Worm is a self-published web serial by John C. "Wildbow" McCrae and the first installment of the Parahumans series, known for subverting and playing with common tropes and themes of superhero fiction. It was McCrae's first novel. Worm features a bullied teenage girl, Taylor Hebert, who develops the superpower to control worms, insects, arachnids, and other simple lifeforms. Using a combination of ingenuity, idealism, and brutality, she struggles to do the right thing in a dark world filled with moral ambiguity. It is one of the most popular web serials on the internet, with a readership in the hundreds of thousands. A sequel, titled Ward, was published from November 2017 to May 2020.
Publication Worm was first published as an online serial with two to three chapters released every week. It began online publishing in June 2011 and continued until November 2013, totaling approximately 1,682,400 words.
The story was written at a rate comparable to a traditional book being published every month. It followed a strict publication schedule, with new chapters released every Tuesday and Saturday, and bonus chapters on Thursdays as rewards for donations. These chapters were arranged into 31 arcs, each of which covered a specific series of events over six to 12 chapters and concluded with an interlude from the point of view of a side character.
In contrast to traditional publishing, which follows a short-term model, Worms readership grew slowly but steadily, beginning with 13 views in June 2011, the month the serial began; 26,844 monthly views a year later; and 207,833 monthly views by June 2013. Views peaked at 1,390,648 in November 2013, when the book ended, and remained steady with 693,675 monthly views even five years later.
, Worm is being edited, and McCrae plans to produce both an eBook version and a physical book via traditional publishing.
Backstory Setting Worm is set in a fictional, alternate universe known as "Earth Bet". The events of Earth Bet closely follow that of our own Earth until a naked, golden man named Scion appears over the ocean in 1982. Following his appearance, a fraction of humans gain superpowers if placed in a traumatic and stressful situation, known in-story as a "trigger event".
The arrival of "parahumans" in 1982 leads to a "Golden Age of Heroism", during which the majority of people with powers work for the public good. In 1989, after a parahuman dies trying to prevent a riot, superpowered serial killers, thieves, cults, and gang members begin to increasingly threaten public safety. Governments worldwide create agencies to counter parahuman criminals, including the Parahuman Response Team (PRT), in Canada and the United States.
In 1992, a giant monster launches a devastating attack on the Marun Field, Iran. To adequately prepare humanity for future attacks and to manage the growing villain population, four prominent heroes form the Protectorate, an organization subordinate to the PRT dedicated to cooperation among superheroes. Two more monsters (collectively referred to as "Endbringers") appear and begin attacking cities across the planet, causing the loss of millions of lives, as well as catastrophic and irreversible economic and geographic damage. The PRT and Protectorate are forced to treat villains more leniently in return for assistance in fighting Endbringers. Mired in bureaucracy and politics, the PRT is increasingly unable to cope with the growing frequency and brutality of parahuman crimes.
The story is set in the fictitious city of Brockton Bay, a formerly wealthy port that has severely declined after Endbringer attacks led to the collapse of the shipping industry. Due to the poverty of the area, it has a higher number of parahumans per capita than any other American city, and a number of superhuman-led gangs vie for control over the city's criminal enterprises.
Powers
Individuals who possess powers in Worm are referred to formally as "parahumans" and informally as "capes", a term referencing the general habit of parahumans to establish an alter ego and go out in costume (with or without literal "capes").
In order to acquire a power in Worm, one must suffer a trigger event: a moment of severe physical or psychological trauma. The properties of the power are influenced by the nature of the threat the individual faces and the individual's thought process at the time. Some parahumans, when placed under extreme stress reminiscent or beyond that of their initial trigger event may trigger a second time, expanding and refining their powers to increase their odds of survival.
In rare cases, multiple individuals may suffer a simultaneous trigger event known as a "cluster trigger". Cluster triggers often cause complicated and intense interpersonal relationships within the cluster, often referred to as the Kiss/Kill dynamic.
Individuals who have spent multiple years around capes will, on occasion, trigger with a similar power. These individuals are generally referred to as "second generation capes" as many are children of previous parahumans, although powers are not, strictly speaking, heritable. The mechanics behind how powers work is gradually explained throughout the story.
Alternatively, powers can be acquired through Cauldron, a shadowy and secretive group which has discovered a method to artificially induce powers. This process carries a significant risk of deformation or mutilation, with the strength or safety of powers acquired varying greatly. Individuals whose Cauldron-acquired powers result in noticeable or grotesque mutation are referred to as "Case-53s" or "monster capes".
