UPDATE 1: Superhero Aspirant

Alright, now for something different. I’m going to read Worm during the next year and half or two years, apparently! The author is named John McCrae, from now on referenced as ‘Wildbow’, because that’s his online name. It’s a long, long story. Luckily, long stories don’t intimidate me. Let’s get into this with gusto, shall we? There are thirty arcs to deal with here, and as it’s obvious, we’ll start from the top. Let this journey into the world of Worm be worthwhile.

Brief note from the author: This story isn’t intended for young or sensitive readers.

So I have heard, author, thanks for the note. Not that such warning means much, in terms of plot or characters. I have always been a bit wary when the author of a story says it isn’t intended for ‘sensitive readers’, but from what I have heard, this time it’s a valid warning. I wasn’t given any specific details, though, and I don’t really want details. I’m sure I’ll know why the warning was given once I get to those parts.

Looks like this is a story narrated in first person! Tackling the difficult challenges, eh, Mr. Wildbow?

This story starts in a classroom setting, and the so-far unnamed narrator’s first action is being impatient and fidget with her pen, doodling and unable to focus. An acceptable introduction, I’d say. The class is about capes, a topic the Narrator was hoping to hear about since the start of the semester, and unless the Narrator is some kind of hardcore fan of the intricacies of geography/geology, I’d say ‘capes’ refer to the article of clothing. Now that the topic is finally touched she can’t focus.

The teacher, Mr. Gladly, is the kind of teacher teenagers would like to have in their schools, the kind that’s usually relegated to Disney live-action movies, but the Narrator doesn’t like him. I have the impression she finds him grating, at the very least. A classmate by the name of Madison Clements smirks, class is over, and homework is given: ‘think about capes and how they’ve impacted the world around you’. Worldbuilding ahoy, perhaps?

Now that the class is almost over, the students mingle and talk. Madison quickly takes her position as the queen bee of the class, gathering friends and receiving a description from the Narrator. There’s a clear undercurrent of disdain here, and I have the feeling Madison would describe the Narrator in similar terms. ‘Madison wore a strapless top and denim skirt, which seemed absolutely moronic to me given the fact that it was still early enough in the spring that we could see our breath in the mornings’ Alright, we have a location and a timeframe for the beginning of the story. All that remains now is a hopefully short description of the protagonist and –oh, there it is, vivid enough to get one to imagine the Narrator yet short enough for it to not be cumbersome. Done! All the minor details to be described at the start of a story have been covered. We’re off to a good start, in technical terms.

As soon as the class is over, the Narrator runs away from the classroom and into the bathroom, nervously waiting for a free stall, and locks herself inside to indulge in the scene of the asocial kid eating the lunch while sitting on the toilet. I have to say Mr. Wildbow has done a rather good job painting the Narrator as disdainful of everything around her, yet nervous of what the other girls may think – or maybe fearing they’ll bother her. It’s a daring risk, one wrong step and it can turn the protagonist into an unlikable person. With some luck Mr. Wildbow won’t fall in the traps many other authors fall into while trying to do this.

‘The only book in my bag that I hadn’t already read was called ‘Triumvirate’, a biography of the leading three members of the Protectorate’. Book that, in her opinion, may have been all made up. What kind of world is this, exactly, I wonder? ‘Protectorate’, huh.

The Narrator didn’t even have time to finish her lunch when other girls enter the bathroom, and she has the bad luck that they precisely knocked on her stall. “Oh my god, it’s Taylor!” Taylor, I see. The mere existence of Taylor in the vicinity seems enough to get the girls to plan something, and when Taylor tries to run away, she finds out she’s locked inside the stall. The girls, who it’s then revealed to be Madison and two friends of hers, pour bottles of juice all over Taylor. Once Taylor is completely soaked, the stall can finally be opened, and she steps out to the jeers and laughs of Madison and company. “My attention was on the faint roar of blood pumping in my ears and an urgent, ominous crackling ‘sound’ that wouldn’t get any quieter or less persistent if I covered my ears with my hands.” Thankfully for everyone involved, there’s no tearful confrontation that could give more fodder to those three, they just leave the bathroom and Taylor resignedly tries to clean her glasses the best she can.

She’s furious yet powerless to fight back or do anything to stop it. It’s not the first time she has gone through something like this, her locker used to be routinely vandalized, and all this has been going on for a year and half. The loss of the only refuge she had during lunch break has hit her especially hard, so hard she let the buzzing and crackling sound mentioned before grow. Ah, here we go! I thought it’d take longer before there was a demonstration of how Taylor’s power worked, but there it is. It’s all responding to her subconscious, but once it gets in gear she can control it all involuntarily. That’s what happens now, she’s so frustrated and filled with hatred she doesn’t care about restraining herself anymore and lets the bugs all come to her!

