anybody read worm parahumans?

I'm interested in reading it! I'm really into ErraticErrata's work (author of A Practical Guide to Evil and Pale Lights, some of my favorite works of fiction ever), and I've been told there's some similarities between the works. I guess because they're all webnovels (altho PTGE is getting published now! >.<) and webnovels do be following certain trends.

I have heard Worm is super dark, though. Can you confirm? :]

I'm currently reading through worm at the request of a friend! I'm super early on, like Insinuation 2.2 I think? But I'm hoping to get my brain to be really into capes again :3c

@ john egberts idk how to reply directly to you, idk if thats a thing, very new to forums + am on mobile lmao. worm gets pretty dark! a lot of body horror, deals with a lot of like psychological and moral questions/themes. the characters are really interesting and feel super real and flawed. very long, like almost 2 million words I think or something. big disclaimer for fatphobia specifically, not super often but when it happens it did take me out of it. it was being posted in the 2010’s same time as homestuck so I’m like. not surprised I guess

i haven’t heard of practical guide, if people are saying there’s similarities with worm i’ll definitely have to check it out!

@ milly bobilly

I hear people say if u don’t like it by arc 8 it might not be your thing, which I stand by. by arc 8 the tone has been set up, the author really finds his flow/direction. it is a very long series but i think it’s worth it lol, also there is a fan made audiobook on spotify, which is how i read it, made it a lil easier to get through!

i think i started several thousand years ago (aka like 8 months. lol) and thought i was p good (i like the mcs power) even if i stopped at interlude 2

if any1 can tell me if its worth to continue rn or if worm is something you should gear up to get into thatd be nice (when i start reading something i can't stop and seeing the wordpress tab is nagging me to get back into it HARD)

Worm is great, even perfect if you skim between Arcs 16 and 27 (with exceptions for some genius stuff in 20 and 22). There's just a lot of filler and bad decisions due to being one of the first serial works, and the beginning and end were far more planned out than the rest.

On the other hand, people say Practical Guide to Evil is similar, and it is, cosmetically, but I found it much more "Young Adult Fantasy" than anything else.

i really enjoyed worm! it is Far from perfect, but the stuff that is good is Really good. shoutout to taylor hebert, who i think might be my favorite character in anything ever? (it's either her or rose lalonde)

I love Worm. It's very problematic, but also there's not much like it at all and it has a ton of strengths in like, the inventiveness of the battles, the characters, the worldbuilding, etc. I'm reading through it with a friend currently and we're in Arc 18, so like, what feels like the third "book" or so :P

also who else into smugbug and wolfspider? i am a smugbug and wolfspider truther

Worm is something I read even before homestuck and I can confirm it's really great.

Yeah, it gets dark, but it never really hides that fact either.

I feel like its sequel, Ward, was harder to stomach in terms of darkness, I liked some of what it did but Worm was just better.

Of the authors work, I also really liked Twig, sort of a biopunk "what if Dr Frankenstein was a real person and his discoveries ushered in an age that supplanted the industrial age".

One thing I like about wildbow, the author, is that they tend to craft very deliberate protagonists in order to frame their story.

Worm had a protagonist who thought that if everyone would just LISTEN there would be no problems.

Twig had a protag who was designed to pay attention to everyone all the time and nudge things in interesting directions.

Those two lenses tell very different stories