Hostage Situation [Worm AU fanfic]

Will fix.

 

Kayden, can you please blast Kaiser to smithereens? I'm sure it would make everyone happier.

 

Amy could actually help with this fairly easily. It would be just a matter of changing Aster's paternal DNA for everything other than her brain. Then all Kayden has to do is run a paternity test and say that Max isn't the father.

Problem solved legally.

Good chapter too.

 

You honestly think Max doesn't have a clause buried somewhere in the pre-marital agreement where he can pull all sorts of shit if she's found to have committed adultery?

I wouldn't put it past him, even to the point of pulling out one where the ink's still tacky but it has her signature on it (thanks, Victor).

This is not a man who plays by any rules but the ones he sets up for his own benefit.

 

Fair enough. It would be a start though, especially if Amy or Kayden get someone sneaking to volunteer to be the father to assert their rights.

 

It would take more than that. Paternity laws pre-date DNA testing, so Max would still legally be Aster's father because he was married to Kayden when she was born. Having a "real" father willing to take responsibility would help, but Max has enough resources and spite to make any attempt to terminate his parental rights a long, hard battle that he would have a decent chance of winning.

 

Well, there's one very specific way to terminate his parental rights, that Marquis might be inclined toward.

Especially after he realised just how much of an asshole Kaiser was toward Kayden.

Just saying.

 

If Marquis were to be around Aster while she grows up, she could get LASER BONES!

 

Is that laser made of bones, or bones made of lasers? Important distinction.

 

Yes.

(You know you asked for that).

 

'Laser bones' sounds like a futuristic disease from bad SF. "I'm sorry, ma'am, it seems she has a bad case of... laser bones."

 

The fuck you talking about?

That sounds like some fantastic science fiction to me!

 

Didn't Kaiser literally publicly crucify the guy who killed fleur? Before he could get caught and tried by the heroes?

 

Wildbow addresses this in Ward, possibly to underscore the grimderp of canon.


The perp was a minor, who broke down during the trial and blubbered for his father.

Vicky thought at the time that he'd never get into the Empire after showing that level of weakness.

She was wrong. They welcomed him with open arms after he finished his abbreviated sentence (minor, remember).

 

This is one that I'm okay with TBH. There are many good ways to make the Wormverse less universally terrible, but whitewashing literal Nazis is not one of them. (And it wasn't even from W**d originally. It was just repeated there for visibility.)

 

Wait, so the crucifixion was fanon? Coulda sworn that was canon...

 

Damn, that's a disappointment. I don't care what people say - I liked the fact that life was brutal and cheap in Worm, and I liked that the villains actually acted like villains. In the army of Genghis Khan, you could get the death penalty for not picking up a dropped bowstring a member of your squad had let slip from his pack, and committing crimes that actually reflected negatively on your leadership would earn you long, lingering torture before death. I'd think that a man as keen on creating both a good image of himself and on maintaining absolute control on everything around him as Max Anders would totally torture a follower who made him look bad to death.

I think the fanon about the fate of Fleur's killer was fine. I don't know why Wildbow would want to replace such a fun and nasty character moment for Kaiser with something so relatively milquetoast, unless he thought it somehow glorified Nazism or something.

 

Given his POV characters in Ward, are you shocked he'd do something to increase the conga line of shit she'd get?

 

That's a very fair point. I wonder if Wildbow actually hates his protagonists, because a bunch of the suffering they endure seems almost petty while remaining implacably cruel.

 

Wasn't Fleur's murderer being an E88 wannabe also originally fanon? If so, it seems like another attempt to subvert a fanon idea. The more I hear about Ward, the more I understand why some people think it was a deliberate "Take that!" at fanfic tropes.

 

It's one of the reasons I and others consider Worm to be a grimderp story, even if the setting is less so (the distinction between story and setting is important in this context).

 

Yeah, there's definitely a fair criticism there, but I don't think it's confined to Worm. I haven't read Twig or Pale, but I did read Pact, and I remember thinking that the poor bastard had gotten fucked even harder than Taylor by Wildbow. It was a situation that just went from bad to worse, to much worse. I don't think that guy had a single positive moment throughout the entire book, except possibly when he met the bird-ghost familiar.

 

I have heard from a number of people that Wildbow has a history of doing things like that.

 

Pretty sure it was always the case. Then someone started the fanon that Kaiser crucified the guy, and WB went, "Nope. He let him in just fine."

I understand he's retconning Worm to make Amy less relatable and more of an evil beeyatch from the start.

 

I can't really blame Wildbow for disliking fanon, heaven knows fans have some bad takes, but if that's the case he should ignore fanfic communities (he should probably be doing that anyway) instead of filling his work with spite. "You read my Jerkass Woobie as more Woobie than Jerkass? Wrong, she's actually a complete monster and rapist." "You thought Kaiser would ever put on a show of caring about the unwritten rules? Wrong, he'd actively and publicly reward breaking them." I don't mind ignoring fanon but it should be because the author has his own ideas, not because he hates the fanfic community that keeps his fanbase active.

 

Among Fandom I don't think Worm fans are anywhere as bad as some of the other fans.
It not in a perpetual Civil War like the Star Wars fandom.
It not trying to get people to comment suicide for doing fanart or art of a certain ship like Steven Universe fandom.
Or send out death threat to the creators to get them to make their slash ship made Canon, I forgot which fandom did that one but I imagine their were a number of them that did that.

 

Also, the whole ambiguous answers to genuine questions irritates the crap out of me.

Contrast u/Ralts_Bloodthorne, who's writing the intensely insane First Contact story over on Reddit. He's been doing it since about February/March, and the chapter and word count are amazing. He engages fully with his fanbase and has canonised about three or four omakes which I've written about the story.

Also, he doesn't hate his characters. The bad ones sometimes get redemption, while the irredeemable ones get what's coming to them. The heroes get to be Big Damn Heroes. One will occasionally go out in a blaze of glory, but they get the recognition that's coming to them.

If you haven't already, go check it out. It starts slowly, but gradually builds up steam. Be aware: pop culture references abound, as do onion ninjas.

P'thok Eats An Ice Cream Cone.

 

I fucking love First Contact! It's so wonderful to have consistent quality updates of a story, and he does such a good job of both keeping the stakes high while not making everybody traumatized by his more hardcore chapters.

My 600k+ karma account got perma-suspended from Reddit, but I still follow the story as a guest. I think it's actually better than the Jenkinsverse, certainly better than the fandom extras as opposed to just the main writer's stuff. I think it might be the greatest piece of Reddit fiction available.

Also, are you the same Ack that does the close-readings of each chapter? If so, I really like your comments. As soon as I read an update, I scroll-down to read your chapter breakdowns - they're frequently entertaining and sometimes informative.

 

That is indeed me. I like to put my own spin on the little nuggets of information he slips in there, and he says he likes me doing it too.

 

It was WoG, not fanon; Fleur's page on the Worm wiki had an edit by Wildbow which mentioned it. The crucifixion thing is totally fanon, though.