Discussion Literature / Worm

To my knowledge, web novels are usually put into the Web Original folder.

I've seen it in both, though most often under Web Original. It's weird and should probably be standardized if it isn't already.

Chekovs Gun would be a better trope.

Or Chekhov's Gunman.

I would say not, seeing as there are 5 epilogue chapters and 1 irregular chapter yet to be posted that could end up as sequel hooks or outright spoilers for the sequel.

Spoiler tags are needed in general, and for a work with so many twists and revelations as Worm are absolutely necessary. It does make for an uglier page, with all the blanks, but I believe there are enough warnings about it on the synopsis. Besides most subpages are not spoilertaped over.

If there's a systematic vandalizing or trolling across multiple pages you should contact a moderator, otherwise there's edit wars across multiple pages, and that just pisses a lot of people off.

wha? whats this he's going on about now?

The Wards (junior branch of the state-sponsored super team) may not fit, but New Wave and the Travellers should be okay. New Wave is a small independent team of people related by blood or marriage and the Travellers are six people who were already (more or less friendly) acquaintances before becoming a supervillains.

I find this a bit stretched. While Clockie takes a weak stab at innuendo because he is the type of guy to make a joke like tha, I think the above is reading a bit too much into it.

A better example would be the Simurgh putting her wing up to resemble a rope, and reclining her head, while Lisa was watching (her brother hanged himself).

edit: btw, it would be either an in-universe example, or the simurgh invoking/exploiting the trope.

edit2: kindly keep the discussion civil and as swear free as possible please.

A. I think it could go on both. It fits her as a character, but in terms of the story it is also a theme for her/The Undersiders. Numerous people didn't consider her a threat until it was too late. The merchants actually laughed at her when they invaded, Lung played around thinking she couldn't do a thing, Mannequin thought he was immune to her ability, and Alexandria acknowledged she was dangerous but really did think she was harmless to her power.

B. Underestimating Badassery does fit Taylor as a person, but I wanted to treat Skitter as a separate persona especially now that she is Weaver and doesn't like some of the things she as Skitter. She admits that she was a villain, and she herself tells Dragon she would be surprised what she was capable of during the lunchroom standoff. Cutting off Bakuda's toes, tearing out Lungs eyes, stabbing the Empire 88 gangmember, mauling the merchants, and fucking up Triumph so badly he came very close to dying. It fits Skitter because everyone didn't think of her as a threat until it was too late, and I don't think Taylor herself realized just how much nightmare fuel her power could really be.

Whether or not she reached Big Bad status then, the heroes thought she was harmless because it didn't fit her character to attack civilians. Her escape by peaceful protest could fit not so harmless again because it shows that she is still a huge threat even if she doesn't resort to violence. Skitter is a major threat because she is also very smart, has ALOT of influence with the civilian population, and doesn't even need to fight to win. She showed it again by outsmarting the PRT director in chicago as weaver but she isn't a villain at that point.

C. I can see your point, but I think there is a difference between acknowledging her as a dangerous villain and realizing the true extent of her capabilities. The heroes knew she beat Lung, but Triumph wasn't worried, Armsmaster wasn't worried, Grue was shocked that she dared to fight Mannequin-while someone who realized how dangerous she was would have thought it a even match, Coil knew she was dangerous but thought he could easily beat her,...etc. I'm talking about the people who realized that Taylor still held back, that fact that she thrives no matter the threat, and how smart she is in a fight. Tattletale probably knew now that I think about it, but Regent/Imp didn't really care enough to really try and figure out that she was the big gun of the group. Clockblocker has more experience fighting her than any other hero and was desperate to stop her from escaping, Rosary instantly surrendered despite the fact that she could have easily dropped a truck on her because she sensed the danger, and Theo knew Lung beat his father and lost badly to Skitter. A better example is when Miss Militia/Flechette have Taylor dead to rights in her territory and Miss Militia give her the gun. At that point they realized how damn dangerous Skitter was but that was after she pulled off so much. I was more talking about the people whose first thought when they first meet Skitter isn't to laugh and underestimate her, but who freak out when first meeting her.

