Ward Review 1: Worldbuilding
Alllllright, strap in internet people, grab snacks and keep hydrated, this is gonna be a LONG one. Like. Real long. Just finished Ward and I want to do a retrospective on all.... 1.9 million words/220 hours of this flawed but REALLY enjoyable series. Feel free to discuss any of what I definetly get wrong since this is my first time doing one of these, but, whatever. I'm gonna be splitting this into 3(?)parts: worldbuilding, characters, and Possibly themes because there's so much to go over and I have a lot to say and I'm not sure if I can cover themes all inside the characters specific parts.
Okay, let's start with a positive point: I really enjoy some of the concepts Wildbow uses in the aftermath of Gold Morning, like prefab houses and the rough surplanting of forests with human buildings, like someone copy pasted architecture into a (mostly????) uninhabited world. Humanity kinda sticks out sorely, and how some of the things when it comes to us sort of evening ground and creating roads has been taken for granted. It's like a constant reminder that they've moved, that this isn't Home, they've been roughly transplanted into another life. Another thing I enjoy with what he used the end of the world for: like*checks notes*... oh. Nothing.
Almost every system in Ward is painfully unchanged from modern society except in its failure to be upkept, nobody has come up with or suggested alternative types of governments or systems within Earth Gimmel, and the most we get to see is from other worlds with entirely different pasts. And the PRT, one of the few governmental organizations added in Worm, is gone, with the Wardens to replace it. An even Less well fleshed out and interesting organization, admittedly because it was so cobbled together after GM that its left taking care of problems so big that Seeing them would be a problem. This isnt an excuse for All of the humanity to seemingly be frozen in snapshots of what they were pre-gold morning, and to almost Obscenely stay contained within their nation and culture. There's still a Gimmel US, which is insane that it doesn't even get a name change from United States! That there isn't a mixture of refugees from other cultures during Gold Morning enough to notably change Any of the culture, or that the world's, which Surely have set themselves into different resource rich parts of their Earths and are trading like MF's aren't swapping people to help with projects Constantly. Seriously! How is it possible one of the few times we hear a language other than English is from a person from a made up earth, and another is from a pair of mercenaries trying to communicate better while working under Cradle???
One of Wildbow's weakpoints has always been the way he seems to view systems as immutable, something a person has to live around and that changes to are almost impossible to cause. After the end of the world, this is kept up to the point of absurdity. There's no splits in governance or even Names of territory, theres nothing that doesn't have basis in a current American system grafted onto this world, there hasn't been any note of class war despite that surely being a Massive problem post GM, there's still... Hell! A New currency is called NEW DOLLARS!!! It's the dollar you knew, but.... NEW! And in multiple shopping scenes, there's almost no reference to difficulty purchasing if they rely on a different type of currency! So, yeah. I would say that his worldbuilding sticks out like a sore thumb for this.
One of the few societal changes is a growth in anti-parahuman sentiment, which is about as shocking as a teenager rolling their eyes. While relying on capes, a great deal of the world still isnt given much information (like, as stupidly Basic amount of information. Like the stuff that anyone should know in setting, such as power types or master/stranger protocols) to contextualize what they are and be allowed to understand them in full. So, theories and blame is rampant, with an unsatisfied population constant in the backround and occasionally brought to bring up point in or two in the foreground. Wildbow's only ability to show this is large crowds yelling, sleazy bastard politics, and old ladies whispering conspiracy. They cause no systemic change, like equipping non-warden heroes with cams or smaller PRT-like groups to assist in back up while observing the heroes, or any oversight at all. This seems to be the main way Wildbow sees people trying to change a system from the outside. Confused, ineffective people that get in the way of things because they don't understand it, who in the end are delt with via being given an instance of trust and making The Right Choice to not change the system by allowing heroes to live. Which. Amazing job buddy.
Then comes along the other side of the world, literally. Shards and Shardspace. Earnestly, they seemed to make more sense Hearing what the story said than actively recalling what it said after. Shards seem to be some crystallization of the alien civilizations/species the Entities encountered and their knowledge into distilled, highly complex pieces of living machinery given sentience and strong parameters of choice. They can give out their civilization's Expertise/Quirk/Tech to their host, to see how a diffrent species takes and uses it, and adds to their understanding of it. They exist in a system which has been shattered since Zion's death, but before that used to keep copies of the hosts mind in certain areas for safekeeping, believing them to be valuable.
Now. Where shards exist... Confuses me. Because, it doesn't seem to be an alternate earth, and I'm not sure if they're all in some Super alternate dimension like some shards bring you to/create, or what. It's pretty confusing since it can be reached via dreams and not have any impact on your body... But ALSO as a totally real realm you can portal to. And it stores the dead who can Take Over the bodies of their living clone siblings. And people exist there and do stuff along with their shards who have mini Endbringer type bodies. This would all Almost serve to make this legitimately strange and eldritch, the living body of a dead god that exists as its own world, if humans couldn't so easily utilize and comprehend what's inside to the point it feels about as meaningful/bad as a lucid dream. The weirdest part of this had to be Victoria's interactions with it though, which are WILD. While Victoria having hero culture so embedded in her she can Reason easier in/with the Shardverse than others, but having her... Connect with her shard through Self Acceptance is Wild??? That is at least the reasons she gives, and what I understand happened, but that's very, very, very weird given how Shards just. Don't seem to care much about the emotional well-being or health of the hosts as long as they provide data through conflict. Which. I would think self acceptance would be an active Hazard to that. And from her shard's interlude we literally hear it think how it would be best useful to her if she accepted using it as a tyrant/for tyranny. Which he either forgot about, didn't include, or just... Tied it up in a way I'm not seeing. Which is possible. I'll get more into that later, but that backpedal on how shard's interact with their host is Maybe the most harmful bit of worldbuilding Wildbow did, especially since it actively and immediately rewards a prespective on every level, unlike anything else in the story. Buh.
