#apparenty people lke this one so ill maintag it in case anyone finds it useful its very slapdash though

[lakesbian]

ok Worm Bigotry Breakdown in more detail for @silverflyingpikachu

tl;dr: author is Cishet White Guy From Canada In 2011. he ostensibly thinks he is progressive. this does not change his proclivity for tossing his Cishet White Guy From Canada Biases into the books and then saying even more bigoted things in defense of those writing decisions on forums. wildbow is just some cunt on the forums with bad opinions on wildbow's writing. the book is 1.7 million words long but i believe in my ability 2 categorize this shit with decent accuracy. everyone who has ever said worm's CWs can't be categorized, including wildbow himself, is a lying ass bitch. this will include some vague spoilers, because i can't really go in-depth without a few examples, but i'll stay away from anything too plot-critical.

racism:

- worm is fundamentally a book abt systems of power and the ways in which they suck. some of the critiques worm issues--e.g, its depiction of how school systems enable bullying, inspired by wildbow's own experiences w/ the school systems as a deaf kid--are viscerally accurate and incredibly compelling. but wildbow fundamentally doesn't understand how certain systems of oppression work--e.g policing--and subsequently, his attempts at depicting them occasionally fall flat onto their face and land in racist territory. this gets particularly nasty when combined w/ the White Guy Author propensity for racist stereotypes--for example, his chosen face of police brutality is a black girl portrayed as predatory & animalistic.

- who is also one of the only black people in the book overall, alongside--for example--an addict portrayed as having less interiority & being less deserving of empathy than A Literal Fucking Nazi. also, the main characters have to team up with the nazis "for the greater good" (defeating the mean asian villains) at one point. it is a mercy to the readers when this part of the story ends. - there are two black characters in the main cast. for the first, wildbow just Straight Up Forgot to include the most compelling aspect of their background + characterization in the text (it was provided via WoG instead, which i provide to all wormreaders like a fuckin' DLC patch when they get to where it's relevant) & entirely forgets they exist towards where the end of their character arc should have been. the second is introduced w/ the most misogynoiristic description on the planet but blessedly has a largely compelling and well-written arc as the book goes on. - depiction of china is just like. fox news level sinophobic "it's all a brainwashed indistinguishable evil cult" shit. not relevant for very long relatively speaking but insufferable to read. asian characters are also like. we got Brutal Yet Honorable Asian Man. we got Fiery Asian Girl With Blue Eyes. it fucking blows it's not good

- oh yeah forgot this one someone mentioned in the tags. #it's an insignificant paragraph and nobody talks about it but the part where it goes #“yeah literally EVERY cape in South America is with a cartel and the heroes are barely distinguishable from the villains” #fuck you #not that the others aren't bad the fatphobia gets really gross but nobody mentions this and that one got me so yeah typical Insufferable Awful Imperial Core Author Understanding Of What Other Countries Are Like - i could make this section one million bulletpoints long but the gist is summarized i think--wildbow's varied racist biases leak fucking everywhere, into character design, into narrative assumptions about who's deserving of interiority/empathy or not, into attempts at Saying Anything About Society, into which characters he prioritizes, into who he offers validity via the narrative, etc etc etc.

homophobia: - theres a girl named amy dallon in it and she is the worst lesbophobic stereotype ever known to man. no other Problematic Lesbian™ you can think of has anything on this girl. the worst part is that she genuinely has a decently compelling character concept and arc, which her being awful is integral to, so you might accidentally find her interesting anyway and then she'll move into your brain - wildbow kept accidentally writing characters that scan as massive dykes and then got really mad about f/f ships for the book being popular in the fandom. he responded by making a deranged forum post involving the phrase "pandering is pandering" insisting everyone (but the bisexual "hedonist") is straight and writing a scene into the book where one of the characters literally turns to the camera and tells the readers "not to get the wrong idea" about her hugging her friend. - over the course of 1.7 million words he finds excuses to loudly inform you that all of the relevant female characters are straight and it's sooo shoehorned in you can always tell when he's doing it - basically worm is like if naruto was about homoerotic teenage girls who do violent terrible things, in terms of levels of unintentional homoeroticism, and the author responds to ppl going "lmao gay" about the unintentional homoeroticism with poorly restrained seething rage

fatphobia: - generic brand of fatphobia you'll see in p much all mainstream media where only side/bg characters are fat and it's obliquely used as a descriptor to indicate that someone has negative personality traits or should be viewed as sort of gross

anti-addict shit: - wildbow generally likes writing about how social circumstances--i.e neglect from society, oppression, failure on behalf of systems--causes crime. he generally likes demonstrating the ways in which the villainous main characters are traumatized teenagers failed by society fumbling to keep existing & holding each other up through The Horrors. unfortunately all of this intelligent writing flies out the nearest window when addicts are involved. there is a gang comprised entirely of addicts, all of whom are portrayed as disgusting, violent, dangerous, and of course often racially stereotyped. it is a mercy to the readers when they're no longer relevant to the story. - on a more subtle level, characters are every so often just like. a little more anti-drug than they would realistically be and you can tell it's wildbow's opinions leaking into their characterization. this is largely what the anti-addict writing is kept to after The Addict Villains leave the story iirc.

if youre wondering wellwhy does anyone read this book then. to that i would say that unfortunately despite it all it'sa fucking excellent book. so we all carry on reading the parts that suck and thinking about how they suck and then reading the parts that fuck and going "ouuugh my god" and rolling down 20 flights of stairs about how hard they fuck.

#sorry if i missed anything this entire post was written while so tired #parahumans #apparenty people lke this one so ill maintag it in case anyone finds it useful its very slapdash though