‘On every surface of the bathroom were bugs; Flies, ants, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, earwigs, beetles, wasps and bees. With every passing second, more streamed in through the open window and the various openings in the bathroom, moving with surprising speed’. …you know, depending of the location of this school, it’d be surprising if no one outside noticed constant streams of insects entering through a window, or noticed and didn’t care. Who knows, maybe anomalies like these are commonplace in this world. Maybe teenagers tend to use their powers without restraint all the time. The bugs cover everything in the bathroom, waiting for Taylor to impart orders.

Like I’m sure a lot of people have often felt before, Taylor wishes she could just unleash her powers and give fair retribution to everyone who has slighted, mocked and bullied her, but that’s no more than a flight of fantasy, not because she can’t, but because she shouldn’t. ‘I was all too aware that I’d get caught and arrested if I attacked my fellow students. There were three teams of superheroes and any number of solo heroes in the city.’ So powers are relatively common, but not so much that everyone has it, apparently. There was no fear of any other student attacking back, so it isn’t like anyone goes around parading their powers. Superheroes and heroes are known yet there’s a certain level of secrecy, or at least that’s the impression I have. So that’s the kind of world this is! Mr. Wildbow throws in a chain of morality in the form of Taylor’s father, as the fear of his disapproval is what grounds her the most. ‘Except I was better than that.’, she says in reference to having revenge on people despite the consequences.

Somehow I have the feeling there’ll be hell to pay if anything happens to her father.

All the bugs are told to go away like nothing happened, and I choose to believe someone standing outside the school saw the clouds of bugs enter the window – and then leave – and shrugged their shoulders. Pah, that happens every day. No reason for alarm. Taylor leaves the school too, enduring the snickering from random students on the way to the door of the school, and takes a bus to return to her home.

‘I was going to be a superhero. That was the goal I used to calm myself down at moments like these. It was what I used to make myself get out of bed on a school day’ …given the very short plot summary I was told first; such goal won’t happen. Oh boy. It’ll be a treat to watch how exactly Taylor went from ‘hoping to be a superhero’ to ‘I joined a group of villains’. Paraphrasing. Quite tragic, if I may say. I’m starting to have a pretty good idea of why such change happened, though, the chapter did a rather good job showing that. ‘It made it possible to keep from dwelling on the fact that Emma Barnes, leader of the trio, had once been my best friend.’ And that adds even more reasons for the change of alignment that’s going to come later. Betrayal and/or a possible falling out, huh. Could be interesting!

All in all, this was a rather solid first chapter. Taylor was introduced in a way that showed part of her personality – parts that may be considered mostly negative but are good base for the direction the story may take – there’s an inkling of what the world will be like, and there was a glimpse of Taylor’s powers, which is something I didn’t really expect in the first chapter. Good start for Worm! I like the writing style, too. Personally I’m partial to third-person omniscient narrators, so I’m skeptical about how well first-person will work, but so far Mr. Wildbow has worked with this very well. I didn’t think Madison wouldn’t be the leader of the bullying trio, that was a bit of a swerve, but it’s not bound to be important in the big scheme of things…I think.

Her power is a good base for her potential turn to villainy, too. I’m no connoisseur of superheroes, honestly, and all I know is pretty much all the superficial information there’s to know, but nothing else further than that. It’s just my personal impression, but I’m pretty sure that if you stopped a random person in the street and asked ‘hey, you think someone who can control bugs is a superhero or a supervillain?’ the amount of ‘supervillain’ answers would overwhelm the other option. It simply reeks of villainy, given the image people in general have of bugs. No one has phobias about super-strength or laser eyes. When someone mentions control over bugs, I’m pretty sure what most people would imagine would be a person completely covered with insects, which can be a very unsettling and nightmare-inducing mental image for a lot of people, most wouldn’t imagine a person with a bug-themed superhero costume.

Since we’re here I may as well go to the next chapter, why not.

Gestation 1.2. I just realized the first arc was named ‘gestation’. Huh. The subtlety hits like a brick to the face, but it’s fitting.

The chapter starts with Taylor recounting what happened with Emma and why they weren’t friends anymore. It’s…much shorter and vague than I expected, honestly. ‘So when I got back from nature camp just a week before our first year at high school started, to find that she wasn’t talking to me? That she was calling Sophia her best friend?’ That’s…kind of a sudden fall from grace, isn’t it? And it doesn’t seem like Taylor did anything to alienate Emma or anything, it just…it just happened. I’ll take your word for it, Taylor, but I wouldn’t be surprised if something happened and Taylor simply didn’t realize how significant it was, or didn’t want to tell what it was.