You can change it if you want, no big deal. But I still think we should treat Skitter as a separate persona. Taylor did give up being a villain after all. Everyone did laugh at Skitter at first.

A. I think this and Underestimating Badassery should both be in the same place, but I can see the logic of putting them on the main page instead of the character page — they're about the position of the character within the story, rather than the character herself. I'll take a minute to think on that.

B. For all the That Man Is Dead attitude Taylor has towards Skitter, it makes logical sense to put all three of them — Taylor, Skitter, and Weaver — in the same character sheet entry.

As for the timing of the Not So Harmless transition, are you proposing that it is Alexandria's death that marks the key point? If so...

C. ...I'll readily concede your point about Triumph, Armsmaster, Grue, and Coil, but by the time you reach the cafeteria I think Dragon and Defiant know what they're dealing with — and I'm pretty sure that from Hive onwards Bitch knew exactly how good Skitter was. There may be a couple others (I'm not sure about Theo, personally), but that's enough to establish that, even if only a handful of people had an accurate assessment of the girl, it was more than three.

On those grounds, then, what about this as a rewrite?

• Not-So-Harmless Villain: In-Universe, Skitter is widely considered to be one of the less dangerous supervillains in town, or indeed in the Undersiders — both because "bug control" sounds weak and because her distaste for hurting people means she doesn't have a track record of mayhem like a lot of the others. This is part of what contributes to an entire series of enemies underestimating her, climaxing with Alexandria not realizing Skitter could kill her singlehandedly.

Works for me.

While I'm ok with the entry as it is (and was as it was btw, nice cleanup however), I don't think Weaver and Skitter really belong on the same character entry.

Taylor is now a mix of the two, and has evolved a lot, but ultimately is the one with less screen time, and IMHO suffers a bit from Secret-Identity Identity

I agree — Cerebus Syndrome describes a work that starts lighthearted and funny, which Worm doesn't.

Another reason she's a hypocrite, she keeps goign on about how ok it is to do immoral things for good reasons. So why does she hate all the official capes on what they do when its the same thing, even if it's bigger scale?

1- she's different because a bully does intimidate etc for kicks. she does it to protect people. I think it's extremely obvious. (e.g.: see the Appeal to Force entry)

2- she does not. she does not like such people calling themselves heroes and getting all the good pr, or does not like them acting the hero for selfish motives. If you're referring to Cauldron it's a question of scale mainly: there IS a difference between lying to someone and kidnapping, killing, torturing and vivisecting thousands of people. Maybe less obvious but not much more so.

1. It's still the same methods. After all, didn't her own former friend try to justify her bullying as well?

2. She has currently mutilated, tortured and killed people for the greater good so she's no longer any different from Cauldron. It's obvious that she's getting worse and worse, not unlike Superman in Red Son. If she could control the whole world just so that it would be better in her own eyes, she would.

1 - Yes, she did, with a "the stronger wins" approach. And again, there's some difference between beating up people because, say, you want to mug them or because you want to defend someone from a mugger. It's a question of morality

2 - She did villainous stuff as a villain, and most of the creepier stuff was either because she was in an imbalanced state or because, well, coil. Cauldron as an organization does not exactly have the "I was really depressed" excuse. It's a question of both ethics and scale

1. Her powers obviously give her a multitude of ways of takign care of a problem as she clearly shows. But she deliberately always goes for the most traumatizing/horrifying ways. Yet the muggers and bad people still keep coming. So trying to be terrifying is no longer a valid reason. She obviously still chooses these methods because she ENJOYS making her victims suffer.

2. So her motto should really be "Do the sorta wrong things for the right reasons"? She constantly argues with more idealistic heroes that there is no scale of morality and that if it's for the right reasons, she's justified in whatever she does. Maybe she's not as big as Cauldron yet, but what's to stop her from one day being just like them? She's clearly getting more and more loose morals.

The series tagline is "doing the wrong thing for the right reasons." Everyone in the series, with the possible exception of Jack Slash who's just insane, thinks that they're doing the right thing. The difference is and will always remain the scale of the wrong things weighted against the scale of the right reasons. The disagreement between these scales is what drives the conflict in the story.

