Memes / Ward

Due to a rich and active fandom, Ward has a small but growing number of memes associated with it, both as part of the story, and as part of the story discussion. Please include citation and links where possible. Unmarked spoilers below. This intro is taken directly from the Worm Memes page.

General Memes

• Mlekk, until Wildbow had them banned from PHO in response to their becoming an Ensemble Dark Horse.
  • Taken a step further in Ward's epilogue, which reveals that Mlekk is Caden, a whiny teenage brat who wanted to let all the capes die and is generally despised by the fans. Also, he uses sockpuppets online to make himself look more popular than he is.
• People talking about the hypothetical arc Hlare. ^Explanation Arc 2 and 3 are named Flare and Glare, respectively. People noticed that not only are the names one letter apart, but also that F and G follow each other on a Qwerty keyboard, and they jokingly stated that Arc 4 would be called Hlare to continue the pattern.
• Why doesn't Victoria eat egg? ^Explanation Daybreak 1.8 has Victoria mention that she doesn't normally eat eggs, which prompted a commenter to theorize whether eggs could remind her of her past self and/or Gold Morning. Wildbow's response? "Maybe she doesn't like egg?" Variations of this phrase have since been used to mock elaborate theories about tiny details that don't really mean anything. More generally, Victoria has been jokingly characterized as having an intense hatred of eggs.
  • Heavens 12.4 added fuel to the fire with the reveal of Cradle's "egg", and Victoria's subsequent plan to deal with it: using Rain's emotion power to "boil" it, affecting Cradle while inside, but leaving the "shell" intact. Some commentators have joked that her hatred of eggs would lead the heroes to victory.
  • One of the mercenaries guarding Cradle's stronghold in Heavens 12.6 takes it upon himself to learn dirty words in Chinese from another mercenary, all while Victoria and Rain are secretly hiding nearby and listening to the whole conversation. In a Bilingual Bonus, it turns out the literal translations for some of the curses have something to do with eggs.
  • Black 13.10 introduces Egg, a case 53 that is literally a human egg, with eggshell skin and yolk innards. Not only is he a major asshole who is needlessly antagonistic to Sveta, but it also turns out that a miscommunication between Sveta and him was the source of the Irregulars' hate towards her.
  • Acknowledged again in-canon in Sundown 17.2, when Carol makes breakfast sandwiches for herself, Crystal, and Victoria. Knowing Victoria's preferences, she leaves the egg off of Vicky's sandwich.
  • Again in Infrared 19.7, when they're looking at the memories their shards have recorded from them; while they're focused on the area for frustrations or annoyances, Victoria's includes racist graffiti, a man taking up three seats on a bus, and an egg sandwich.
  • Finally in Last 20.e5 a Stealth Pun perhaps indicating that (in fitting with the theme of recovery) Victoria has come to terms with eggs: she makes plans with Annelace to watch a parahumans-verse Disney version of the Grimm's fairy tale Fitcher's Bird, which involves an egg (and appropriately, body horror).
• Being Rain is Suffering. ^Explanation The sheer awfulness of Rain's situation at the beginning of Ward, a situation which gets worse and worse with each interlude that focuses on him, has lead to many describing Rain's life in this way.
  • Even the other characters eventually begin to notice this and comment on it.
  Victoria: Poor Rain.
  Victoria, one chapter later: Rain had taken a bit of a beating, but that was usual.
• Everything is a Camera. ^Explanation Kenzie's comment that she likes to picture everything she makes as a camera (I.E. microphones are "sound cameras") coupled with the diversity of her inventions has lead to many jokes that Kenzie can build ANYTHING and just calls them all some form of camera.
  • Kamikenzied. ^{Explanation (Pitch 6. 3 Spoilers)} Related to the above, Kenzie's taking out Mama Mathers with a falling camera has lead to many variations of the above line, as well as jokes about Kenzie's cameras really being combat drones/heat-seeking missiles.
• Kenzie Smiles ^{Explanation (Interlude 7.x Spoilers)} The reveal of Kenzie's Stepford Smiler status immediately transformed every single time Kenzie has or had smiled into a colossal fandom Oh, Crap! button.
• Fucking Why? ^Explanation Even after saying this only twice in story, "Fucking Why?" or any variant of said phrase has become Victoria's Catchphrase according to the fandom.
• Aaaaa ^Explanation Natalie's internal line during Interlude 8.x quickly became shorthand for whenever something is exciting, heartwarming, adorable or absolutely terrifying.
• Goddess is the protagonist. ^{Explanation (Gleaming Spoilers)} Goddess mind-controls the protagonists for an entire arc of the story; due to the way her mind-control works, the narration itself acted like Goddess was obviously in the right. During this period, large portions of the fandom acted as if they were mind-controlled as well and that Goddess was the protagonist - and since the author usually has horrible things happen to his protagonists, this meant pretending that everything was going too well while Goddess was winning and that the other shoe had to fall soon.
• Victoria Dallon: Fashion Police. ^Explanation People quickly latched onto Victoria's notable eye for fashion and tendency to give an immediate critique of the wardrobe choices of anyone she meets with, with many jokes labelling her as the fashion police following.
• Ward is an Anime ^Explanation Many people have started calling Ward an anime, citing a number of things that closely resemble common anime tropes being present in the story. These include March's You Are Already Dead powers, many costumes such as Brio's and and the sheer existence of the Super Magic Dream Parade in general.
  • Goddess the Isekai Protagonist ^Explanation Goddess' predicament of being trapped in a parallel world that was not her own spawned many comparisons to the Isekai genre of anime, where a character finds themselves magically transported to another world. Naturally this also ties well into the "Goddess is the Protagonist" meme mentioned above.
  • Aiden the Harem Protagonist ^Explanation The events of Interlude 10-z displaying both the fact that Aiden has multiple love interests and his complete obliviousness to said fact immediately drew comparisons to the Harem Genre.
  • Victoria the Stand User ^Explanation It didn't take long for people to start comparing the mechanics of Victoria's wretch/forcefield to the stand powers of Jojo's Bizzare Adventure.
  • The hero team Super Magic Dream Parade literally acts like they're a group of Sentai anime superheroes, complete with over the top declarations, calling attacks, and ridiculous costumes.
• Fuck March. ^Explanation March's timing power is incredibly potent, leading some fans to conclude that she's unrealistically overpowered or has Plot Armor. Then she seemingly kills fan favorite character Vista and sets off another S-Class disaster all for a reason that's both petty and not even based on accurate information.
• Cradle is Caillou. ^{Explanation (Heavens 12.f spoilers)} Wildbow has a notable dislike of Caillou and has explained several times how the show sets a bad precedent for kids that watch it. When Cradle's interlude released and showcased his sociopathy as well as his general shittyness as a kid, particularly his tantrums, people jokingly said he was supposed to be a dark parody of Caillou.
• Blingalingadingding ^Explanation A commenter noticed that Gleaming and Blinding, the two worst arcs for the heroes, had their name end with -ing. Wildbow answered "Just wait for blingalingadingding." When Arc 14 was revealed to be named "Breaking", people quickly assumed the worst. And then Arc 15 showed up with the oh-so cheerful name Dying.

