Bay 12 Games Forum

The story has been told in the past tense from Taylor's perspective in all instances barring the interludes and epilogues.  Who do you think she was telling it to,

So is nearly all fiction.

how else would she be aware that she had been shot twice in the back of the head if she had stopped being able to feel after the first one.

Same way that any narrator character does when they die. It's a minor literary thing to let the reader know why the story suddenly ended.

It's not Deus ex Machina, it's you being upset that you went all in on her being dead.

It's Deus Ex MAchina because it makes no sense, came out of nowhere, is unexplained, and incidentally negates a significant part of the entire story up to that point. Every sacrifice? Gone. Every loss? Meaningless. It ruins the tone.

Contessa is the most logical person in the series to have been able to disable Taylor's powers and she did.  Don't say your suspension of disbelief is broken by her being able to shoot through Taylor's skull while not killing her and shutting down her powers, she was able defeat Taylor and the Wards like it was nothing, when she first met Lung, was able to bounce and catch a knife, multiple times, she was able to kill an absolute ton of S9 clones w/ Number Man, whose powers were extrabullshit, and she would have killed Scion before he started destroying the world if Eden hadn't broken her powers.

On the other hand, Contessa can't defeat an Endbringer. You know why? Because it is impossible/i]. So is disabling Taylor's powers without killing her, as shown when she was knocked unconscious and continued subconscious use of her power, and when her freaking corona pollentia was disabled and she still could control insects. Not to mention that her power, BS as it may be, does not let her fire teleporting bullets, or undo absurd levels of brain damage plus the collateral damage caused by her bullets.

Also, this is a superpowered story, saying that something is impossible, like disabling someone's power, is begging for it to happen and suspension of disbelief is what you've done the entire time. Are you honestly okay with tinkers being able to make dimensional door machines into guns in less than like twenty minutes, containment foam, a chemical substance that somehow allows air in, is impossibly sticky, compressible, non-conductive and non-flammable, machines that lock down or teleport between dimensions and a sentient AI that is not only capable of love, but has found someone with whom she is willing to spend eternity with, and not bullet brain surgery?  Heck, those are the things that could technically be possible, Scion's entire species is able to compress and simultaneously destroy all multi-dimensional instances of a single planet as a part of their regular life cycle, Eidolon accidentally created monsters that could eventually destroy the world, Jack Slash can't lose against other parahumans, Foil is able to kill someone in all possible realities, etc.

1. Jack Slash can lose against other parahumans. He is merely very good at winning against them.
2. You misunderstand Foil's powers. She shoots through all realities, but she only kills people her bolts hit in vital areas.
3. Everything else in Worm made sense. It was foreshadowed, or explained directly into their power. It fit with previous logic. This didn't. It ignores previously-established facts about Taylor's power, and logic, and everything else, just to give Taylor a happy ending, which is discordant with the entire story and incidentally negates the impact of pretty much everything she ever did.

Finally, Taylor sacrificed everything that she had gained from her powers, and in the end got a life back.  It will neither be exceedingly happy nor easy, but she can and will make it work, because that is the person that Wildbow has written her to be.

Yes, she got a life back. Yes, she deserves it.
No, it does not make sense, nor does it make the story end better, nor does the tone of Taylor living happily ever after fit with any chapter of any arc in the entire story.