Not wanting to think any more about Emma and get case of Sudden Turncoat Friend, Taylor turns her attention to the backpack and the damage the sodas and juices did on it. To summarize the paragraph: it’s ruined and everything inside is ruined. Special attention to a hardcover: ‘That notebook was – had been – my notes and journal for my hero career.’ …yikes. Really, no surprise Taylor’s goal changed. I’m sure there’s a very good reason why Taylor would carry something as meaningful as that with her to school instead of leaving it at home, right? Yeah, there must be. I hope.

Given how ruined the notebook is, Taylor may have to rewrite everything in a new notebook, and it’s a lot of information. It had writing about her powers, the training she did, drawings of costumes, crossed out name ideas – …is the ‘Worm’ title of this story referencing Taylor herself as an alias instead of her powers themselves? Not a very flattering name, in any case –and plans for her hero career. In other words, her own life as a hopeful superhero was there and now it’s ruined. Either she starts again or she gives up and lets all that info be potentially lost forever.

Taylor’s house is a safe place for her right now. She gets into the shower and tries to give a positive spin to everything that happened in the school bathroom. Needless to say, it’s…not a successful endeavor. I consider myself generally optimistic, and I can’t think of any perks to these events either. The ruined hero journal is what sticks in her mind the most, for reasons mentioned already.

Taylor goes into her basement and retrieves a gym bag she had hidden down there behind a panel. I again question why she’d take her hero notebook to school despite knowing her stuff couldn’t be safe anywhere near that place. Taylor takes a minute to summon bugs to come to her basement from a two blocks radius, and took out her costume from the gym bag. This wasn’t a mere dream, huh. Taylor was already making a costume, it seems.

‘The first of the spiders started coming in through the open windows and congregating on the workbench. My power didn’t give me a knowledge of the official names of the bugs I was working with, but anyone could recognize the spiders that were crawling into the room. These were black widows. One of the more dangerous spiders you could find in the States. Their bite could be lethal, though it usually wasn’t, and they tended to bite with little provocation.’ Augh, geez! There’s something extraordinarily unsettling about the thoughts of dozens upon dozens of black widows living in a ratio of two blocks. Thank goodness I live in a place where the only potentially lethal insects are mosquitoes, and those are very rare in my apartment.

The spiders start to lay down the foundation of part of the costume, using their webs. Interesting use of powers, may I say. Certainly creative, I applaud your cleverness, Taylor – and by extension Mr. Wildbow. Taylor proceeds to tell how she got the idea of putting a costume together by using real spider silk. It was because not long after she discovered her powers, she watched in ‘discovery channel’ (sic) that someone had made a suit able to withstand bear attacks, and it was made of synthetic spider silk. I’m no expert, and I’m aware that spider webs can have a lot of tensile strength, but there are many problems with using real spider silk for something like this, the biggest one I can think is that it’d require the spider silk to be tensed to the limit for it to be truly effective as protection. Who knows, maybe Taylor has the means to ensure that. I’m not the hero candidate here, she is.

Speaking of creative uses of powers, Taylor breed a lot of black widows in the vicinity. Oh, jolly. She shows great capacity of management and attention in her narration, telling how she arranged the best possible time for breeding, the food, the locations, taking into account the territoriality of the spiders…a lot to have in mind yet she managed to do it. That’s talent.

The costume result so far is not pretty at all. It has rather ugly colors, in fact, expected from using real spider silk and exoskeletons from bugs to make armor. No self-respecting hero would focus on colors while designing the specs of a suit, of course, what matters is that it’s ‘flexible, durable, and incredibly lightweight,’ in which case it’s a success. Taylor found out it’d be very difficult to cut the suit. I guess there was no reason for me to be skeptical of Taylor’s planning, I suppose, although I remain unconvinced of it working in real life. Good thing it’s fiction.

So what was Taylor planning? She’d finish the costume during the month – including more appealing colors, as she said – and then once the summer began, she’d take the leap into the world of superheroics. Not a bad plan! However, the loss of her notebook seems to have spurred in her the need to take the leap way earlier than it was planned. That’s…a bad plan. This can’t be something one can rush or cut corners into. While Taylor tests one of the gloves, she has the quiet determination to do it as soon as possible. ‘I’d go out next week – no. No more delays. This weekend, I would be ready.’ I have so many bad feelings about how this’ll go.

That’s the end of this chapter, and Taylor has decided to take the leap of faith and hope for the best. It’s going to be a major disaster, isn’t it? Welp. I feel bad for Taylor. There’s no way this’ll go like she wants it to go.

I think I’m ending this first update of this new liveblog here. Here, allow me to unveil the ever important matters for the story: the story itself and the main character.

It was a promising start, that’s for sure. I’m not completely hooked yet, but as I said before, Mr. Wildbow is a rather good writer. I think I could learn a thing or two from his style. I’m stopping here and I’ll continue next time.