• Thirstoria ^Explanation In Breaking 14.1, Victoria shows her progress towards healing her mental aversion to human contact by having a sexual fantasy without completely breaking down. However, it takes some doing for her to tiptoe around her various traumatic hangups and one of her discarded fantasies involved licking the shower-water and sweat off Anelace/Ethan's chest in the locker room of the physical therapy center. Memes on the topic of Victoria's sexual and literal thirst began almost immediately.
• It's handled ^{Explanation (Arc 14 spoilers)} When Victoria visits Amy in Earth Shin and confronts her about her alleged healing fuckup, Amy continuously denies it being a problem, repeating variations of "It's handled". It becomes increasingly clear it is not, in fact, handled. Memes have then been made of Amy saying things that sound similar to "handled", and Victoria flipping out over it.
• YEET (Or, Victoria's about to end this woman's whole career) ^Explanation  During Arc 12, Victoria gets into a fight with a group of villains including Etna, a woman who can shoot globs of molten glass from her hands and fly slowly. Antares, getting fed up with Etna's seeming disregard for how she might hurt someone with her power (and being a much better flier) manages to close to point blank range with Etna in midair, grab her, and hurl her into a hillside shotput-style. Some arcs later, Antares discovers that this experience actually caused Etna to reconsider her life decisions, retire from villainy and maybe even consider helping out the heroes. In other words, Victoria yeeted someone so hard they turned good.
• Amy's Vicotine patch ^Explanation  The fan nickname for the piece of Victoria's arm, that Amy keeps attached to herself as a substitute for the real deal. With Amy's addiction to Victoria and her keeping it attached to her skin, the comparison to nicotine patches for smokers were drawn quickly.
• Defiant has entered Dad-Mode. ^Explanation  Chewing Breachthrough (et al) out for whatever world(s)-impacting chain-of-command-evasion they've been caught doing this time tends to get Colin pulling stereotypical Angry Dad behaviour and language out of storage. Including grounding everybody in sight, but especially when it comes to Kenzie — she gets very limited access to her toys and internet time added on top.
• Victoria the parahuman supremacist. ^Explanation It's pointed out several times that throughout the story Victoria grows increasingly disconnected from the civilian side of her life and unpowered people in general. In arc 13, Black, she even says that in order to face the coming threats the Wardens might need to stop taking the feelings of the unpowered into consideration and do whatever they need to do, prompting a horrified reaction from Sveta. Similarly to the "Taylor the baby destroyer" meme, people have since jokingly described Victoria as a virulent parahuman supremacist who calls the unpowered "humans", and pulls the Some of My Best Friends Are X-card with Natalie.
• Waste-chan ^Explanation A name for Victoria's shard, which called itself "waste" in its interlude and deeply looked up to Victoria.
• Halping! ^Explanation Shards give their hosts powers based on the trigger events- essentially, they're providing solutions to their hosts' problems. However, a lot of the time, the solutions, while viable, end up making things worse for the host or reminding them of things they'd rather forget, which is usually the result of the shard genuinely trying to help the host, but screwing it up.
• Victoria/Waste OTP vs. Victoria/Gun OTP vs. Victoria/Waste/Gun OT3. ^Explanation  The readers have known since the Heavens arc that Victoria's shard (Which calls itself Waste, but which Victoria calls The Fragile One) is basically Victoria's biggest fan. However it isn't till the end of the Infrared arc that Victoria comes basically face to face with her shard and realizes how much it loves her, at which point it of course became a running joke that the fans ship Victoria and her shard. However, around the same time, Dragon gave her a 12-ton, laser cannon that shoots miniature Scion beams. As she blasts things with it she begins to personify it and talk to it the same way she does to The Fragile One, leading fans to "ship" them, as well. And many fans then said "why not both?"
• Thicctoria ^Explanation  Victoria has always been described as attractive, but fanart of her during and post Ward has tended to portray her as athletic with large hips, thighs, and chest, i.e. "Thicc".