I agree with you that Taylor is in some sense a hypocrite, but keep in mind that this is in many ways a coming-of-age story. Taylor is constantly changing as a character, trying to find her place in the world as is the challenge of any young adult. It's this struggle to find meaning and purpose that makes the character interesting.

Also, your slippery slope fallacies are annoying, so please stop using them, and try not to insert entirely made-up justifications such as "she enjoys making people suffer" into your argument. I find that it weakens it extensively and makes it very unlikely to be taken seriously. There are plenty of good arguments that Taylor is a hypocrite without resorting to inventing malicious motivations for her actions.

Separated, it's tidier and they have different tropes anyway (one being a superhero, and one not)

We should probably create a Boston wards entry. And put Weaver in there too. As in a separate entity from Skitter, some different tropes there too, and some of the shared one apply differently (e.g.: The Worm That Walks is deconstructed with Weaver, thanks to the butterflies and the meddling PR guy, played straight with Skitter)

edit: there's already a boston wards entry... how about giving a short list of codenames and short power description, with a big warning that the teams contains more spoilers you can shake a stick at, and they're all unmarked otherwise we'll have to blank the whole entry? Leaves us free not to blank weaver's entry, and it's generic enough not to give anything away.

edit2: Flechette and Foil too.

I'm not sure how we want to play characters who switch teams — what I did with the Undersiders was simply include a block of text that mentioned the characters recruited to the team whose entries were on the other pages. Without having different character pages circa each arc, I don't know that there's a better solution for avoiding excessive spoilers.

In the boston ward's case, just giving a list of codenames, then placing the unspoilered and tropified list in a folder should be enough. But that's only for them.

For the duplication: it's not really one, because different tropes apply to e.g. Skitter and Weaver, or the same trope applies differently. Hell, most of the tropes about Armsmaster do not really apply at all to Defiant.

The comments figured he was Tony Montana.

No.

Sorry to ruin your nicely constructed post, but you missed the part where Legend is discussing about adopting a child and IIRC Alexandria points out that adopoted children have the same probability as natural ones to trigger.

Okay, I reread and figure I completely lost myself in the construction of the argument.

The issue with quoting "genetics" is that it's incorrect. While genetics probably has SOMETHING to do with the ability to contact a Passenger (and Cauldron is leveraging advanced medical tech to artificially establish a connection), the main determining effect in most natural parahumans tends to be psychological trauma.

Might be better if we do not. Otherwise it's impossible to spoiler-tape over.

And it's called "fall"? As in both the season and setting things up for Taylor to became a Well-Intentioned Extremist? (Not that she's there yet )

Ditto Fighter then? except the skills he steals remain with him instead of going away?

i'd suggest Power Copying except the trope itself implies 'powers'... maybe the old title of Mega Manning?

Uh, actually Power Parasite allows for skills as well as powers. It's just that the "powers" thing is more common. And IIRC the guy heavily degrades the original's skills, so it's not Mega Manning either (like for Grue).

I don't think Lisa counts as she is a main character and was always pretty popular. Bitch and Weld might work, as I don't think wildbow expected them to be so well loved. You have to mention why they are popular though. For Weld its because he is the most overtly honest/heroic character yet seen in the crapsack world that is the wormverse. For Bitch I'm not sure why she is so well liked for others. I like her because she is refreshingly blunt about things, makes a great straight man, and I enjoyed how she has grown as person thanks to Taylor's friendship.

IMO the only one that really qualify is Vista. She gets almost no screentime, since her interlude a lot of people cheer for her, and when Echidna got her there was multiple people asking what happened to her in every single chapter.

Another example, but not played straight, is Faultline's crew. IIRC a lot of people were asking for them to came back.

What about Even Evil Has Standards?

Ooh, I got another one that could do it. Maybe. Got the idea from Legion of Nothing.

