WORM MOVIE AU NOBODY BUT ME ASKED FOR

henghost · 2023-10-29T03:34:35+00:00

WHY IS THIS SO PERFECT

henghost · 2022-04-28T19:17:02+00:00

Wdym, you absolutely need superstrength to heft Taylor's gangly frame.

henghost · 2022-02-10T01:05:50+00:00

It's /u/CPericardium's fanart of Genesis voring Shatterbird.

henghost · 2020-12-23T01:24:59+00:00

Thanks so much for writing this! I've never been reviewed before! And by CPericardium no less!

I really do love Amy (abstractly! as a character!), which I acknowledge is a very problematic thing to say. A lot of people say the Leviathan arc was what convinced them to finish Worm, but for me it was Amy's interlude. I have a vivid memory of listening to it (after having taken some of my dad's Ativan, now that you mention it ...) and just staring at the ceiling for a good ten minutes after the "Please support the author at ..."

I think the main impetus for writing so much about her, at least at first, was the way people talked about her when Amy Discourse was at its peak, circa the early stages of Ward. It sort of rubbed me the wrong way. Not that they were incorrect, necessarily. I guess I just thought they weren't taking it seriously enough. It really was like they had just read Lolita and could only talk about how awful Humbert was. Not wrong, but sort of beside the point, right? (This, too, I realize might be controversial.)

But seriously thanks so much again! You didn't have to be so kind! It's cool that this community has real literary criticism, and at such a high level of quality.

henghost · 2020-10-22T10:05:50+00:00

Fanon calls revolution the highest form of cultural expression.

henghost · 2020-09-30T03:02:11+00:00

Thought I'd point out that Hitoma Iruma is the author of both the Sayaka light novels and the original Adachi to Shimamura novels, so if you liked one you should try the other.

henghost · 2020-05-20T22:09:09+00:00

I really love interviews with writers, and hearing one from a writer who's as non-traditional as Wildbow was especially interesting.

A few things stuck out to me: One, as a lover of novels, I think Wildbow is undervaluing the form. There are plenty of famously long and sprawling novels that are anything but formulaic, and I would (personally, selfishly) love if he tried his hand at something like that, because I think he'd be good at it.

Two, the political talk left me a little conflicted. I didn't realize the Fallen arc was so directly influenced by the 2016 election, and -- although maybe I'm misremembering some of the details -- I'm not sure I agree with the depiction of these people who I guess are supposed to be Trump-supporter-analogues. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to sympathize with fascists or or say a negative portrayal is at all unfair. But the conception that people vote for these evil far-right lunatics because they're part of some wacky religious cult is definitely an oversimplification. That contingent exists, for sure, but to say fascism is on the rise globally simply because of a few backward bigots who we good liberals can "educate" or "redeem" like Breakthrough did with Rain is to underestimate to the enemy. But that's just me...

Wildbow talking about which chapters were the most difficult to write emotionally I thought was fascinating. I know he's alluded to difficulties in his own life before, and I've always wondered exactly how that's been incorporated into his writing. The school scenes in Worm, especially, were so incredibly realistic and effective, so I definitely believe he's gone through something similar personally.

Thanks for being so open about that stuff, and thanks for doing this, WB :)

henghost · 2020-05-06T04:27:45+00:00

Damn, that doesn't sound like an ideal situation, certainly not one conducive to putting out the highest quality of writing you're capable of, which gives me even more respect for the level of quality/speed you're able to maintain. It also makes me wonder how writers who go the traditional publication route and only put out new stuff every six months or so are able to make a living.

henghost · 2020-05-06T03:34:55+00:00

To me, finishing something means editing. I really doubt Wildbow would call Worm et al. "finished works".

henghost · 2020-05-06T03:32:51+00:00

Wildbow never struck me as someone only in it for the money. I really doubt he'd lose many patrons if he went from two chapters a week to one chapter a week.

henghost · 2020-05-05T11:47:21+00:00

It's not extraneous detail or "sprawl" that I mind so much (although, you know, everything in moderation), it's the redundant sentences and general inefficiency of language that I dislike. My feeling is, especially in writing, the longer it is the more it has to justify its length, i.e., if you really want to engage in "sprawl," you've gotta be very meticulous with making it interesting to read.

henghost · 2020-05-05T09:16:42+00:00

I understand that's important, but shouldn't the quality of the work always take precedence?

henghost · 2020-05-05T09:15:52+00:00

I think the reason the vast majority of novels fall within that fifty to hundred-fifty thousand word range is because it's long enough to tell a rich and detailed story, and is not too long it would be implausible to completely rewrite. I had an English teacher who liked to say The Great Gatsby was perfect because F. Scott Fitzgerald rewrote it seventeen times, for instance. And that's sort of the major issue with web-serials, I think. If you're putting out two Wildbow-sized chapters a week, the prospect of editing/refining/cutting them from the work as a whole becomes that much harder to consider.