Kenzie Facts

• When Kenzie needed an instruction manual for her powers, she happened upon 1984. She hasn’t looked back since.

• Kenzie sees you when you’re sleeping, and retroactively when you’re awake. She knows where (but not when) you’ve been bad or good, so be good for Looksee’s sake.

• Everyone said cameras made horrible weapons. Kenzie replied by sniping them with makeshift meteors.

• It doesn’t matter what it does. If Kenzie says it’s a camera, then it’s a camera. Unless it tells time.

• If you can see Kenzie, she can see you, and what you’re looking at is probably a hologram.

• When Kenzie needed a place to stay, she blackmailed a pair of sociopaths who already had a grudge against her. When they tried to poison her, she was more mad about the embarrassment in front of her friend than the attempted murder.

• Kenzie’s devices come in two types: the ones that she kicks when they stop working, and the ones where a single glitch will stab her friend in the pupil. Only she can tell the difference.

• Kenzie's best friend has had more lives than Kenzie has had foster parents.

• In a completely predictable turn of events, the paparazzi Tinker has an excellent sense of fashion.

• Once a group of men set their eyes upon a helpless little girl. Unfortunately for them, that little girl was Kenzie, and said eyes stopped working shortly after.

• Kenzie had a crush on a psychopathic serial murderer three times her age, he told her she was too much for him.

• After her heartbreak she rebounded in a love triangle involving her, the alien progeny of Skitter (see her facts in Worm memes) and a coldblooded killer that can make you feel everyone's pain. So far, all three of them have lost limbs and its only starting.

• One of Kenzie's many delayed projects is creating life (see 7.10), she'll get to it after her team finishes setting up a police state where criminals are sent to deserted earths.

• Kenzie is really, really good at making friends online. Until she deletes them.

• Kenzie’s friends include a reincarnated serial murderer (who is also her mother/older sister figure), a traitorous ex-cultist mass murderer, a girl with *breathtaking* body image issues, two siblings who perpetually threaten each other with mutilation, a former heroine with an eldritch horror as skin and a shapeshifting monstrosity created by the worst mad scientist of their earth (also her crush); out of all of those, the nervous little girl with attachment issues is the one to be afraid of.
• “Hope Kenzie doesn’t see X” is a bad strategy for just about any X. ^note From the Ward comments on Breaking 14.7