Enforced Cold War might be able to work as far as escalating the conflict. Some higher power is involved to prevent the conflict from escalating, with the page itself using the Cold War as an example where the higher power was the fear of mutually assured destruction. Usually that means you can't attack the person directly, but it might work as far as bringing family into things. In this case, attacking a hero or villain's family is likely to lead to pretty bad consequences involving the Birdcage, escalation against heroes, or problems with the Truce.

i like the second one. evil has standards seems overused

BTW, I've looked up the Whateley Universe page (they have a similar "no involving family" rule), and they go with Even Evil Has Loved Ones

Skidmark is categorized as a Shaker 2, but I could see some kinds of telekinesis having Blaster categorization as well — and Parian is categorized as a Master.

Powers in Worm are not classified per source (like, say, in the Wheateley universe), but per effect. Taking it to rpg systems, hoping you're familiar with it, it wuould be the difference between D&D and the Hero system.

So telekinesis is not a classification in itself, what the guy with the telekinesis does with it mades it into the classification.

e.g.: if he blasts people from afar he's a blaster, if he makes himself super strong he's a striker, if he makes himself invulnerable he's a brute, if he flies he's a mover and so on.

You might look in Whatever Mancy. Might be just what you're looking for with the narrower applications of powers.

i wonder if we could use a combination of the two as an actual trope.

• Whatever Mancy - Some Powers in Worm fall under this, but their applications are as varied as the individual who wield them and are categorized as such.
  • Two capes might each have telekinesis. If one uses it to pick up parts of their environment and kludge it together into a golem they'd be a Master. If the other uses it to effectively pick up and throw themself around, they'd be a Mover.

...or whatever examples might make it more clear

edit: eh, no complaints, i'm putting it in

Wait, Dragon and Armsmaster have less sex?

In your position, I would probably put something like:

* UnfortunateImplications: There seem to be only three kinds of relationships we see playing out on-camera: heterosexual relationships that are working out well (Skitter and Grue, Dragon and Armsmaster, Gallant and Glory Girl -- even Night and Fog and Victor and Othala), one-sided heterosexual relationships which are disentangled gracefully (Vista and Gallant, Panacea and Gallant), or one-sided ''homosexual'' relationships that work out very badly indeed (Flechette in misery pining for Parian, Panacea warping Glory Girl body and mind).

but I honestly don't see it. Even leaving aside Danny and Annette Rose Hebert and leaving aside Kayden and Max Anders (and Triumph and Prism, for that matter), Legend and Arthur are obviously heartwarmingly sweet together, and all of this is a sample of less than a dozen relationships out of over a hundred characters, ninety percent of whom are severely damaged. And all of which is taking place in a town which has been a haven for homophobic white supremacists for decades.

Oh, and it belongs on YMMV. Unfortunate Implications is a YMMV trope, and what you're pointing out is an example of it.

Yep, they have less sex :) she did not build everything yet, IIRC it's even mentioned in their interlude. I'm actually wondering if she can build herself all the relevant bits before Armsmaster ends up swapping out his relevant bits for some cybernetic enhancement that shoots laser blasts or something :P

For the trope itself: I know it's not intentional, but as you see Legend is the only one well off, and it's offscreen... dunno, I guess I'm over-thinking it. I do get peeved by the weirdest things sometimes, maybe that's one of them.

I'll shelve it for now. Maybe Parian and Flechette got together in the Time Skip, you never know :)

Now I feel like I've talked you out of expressing your honest feelings. :/

And I hope Flechette is at least staying in touch. There's still a loose end with the armband to be resolved.

Nah, don't worry Robin Zimm, the page is for tropes and they have to be written clearly. Goes double for inflammable subjects.

Besides I did express my honest feelings in the discussion ;)

It seems to fit with me. All of the regular posters got a shout out. I can't seem to identify which one is psycho gecko though.

I posted because it got deleted for incorrectness. I usually go to discussion and wait for a few opinions before re-adding.

