Worm Review

Edit 4/4/2025: I do not agree with this anymore and wrote it without much thought, but perhaps, that is why it is worth keeping. 

Originally written from 9/14/2023 to 9/15/2023:

When I first started reading "Worm" by "Wildbow", I thought it was one of the most underwhelming things at first. The beginning felt like a dark Internet talk about bullying, and it was virtually hard to keep reading when the only thing I was expecting was "revenge porn". I prefer to read books that maintain some sense of optimism because it would lose that action feel if it was all depression. Of course, conflict made people sad, but sadness is different than the combination of nihilism, depression, and anxiety. Bullying for bullying' sake was a good way to make a novel that related to others, but the best kind of fantasy is the kind that talks about issues while retaining some sense of disbelief. Any kind of involvement with reality involves a sense of surprise, disbelief, and impossibility. Real life is too dramatic, terrifying, random, and impossible, and trying to represent that in writing only serves to make for cheap and practical softening up and loosening of those who are in desperate need for a hug. However, that is why I avoid those things because like most people, I seek fantasy rather than a validation of the experiences which I have failed to understand again and again because reality is full of confusion and bizzareness. It is only valid that I look for more structured, convenient, and a sense of order in writing. In reality, entropy is the natural course of things, but in writing, the goal is to create a sense of order and clarity amid the seeming chaos of conflict. Writing is meant to clarify, to summarize, and to give people a more lighthearted, easy way to understand the complex world by delving into something that expects certain audiences and writes for them, focusing only on the necessary elements that make a good story rather than daring to represent everything in its reality as if ignorant of the complexity of reality. That goes back to Worm, the beginning of which was lame and boring, only making me doubt whether I was reading a story or a failed non-fiction attempt at expressing one's aggrievances toward bullying. In the end, I prefer that the writer refrains from the pretense that they can dictate what reality is through such simplified expressions. Let the fact that it is simplified take course and focus on clarity all throughout at the cost of chaos and confusion, with which reality is pervasive. If one decides to write in fantasy, let them clarify that it is chaotic for readers who prefer that, but be careful regarding presenting a book as if it serves to relieve someone of the complexities of reality. If the book is meant to be an attempt at implicating reality in fiction, let it be clarified through and through, and when it is done, all the critique falls away, and now, it can be analyzed from the perspective that it deserves. This is what happens when a novel subverts expectations. Previous critique based on earlier chapters becomes useless when the story itself progresses in a way that makes the writing that much more nuanced rather than focusing on singular, predictable ideas. Now, its complexity and chaos becomes simple and clear because expectations are re-adjusted to accommodate the progression of the novel. A "lame" beginning can serve as a tool to launch an even more attractive story in the coming successive chapters all the way up to the end because broken expectations are much more better served when what comes next is more attractive than that preliminary impression. Ultimately, the book deserves a 5/5 for being really good at tackling issues that many novels fail to tackle. In the future, when books like these are common, I will lower my rating to 3/5. I know that books can improve and get better, so I await the time that happens because many clarity issues continue to propagate and scare away new readers.

I remember how it felt when she finally got a team. It was only interesting once that happened; however, every time I learned that a "hero" in this superhero world was actually just a horrible person rather than portraying them in a way that allowed freedom for nuance by showing them as antagonistic rather than telling the readers that they were horrible, I wanted to face-palm. I can see why it is difficult to give antagonists time to grow and develop before concluding them as villains because it requires a more open mindset, but it is crucial to creating a story where your protagonist can struggle while allowing the tension to rise through the fact that the villains and side characters are so developed. If only the protagonist and her friends are developed, then it's easy to believe that they will win every time because of how little development and growth the portrayal of the antagonists get. When the portrayal of the antagonists becomes nuanced overtime, it is more exciting because you can feel the two forces collide rather than reading a story about how the writer portrays the main protagonist as a superior force that is morally correct rather than just showing that the protagonist has their own considerations of right and wrong. When the omniscient narrator pretends that the protagonist is morally correct despite her being a superior force and writes all the antagonists like pure evil horrible monsters, it gets hard to enjoy the story since it just feels like a child's revenge flick.