Powers in Worm obey several arbitrary constraints. All powers can be used aggressively, regardless of manifestation. Thus, healers are incredibly rare and often as a byproduct of another power, or have other abilities suited towards combat. Another limitation is the "Manton effect": a parahuman's abilities very rarely affect both organic and inorganic material, and parahumans are instinctively protected from their own power – e.g., a power may affect the landscape, but not the people within it, or vice versa. There are instances within the setting of parahumans who have been able to bypass this effect, although the circumstances which enable this are typically difficult or dangerous to replicate, depend heavily on the individual in question and tend to suffer debilitating psychological and physiological effects.
Synopsis
Taylor Hebert is a 15-year-old parahuman who has developed the power to sense and control insects and other small invertebrates following a traumatic event at the hands of bullies. She lives in the fictional city of Brockton Bay, a hotspot of parahuman activity, and seeks to become a superhero. On her first night out in costume, she defeats a superpowered gang leader and is subsequently mistaken for a villain by a team of teenage parahuman thieves known as the Undersiders, who work jobs for a mysterious benefactor. Taylor joins the team, hoping to learn the identity of their boss before turning them in to the authorities. However, Taylor grows increasingly close to the Undersiders, whilst having repeatedly poor run-ins with the Parahuman Response Team (PRT), the United States of America's parahuman law enforcement agency, and the superheroes of the PRT's sister organization, the Protectorate. She ultimately finds herself unable to betray the Undersiders and becomes fully committed to them, adopting the moniker "Skitter" and abandoning her dream of becoming a superhero. After a job, Taylor learns that the Undersiders have unwittingly assisted their patron, the gang lord known as Coil, in the kidnapping of Dinah, a girl with powerful precognitive powers, and is wracked with guilt over her involvement.
In part due to violence initiated by the defeat of various gangs by the Undersiders, Brockton Bay experiences a period of instability. This culminates in an attack by Leviathan, one of three powerful monsters collectively called the Endbringers, which devastates the city. In the aftermath, Coil directs the Undersiders and a group of contracted villains, the Travelers, in seizing territory and they begin to operate as makeshift warlords in the ruined city. Privately, Taylor and the Undersiders plot to depose Coil if they cannot secure Dinah's release. The Travelers struggle to find a cure for their fifth teammate, Noelle, whose condition is undisclosed and is living in a highly secure vault in Coil’s base. When Jack Slash, the theatrical leader of a notorious gang of parahuman serial killers known as the Slaughterhouse Nine, invades Brockton Bay, Dinah predicts he will bring about the end of the world in two years if not stopped. The city weathers the incursion, but its parahumans fail to kill either Jack or his prized protégé Bonesaw, a young girl kidnapped and moulded by the gang of serial killers. In the process of escaping the city, Jack learns of Dinah's prophecy and decides to fulfill it and end the world.
Coil, valuing Dinah's precognitive abilities too highly to consider her release, attempts to assassinate Taylor when she pushes the issue. She survives and the Undersiders kill Coil in retaliation. However, as a final act of vengeance, Coil unleashes Noelle (now called “Echidna”), who is revealed to be a monstrous parahuman with power and lethality on par with the Endbringers. The ensuing battle between Echidna and the desperate alliance comprising the Undersiders and the heroes devastates the already-ruined city even further, and lack of cohesion between the Undersiders and the heroes (such as the heroes ignoring the Undersiders' warnings that Echidna can clone parahumans) worsens the conflict as well. After Echidna is defeated, Dinah is later returned to her remaining family, and the Undersiders seize control of the remnants of Coil's criminal empire, fully entrenching themselves as the shadowy rulers of Brockton Bay, though it remains ostensibly governed by the United States. Together, Taylor and the Undersiders carefully balance staving off attempts by regional criminal organizations to establish footholds in their city with scuffles against the legal authority of the city and assisting the remaining civilian population.
Tensions with the authorities later come to a head when Protectorate heroes arrive at a school Taylor is visiting in an attempt to arrest her, publicly revealing her identity as Skitter in ensuing standoff. Taylor is even further dismayed when she is informed by the heroes that Dinah had turned on her and was voluntarily aiding them in their operation to capture her. Despite the overwhelming advantage that Dinah's abilities had given the heroes, Taylor leverages her reputation and the Protectorate's dwindling popularity to convince almost a hundred students to help her escape, and flees to the safety of her territory. The Undersiders then continue with their operations in Brockton Bay, later carrying out an attack against the PRT local headquarters in retaliation for outing Skitter and as a show of force to deter rival gangs from action.