BTW, I thought Whackograve was PG, he's mentioned in the post about confirmed true/untrue brockton bay residents by white fairy. I wasn't able to identify almost anyone, except him, Hg (dead giveaway, (s)he got the same tagline too), Sveta and Charlotte. Yeah, I kinda suck at this :D

edit: to be more specific, psycho->whacko and psychopomp->grave, so his alt account is psychopsycho bu hey... it kinda fits :D

According to Wildbow, I wasn't in the forums, not even as Procto the Unfortunate Tinker. A different alias that would have worked is Axolotl Xolotl.

Ascended Fanboy may not work except for Greg, depending on how the story goes. I almost suggested Charlotte, but there's no indication she was a fan of it all before being dragged into a life of horrendous supervillainy (feeding kids with great evil!)

I think we have to go with Promoted Fanboy for the forum stuff though. Just no contest for the Contest Winner Cameo

Ok, I'll re-add it then.

In-Universe the most egregious example would be Genesis, but Taylor was somewhat a cape follower too IIRC.

You forgot WagTheDog, who managed to wangle himself a minion spot with Bitch.

Anyway, I deleted "Promoted Fanboy" for two reasons:

First, I interpret the trope as involving fans having some degree of physical involvement — which could be as little as being an extra in the background of one scene of the film or as much as writing the film. None of us fans had that, as clearly demonstrated by the fact that Psycho Gecko wasn't represented. Instead, we were the subjects of Shout Outs ... as per Tuckerization, a trope which is present right now on the Characters page under "Parahumans Online" (although it might belong on the main page, now that you mention).

That being my second point: our cameos are already included under Tuckerization, and that is the better fit tropewise.

I'm not really sure, the whole point in tuckerization is a generic shoutout. Promoted Fanboy instead is specifically a fanboy who gets some measure of recognition in the work. IIRC it's the sister trope made in contrast to Ascended Fanboy (which remains In-Universe).

Point being, the only other trope that fits is Contest Winner Cameo , but that fits worse because, well, contest :P

And I left it on the main page because 1- I don't want to get into an edit war encroaching your addition 2- since it's mainly throwaway minor characters I liked it better as a generic.

I don't think both of them should be included. If there is a consensus here that Promoted Fanboy is a better fit, I'll concede defeat, though.

fyi, if you click on "related" (the bottom right button at the top of the main page) you get a listing of which pages links to an article. Comes in really handy to check the wicks.

Hmmm, that is a good question actually. I never read the comments during my first readthrough but found your comments and others very funny so I reread the story with the comments and enjoyed it. But this is page about the Worm story, not the fanbase. Should we include maybe a meta moment of funny? Might be useful to take a quick poll to see if it is okay. My vision would be something like this: On a meta note, worm's fanbase can be a little "interesting" at times with comments ranging from amusing to hilarious.

Yeah, my main objection to it is that it wasn't the author's work or even some accepted fanfic.

Usually you can and should add in stuff like what you propose. It's a web serial after all, and the comments and the community around it are part of it.

If the thing becomes too big we just have to rework the Web Original/Worm page or something like that.

Besides having part of the community writing an analysis on itself lets us have Word of God on possible tropes. For example, say: What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs? on some of the more... ah... colorful comments? (any reference to any actual troper^note *cough*Psycho Geko*chough* is purely coincidental of course)

This is just my first instinct, but how about separate sections on each page for tropes, Funny Moments, etc. in the comments?

That would work, and it would be easier to move the whole thing on another subsection if it becomes too unwieldy.

Thanks for getting volunteered RobinZimm ;D

Unfortunately, I haven't been reading the comments.

...wait a second — is there a trope for those comedic "next episode preview" things with the deceptive cutting and so forth that some anime do? Does that fit?

for the previews, either Never Trust a Trailer or the (less appropriate because of thecnicalities) Bait-and-Switch Credits.

But dear RobinZimm, you should really go read them! Here, take this and enjoy! :)

Go ahead, read the comments. On top of some people's accurate predictions and a mess of WMG, they also might make you laugh. They can especially help in some of the darker parts of the story.

As for the Preview thing, check Arrested Development's page for that kind of thing. They used to have "preview" scenes at the end of the episode that never occurred in the next episode, but were canon anyway.