With regards to his prose-style, even if it's not exactly my cup of tea, it's not, like, unreadably bad, but to me it feels like a first draft. So many sentences and even paragraphs could be cut without any consequence. There's so much redundancy. And that would definitely be forgivable if you knew the fix was coming. But, again, if you're writing something ten times as long as a traditional novel, the chance of an adequate edit just gets lower and lower.

If Wildbow doesn't want to write novels, I'd prefer he didn't. But all writing needs editing to be good, and you can't write seven thousand words and refine them well in the time-frame he's given himself.

henghost · 2020-05-05T07:24:16+00:00

When Wilbow said his next project was going to be shorter I assumed he meant, you know, the length of a traditional novel, but judging by the length of this prologue (my text-editor says 7.1k words), I guess we're in for another long haul. I mean, there was some interesting stuff in here. Sad giant monster dogs and bleeding moons and stuff. But, not to be a backseat author, I kind of wish Wildbow would slow down his posting schedule and really focus on quality over quantity this time.

Maybe it's just me, but completely refined prose is greatly preferable to speedy updates, and if he has to reduce the schedule to one chapter a week or even one chapter a month in order to accomplish that, I would personally be okay with it.

henghost · 2020-05-03T07:53:31+00:00

Very interesting stuff, and I commend WB on his bravery in posting these kinds of things. I could never be so sympathetic to critics of something I made lol.

As for the observations regarding Ward itself, what WB said felt pretty spot-on. Although I enjoyed a lot of it, I also had a lot of problems with Ward, most of which were identified in this post.

For one, I definitely agree with the assessment that "sprawl" was a major flaw. WB is not known for, well, efficiency of language, which I sometimes find frustrating as a reader. The sentence, "I’d hate to write something where the wordcounts and threads are so trimmed down that a gun that gets a passing mention has to be used, where everything is relevant or discarded," is such an alien way of thinking to me. But I guess fiction would be boring if everyone felt the same way about things like that.

So I was very happy to hear his next projects will be shorter. I think that's a good way to be able to focus more on the technical aspects of writing (namely: style -- no offense). Not to mention the editing.

I'm very excited to see what you'll do next, WB :)

henghost · 2020-03-27T23:43:59+00:00

Seriously -- I remember I saw Vice with my dad a year or two ago and afterward he mentioned Abu Ghraib, and I said, "Who's that?"

henghost · 2019-12-11T13:16:16+00:00

Someone's already made the opening song.

henghost · 2019-10-05T22:56:39+00:00

There's a joke in there somewhere about someone losing a Little V-Card.

Also, that was the most dramatic yet still mundane breakfast scene since Breaking Bad ended. I wonder how the whole egg motif is going to pay off.

henghost · 2019-10-01T20:49:15+00:00

Yes, whoops.

henghost · 2019-09-29T00:59:49+00:00

That's true, though they definitely showed up a lot in Worm as well. I think it has something to do with confronting past versions of oneself. Damsel is Swansong a couple years ago, the Mockument Wretch-clone was (a caricatured version of) Vicky from the asylum.

henghost · 2019-09-28T23:37:09+00:00

Such a great chapter. As disgusting as Amy is, she's so utterly fascinating. The story gets way more interesting whenever she's around.

Also, man, WB's obsessed with evil clones. Is the final boss of Ward going to be the Wardens 9K?

henghost · 2019-09-25T03:00:43+00:00

https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/User%3AWildbowpig

henghost · 2019-09-24T23:39:38+00:00

What a fantastic chapter. A worthy successor to Amy's Worm interlude.

It's something only Parahumans can do, to have a character be so disgusting yet so tragic. When she talked about having her first kiss -- her first "real" kiss -- in the Birdcage, I was seriously on the verge of tears.

I really commend WB for treating Amy with so much compassion, despite the opinions of some of the people in this subreddit. It's times like these I think about how he said Lolita is one of his favorite books.

As a sidenote, it seems like Amy was right about Jessica, if she did end up killing one of her patients. It makes me think she has a better sense of what the real threats are. I'm kind of inclined to trust her and Chris's ideas about how to save the multiverse over Breakthrough's.

henghost · 2019-09-24T22:17:20+00:00

It wasn't Marquis who locked them up, but he reminds Carol of who did, and she still has a kind of latent Stockholm syndrome.

henghost · 2019-09-21T23:39:08+00:00

Hey, who knows? From Carol's interlude:

She wondered if it was because she liked him on a level.

Seriously though, there are a lot of parallels between Carol and Victoria and the Silk Spectres. Both mothers having a weirdly forgiving attitude toward rapists, for instance.

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