Spending too much time detailing the protagonist's thoughts rather than considering others' plot-important perspectives on the conflict or world makes it harder to relate to the protagonist because people often deal with things that are difficult, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are thinking about it in a way that makes it sensible. People often have bad ideas and have thoughts that soon become directly useless; however, they serve to give room for creative solutions. Trying to detail the thoughts of the protagonist is a waste of time because most people in real life spend their time thinking as they go rather than standing still in such a horrible situation. Only people who have lived at home for most of their life are less physically involved, so the tendency of writers to write characters that have that same way of standing still and thinking is evident. In real life, however, people tend to think as they go because most people in the world outside a privileged lifestyle are always moving. Writing a story with a more normal person in urban society would be much more fast-paced and "think as you go" than such languid and prolonged thought. In a superhero world, expect that sense of fast pace to be so much more evident since people have flashy ways to go around, work, and express themselves. Rather than portraying the character's thoughts, it's better to weigh the situation from multiple angles, creating an intersection of views that provide a sense of tension through contradictions. If you do prefer to detail a character's thoughts, please remember that you have to consider how fast people move. When you spend your time in real life rather than in a chamber, you get to see how urban society runs. Maybe, people from rural backgrounds might struggle to adapt to the fast lifestyle of people in urban areas, but besides that, recognize that people have to be fast, go around, meet people, finish work for deadlines, and sleep while shortly pondering about their life before bed.

If you need to clarify the nature of the world and the background, recognize the need for exposition if the story gets too chaotic rather than brute-forcing the exposition through thoughts. Recognize that people are emotional rather than capable of expressing an exposition in their thoughts every other day. When people do think, recognize that they end up forgetting it for the most part because they think on the go.  Portraying thoughts is also recognizing that those thoughts only exist due to action rather than stillness. Dialogue also is a modality through which people express exposition, and it is effective because dialogue is how people "think" on the go. Often, people only recognize and remember their thoughts by talking to others. In such a fast society, recognize that it is a "society" full of communication. Growing up all alone in a room in the Internet all day will cause deprivations in that recognition of how engaging and swift people are when it comes to asserting themselves and the manner in which they fetch their memories and burst forth. Of course, in reality, they may look fine when they have time to talk, but that is why people are so fast because they can seize comfort in the things that they have to do because the human mind is capable of that. It is typical to see very negative people on the Internet, but in reality, people are fast, which means that they are often outwardly positive and optimistic for the sake of gaining comfort, socializing, and feeling accepted amid trauma and struggles that they keep under the surface. If everyday people mirrored the extremely negative sentiments on the Internet, society would collapse. However, people who touch the real world often find strength amid troubles, so that when people do break, it feels sudden and out of nowhere because people are capable of being optimistic and happy amid struggles. It might takes decades before someone recognizes their trauma because people are capable of gaining comfort everyday to press on. Rather than dismissing the optimism of everyday people, recognize that privilege is built upon the common lives of those who press on hopefully and optimistically despite their lack of a privilege lifestyle. People's communication often involves a lack of clarity due to very deep context between associates, but for the sake of communicating, you can either force clarity in this case, or portray how hard it is to understand people and how greatly rare conversations actually give context behind things such as situations, people, activities, and ideas with which they associate everyday. The granting of context of a singular instance of a thing often only happens once in a short conversation, and conversations about the same thing may happen in a disjointed manner, interspaced between several weeks, months, or even years. This is why real life is very complex, and it is also why writing dialogue requires simplification and suspension of disbelief for the sake of clarity. When the dialogue gives context behind why things are, it might sound bad when you are someone who is active in everyday society rather than stuck in high society or inside a small room in the Internet, but it is essential for clarity. Again, exposition through narration rather than dialogue is always an option, and it is usually more natural than dialogue, wherever the main character is already an established person of society rather than being a newcomer. However, recognize that people can suspend their disbelief or be ignorant regarding how everyday people think or talk, so writing exposition through dialogue and direct thoughts can still work even it it is very far from reality. However, it is crucial to rely on "showing" and judiciously using "direct narrative exposition" in order to achieve the least unrealistic form of writing, although indeed, it is still far from reality. To clarify, when I said "extremely negative sentiments on the Internet", I was referring specifically to negative sentiments on the Internet rather than declaring the nature of the Internet.

In regard to the plot, it is crucially bombastic and develops quite quickly, focusing on fast, sometimes literally explosive exchanges between teams, creating an almost game-like situation where each character has a set of weapons, magical skills, tools, and physical abilities to fight. Taylor and her company of allies are protagonists that rely more on their angsty teenage attributes to deliver a novel and more detailed perspective on the superhero world. Despite the traumatic situations providing a good reason to suffer, Taylor and her allies often end up looking like angsty teenagers rather than traumatized veterans because of their personalities based on their pivotal communications with each other. In the end, Taylor is a protagonist with a goal, and her circumstances develop her further throughout the story as someone who lives outside the law. The "angsty teenager drama" pillar of the story is very reminsicient of "Wattpad" and fanfiction, but many readers might enjoy that.



My thoughts on this review as of 4/4/2025: I would say that it is better than nothing. It is an immediate reaction and clearly done on the fly after reading. It would be much stronger if it was written over the course of a week or two, but I'd say that haphazardness and immediacy are the point.