Incidentally, I now have a whole new idea for funny comments. And yes, I appreciated those of mine that have been added. It's probably best if I don't add any of mine myself.

Heheh...veal.

Well, it's not like we don't want you to PG. Even if you can spell "eviscerate" but not "heroically".

But yeah, you have the context of your own head to find something funny that everyone else lacking it would maybe not. How about you link some stuff and let the Wiki Magic decide? Anything short or short-eable works better, bonus points for any back and forth between various people.

OOC (and definitelt OT), is any kind of registration or actual email address required to post on worm's comment section? So far I avoided because the only constructive thing I had to say proved out to be almost true and thus spoilery (I guessed the travelers were a group of people playing D&D together about right after Noelle was introduced on webcam), but I wanted to try and ask Wildbow for something specific. Since the unfolding of the story is so fluid maybe she can take the suggestion and actually implement it.

Unfortunately, there is no edit button on comments. My typos live forever. Unless you mean on here, in which case I'm just embarrassed. Probably spelled embarrassed wrong, in fact.

Nope, no registration required. I think it requires an email address, but only Wildbow would see it.

As for the context of my own head, I had an awesome time on that interlude where the Nine attacked the nursery. I just feel a little bad about imposing on Worm's T Vtropes page. I like it a lot too, but I'd rather let other people put me here (or over on the character pages...RIP Psycho Gecko entry) than engage in something that seems so egotistical and self-serving.

A deconstruction of a One-Liner I'd say. She seems cool and composed, thanks in part to The Faceless costume, but inside she's anything but. Good catch on that one.

Tropewise, the Bond One-Liner is something you say just after you kill someone btw, so the part when she kills Coil does not count either, but it's a Pre-Mortem One-Liner.

That said, we should really put much of that stuff in the quotes section ya know, it's much more cool over there :) besides between Regent and Imp we have some really nice quotes.

Ooh, another One-Liner: when she's on the balcony with Armsmaster, she Ironic Echoes.

Perhaps I should give her a bullet on the Characters page.

Striking Hates Being Touched and Knight of Cerebus. Not sure about Dark Is Not Evil or Character Development.

I think Panacea, Triumph, and possibly Flechette show some Character Development as well.

I concede that I didn't really think through adding hates being touched and knight of Cerebus, and you make good points for removing them. But Alexandria is part of an organization that kidnaps people with a few personally kidnapped by her, removes their identities/memories of friends and families, treats them like animals, experiments on them, tortures them, gives them a good case of body horror, takes away the freewill of a few by brainwashing them to act as enforcers, and drops them off when they aren't useful anymore. This isn't even getting into creating villains, or wanting to let members of the 9 survive. Greater good my ass, she is evil/hypocritical bitch by letting this go on while still claiming to be a "hero". I think Character Development does fit because many of the minor characters are also changing but we just don't see it because they are minor characters. Look at how different the Wards are in the therapist's interlude to show what I mean.

On the Character Development side: ok, this is somewhat difficult to convey, thanks mainly to Wildbow's writing prowess: most of the cast is absolutely monodimensional, but you do not really notice it. Mind you, it's ok to have such people in your work, as they're the basis of Characters as Device. The point it: to actually have Character Development, the character itself must be, at least somewhat, rounded out. Yes, the interludes seem to provide a small measure of that, but what they actually do is to hide the fact that the characters are devices. Personally I find this absolutely awesome and extremely well done, and it's one of the main reason I really like her work. However it has the side effect of meta-analysis obfuscation, and that's what we're doing here.

tl;dr = Imp is fucking with your perceptions of the story too :P

For Alexandria: IMO she's still at level III (or maybe IV depending on the reading) of the Sliding Scale Of Anti Heroes, while her actions are questionable she genuinely seem to care, so she cannot really be a Knight Templar or a Well-Intentioned Extremist.

(edit: to put things into perspective you can compare her to another "hero" who's one step further on the sliding scale, but still manages to be at least somewhat heroic: Spawn )

Either way, we have a new meme. Imp is messing with the story.

And if so many changing Worm characters are monodimensional, we're going to need more dimensions before that to account for less well done examples.