In The Original Tweet It’s Not Even Her Cat; It’s Her Neighbour’s Cat.

Taylor the Survivor

This is a key moment for Taylor's character arc, helping her dad salvage what they can in the aftermath of the endbringer attack. The high school insecurities are just a memory and stepped fully into her role as a masked parahuman. She's growing into her potential, even as the line between Taylor and Skitter begin to merge in dangerous ways. Physically at ease and confident; I wanted to include the knife she wore but it didn't work with this pose.

That being said, I don't know why it struck such a visual chord with me. Emma seeing her old victim from the car was just a vivid scene to me, I knew I had to draw her.

I disagree strongly with the people people who say taylor getting stuck on earth Alph is a fate worse than death. Obviously it’s awful that she can’t see her friends again but the ending represents her entering a place of stability and healing, where she can finally begin to live a healthy life.

I think those people see Taylor’s awkward and I’ll fitting entrance to the civilian life and feel that she’s lost her place in the world, but I think that’s part of the healing process. She’s no longer trapped in the place that forced her to do the things she did to survive. She doesn’t fit in because she has been molded in a harsh environment, and now she finally has room to change.

Deception also plays a large part of this. The Major survived a decade as America’s super powered hatchet man off of a bluff. Lux’s dead-man’s switch is possibly a bluff. Heavy can pull himself back together from more or less anything, but it’s not as perfect a process as he pretends it is. For all we know America succeeded in killing him, just with a delay

Its just a background detail at the moment, but it’s interesting how the superpowers have undergone a quasi-evolutionary process, in that a new superpower can only emerge and remain around if they are more-or-less immune to the various powers of the existing superpowers, or have some other reason for the existing superpowers not to kill them.

Anyone without psychic shielding would be instantly neutered by Lux (see The Devil). Anyone one not physically resilient enough to survive a first strike from Heavy and whom Heavy dislikes enough to kill will likely be killed by Heavy. Etc

The Major only survived as long as he did because Magnus didn’t tell Heavy about how weak he was because letting America believe that it was still powerful was worth the concessions they were asking for until, suddenly, they no longer were.

Lux, Masumi, and possibly Magnus, are only alive, despite physical squishiness, because they have (in Masumi’s case, unintentionally) created dead-man’s switches.

And so by 1999 all you’re left with are Superpowers that have psychic shielding and which are either incredibly physically resilient or have truly terrifying dead-man’s switches

It is an actual crime that Ward isn't set in New York City. The portrait of the city painted in Worm's epilogue is genuinely an incredibly compelling setting. A city with depth. An ungovernable labyrinthine city spread over dozens of worlds, accessible only through portals created by humanity's saviour, with its central hub being the partially rebuilt ruins of the last sizeable outpost on Bet protected from the pollutants created by the destruction of Bet only by a thin forcefield. A city created by the final battle, and yet scared by it.

New York, in the process of being rebuilt.  Dust and ominous clouds were being held at bay by a thin forcefield, and the city stood in the center of a brilliant sunlight.  Where glass had broken and where oils had risen to the tops of city streets, things almost glittered.  A shining city.

Does Ward ever explain why they went from rebuilding New York on Earth-Bet to living in 'The City' on Earth Gimmel? Or does it just do that and leave us to wonder as to the answers?

My god, did Wildbow even re-read the epilogues before he wrote Ward? Like, I knew he didn't re-read Worm as a whole, because his characterizations of Amy in Ward are like, frozen in Arc 14 for most of the text but did he not even make the effort to at least re-read the last couple of chapters?

What the fuckberries? How is this the first I'm hearing, in all the complaints I've seen about Ward, and 'The City', that they were GODDAMN REBUILDING NEW YORK CITY after Golden Morning?

Sometimes I think about for how much Faultline looks down upon Skidmark and the Merchants, for her whole “he has no ideology, he’s just an idiot” line at the S9 moot, Skidmark and the Merchants actually showed up to the Leviathan fight, while Faultline and her people got the hell out of dodge because no one was paying them.

 Like, Melanie, you are not significantly less of an opportunist than those guys!  You sided with the villain alliance over the bombslinging terrorist because they outbid the terrorist. Your wholesome fan-favorite found family is composed entirely of people you took in because they were at rock bottom and you could exploit that- you were not Spitfire’s first choice of boss, lady! Your cute surrogate-daughter is someone you broke out an asylum to use as a gun. You only grow principles when it would let you butt heads with Tattletale more effectively, or wring more money out of a deal by positioning yourself opposite Alexandria! 

I dunno, I find this internal moral jockeying between the villains to be super entertaining because of how clearly it highlights how many people in the wormverse are angling for any means by which they situation they’ve arrived at in life is the morally and practically correct one.

Reread 19.y, and noticed something I hadn't caught before:

Parents. Plural. He makes such hay over being someone who really knows her like other people don't, but he doesn't know her mom died. That's not an unreasonable or unconscionable thing, you're not rude for not knowing everything about your classmates' circumstances. But also, it was a detail that we see the trio implicitly reference, and that Emma will be explicit about without visible shock from other classmates. People who know about Taylor enough to torment her know about it—but its not something Greg knows. It highlights how he's being kinda ridiculous, thinking he has some special connection to her. Good little detail.

someone: this beauty standard was constructed with specific political purpose, and effectively dismantling the power structure that justifies itself through it requires us to give up using aspects of the body as a metaphor for morality or social worth

the notes:

it’s just a personal preference, it’s not that deep, go outside, touch grass, get married, work a hard job, have kids, stop thinking

so you’re saying I have to fuck people with [trait]? you’re going to show up at my apartment and force me to fuck strangers? your analysis of beauty standards is literally rape. OP wants to fuck me specifically, a random hostile stranger in their notes. they’re turned on because their body disgusts me! (no I have never seen them but I vividly imagine their body as disgusting because why else would they make a post like this)

did you know that another society/culture/time period had a different set of beauty standards? I bet OP didn’t even realize this

actually beauty standards are evolutionary instinct and you’re anti-science. you want us to ignore biology?

I actually WANT to fuck people with [currently devalued trait]

we should remind people that [currently devalued trait] was valued in a different society with another brutal hierarchy based on bodily ideals as proof that [currently devalued trait] is good actually. this definitely does not replicate the exact politics OP is challenging

once I met someone with a stigmatized bodily trait and they were a bad person. I’m sharing this anecdote absent any context so others can draw their own conclusions. if you go to my blog every single post is me sharing totally real stories of people with this trait doing mean things. I’m not saying certain bodily traits create inferior morals, I’m just compulsively curating an entire blog to imply it over and over and over

I used to think [stigmatized trait] was disgusting but I’m trying to unlearn it right now. I assume anyone with that trait would feel me saying this publicly is an act of kindness I’m bestowing upon them rather than a casual cruelty just like all the other comments about how disgusting the trait is

feelin impish!

these two are like sisters to me.

both issues are focused on young depressed artists whose entire being, their own nature and their powers, overshadows their art.

people loving Tara (wicdiv) as a god but hating her if she wants them to see beyond her godhood with her songs/poetry vs people fearing Masumi (tpf) as a kaiju-summoning destroyer and praising her creations no matter what even though, by Masumi's own admission, she know no one really cares about her paintings.

how both are so resigned to it.

do you see my vision.

the funniest part of the endgame sequence of Worm is when the narrative completely forgets about the END OF THE WORLD for a hot second to describe in great detail how sexy and effeminate Marquis is. how even though she isn't usually interested in feminine men or older men Amy's dad is gnc af and just so incredibly fuckable. Taylor there's people that are dying