talk about spoilers tag them out please =)

I'd like to see Johny Depp do Jack Slash, but a bit less... wacky than Jack Sparrow. And no silly hats.

*Cheers at thread's resurrection*

During my current re-read I read all of Jack's lines in Depp's voice, and it works pretty well.

And yes, I have read the latest. I am just picturing Taylor hovering in front of the simurgh's face, arms crossed. Also, damnit wildbow, leave dragon alone ;-;

edited 5th Sep '13 7:57:56 PM by gaunt88

Taylor has done some crazy shit, but I think talking with the Simurgh is the craziest thing she has ever done.

In other news I've also been re-reading the story, and I've been struck with just how much Foreshadowing wildbow has put into everything.

Yeah, it's really impressive how Wildbow managed to, well, manage so many hints and clues.

Heh. If we were doing impossible/dream casting for this, Tony Jay as Coil. I don't think Coil is supposed to have a British accent, but other than that, Tony's voice would have been just too perfect for him (Megabyte on ReBoot and Judge Frollo from the Hunchback Of Notre Dame are his two best-known roles in North America, as far as I know), and physically, I think he could have pulled it off without too much trouble.

Discovered and archive-binged this a few weeks ago, enjoyed it quite thoroughly, and I'd tend to agree that it seems to avert Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy. Not entirely sure why, though. Maybe because we've been so preconditioned to expect a hopeful ending in a superhero story? *shrug*

Also, spoilering this just in case, but my guess for the ending? And granted, this is probably painfully obvious, but I want to call it now- One of the parahumans becomes Scion's next partner/other half. Guessing most likely one of the Thinker-types; Tattletale makes the most narrative sense to me, with Taylor/Skitter/Weaver being a close second, Dinah Alcott for third, and then pretty much... hmm. Actually, Dragon might be tied for first, thinking about it. Accord, Labyrinth, Panacea, and Bonesaw are also ones that feel 'right' to me, and Canary's resurfacing in the story is just so odd that it makes me wonder if she's being set up for this, particularly if she has some kind of vague connection to the Simurgh.

Also, one thing that kind of bugged me... if the Birdcage is actually shrunken (as was speculated in-story a while back)... do Cauldron's portals return the inmates to their normal size when they get pulled out for meetings, or what..?

edited 6th Sep '13 3:52:59 PM by TeChameleon

I have one word to describe tonight's chapter: Well.

@ the birdcage's size: It's not a huge stretch to think that the Doorman's power can bring them back to normal size. Or, perhaps the birdcage isn't actually physically small, and is instead just sort of compressed in space.

@ 28.4: I second that "Well". Maybe upgrade it to a "Welp".

As someone in the chapter comments said - Worm in a nutshell: The good news is, it worked! The bad news is, It worked.