Since you now know about the eight interludes at the end of arc 11, it’s probably safe to tell you that that was the point where wildbow updated every day for a week, to celebrate worm’s first anniversary.
Oh, nice!
I wonder if Interludes tended to be quicker and/or easier for Wildbow to write? First the donation bonuses, now this…
I think the reason for both of these things is because Wildbow has had trouble ordering the chapters the way he wants them in the ToC. If you’re just clicking next to get to each chapter, then eventually the interludes will show up like this (for example): Interlude 10 (Donation Bonus), Interlude 10 (Donation Bonus #2), Interlude 10 (Donation Bonus #3), Interlude 10.
Huh, interesting. I guess his TOC is somewhat automated, then?
But yeah, I click next chapter each time.
(Speaking of which, I’ve just found out what caused my Worm tab to go back to Interlude 8 a couple days ago. The good news is it’s preventable (or rather, updatable). The bad news is I realized it because it happened again, so that’s another round of clicking through two Arcs’ worth of chapters to get where I’m supposed to be. :p)
IMO the reveal that Alec is bisexual is kind of overshadowed by the reveal that he’s a rapist.
Yeeeah.
“You don’t feel any pity for Sophia? You don’t feel at least a bit of a pity for a teenage girl whose life was destroyed by a freaking psycho?” I try to feel pity for her, but it’s outweighed by the fact that said teenage girl is herself a freaking psycho who was doing her level damnedest to destroy the life of a fellow teenage girl for whom she obviously didn’t feel even a bit of a pity.
Yeah, she’s not exactly innocent herself.
Do you have any guesses about arc names you expect to see in the future?
Let’s see… a couple bug words that might become Arc titles in the future:
Armsmaster did mention when confronted about what he did that his combat analysis software had issues with to many variables, which was why some hero’s died, so the reason he wanted to fight Leviathan alone may have been to increase the effectiveness of the analysis software. In that case it isn’t quite as bad as he would believe that by sacrificing some villains he could kill Leviathan and that if he didn’t the combat software wouldn’t have been good enough.
Ehhh. Maybe. Not sure I buy it, but I suppose it works.
…I guess it would’ve made sense for him to want an audience if they wouldn’t get in the way. Hm.
But yeah, either way, it takes us back to arrogance and faith in his own work. He’d have to legitimately think his system was so good at peak performance that it working just a little better was worth getting rid of all the help from others, at the cost of lives.
Hi Krixwell! I just wanted to tell you how much I love watching you read Worm via your blog. It is such fun, thank you for doing this and sharing as you do. So, my question, what are your thoughts right now about the world of worm? Purposefully general, I’d like to hear whatever comes to mind.
It’s not a world I’d like to live in. Yes, it has cool heroes, but it’s a crapsack world. Or, at the very least, the narrative focuses a lot on the negatives of the world, negatives that are realistic but perhaps just a bit exaggerated.
Then again, I’m incredibly privileged. The biggest problem I’ve seen in Worm that I have personal experience with is Kid Win’s ADD, so maybe it’s my perspective that is skewed.
But even if the mundane crapsackiness of the Worm world is realistic, you’ve got the parahuman crapsackiness that comes with villains like Heartbreaker, the Slaughterhouse Nine and Kaiser running around (well, not so much Kaiser anymore, but you know what I mean), or Purity for that matter. Purity might actually have the highest “onscreen” killcount so far, besides Leviathan.
And, speaking of Leviathan, then there’s the whatever-the-fuck-the-Endbringers-are crapsackiness. You think you’ve got a shitty city? This world has monsters that deliberately target weakened spots and can make large islands sink into the sea, cover cities with lava and… whatever the Simurgh does (if Leviathan is a tsunami and Behemoth a volcano, maybe the Simurgh is a hurricane?), just to prove you wrong!
It’s an interesting world to read about, for sure, but damn if you’d get me to crawl through Professor Haywire’s hole between realities and live there.
One thing I want to note about “prevent rather than punish”: I’m not saying “punish prematurely”. I’m saying make it impossible for the crime to be committed in the first place. For instance, keep likely victims away from murderers, keep valuables out of reach of thieves, teach people properly about consent and don’t bring them up to glorify rape, that kind of thing.
It’s not always possible, and if it fails, it’s not the victim’s fault that it happened to them. The culprit is still 100% accountable. But it’s better if the crime doesn’t take place at all than that it does and the culprit is punished, because then the harm that comes with the crime doesn’t happen.
Really enjoying you reading this so far. This is probably as close as we’ll get to a continuation of that “MST3K reads Worm” one shot on Spacebattles. Also, don’t know if this counts as a spoiler, but the next arc has 8 closing interludes. Who do you think they’ll be from the perspective of?
Woah.
So the natural guess based on the number is the Slaughterhouse Nine, but the thing is… if that’s the case, the Fellowship of the Meat (beyond just Jack, I mean) has to be a lot more important than they currently seem to be, to warrant what is practically another Interlude Arc like Sentinel to get to know them.
If it’s not them… just a collection of a whole bunch of other characters that turn out to be relevant to the next Arc? I don’t know.
Pist 170008370624 has a mis-capitalized chapter tag (“chapter” instead of “Chapter”).
That’s okay, tags aren’t case-sensitive. Thank you, though!
Krixwell Liveblogs 