TwiLyghtSansSparkles

Just go ahead and make Jade and Nathan NPCs if you need to.

No storming kidding. Both are pretty good right now, can't complain. I've been working from home since the whole COVID thing started, which has actually been pretty nice. Bruce is also a big fan. How about you? How are things?

Well hi there! I'm sill around, sort of. I don't post much, but I pop in every now and then.

No, but it does mean that the characters aren't doing what they're doing out of the goodness of their hearts. It means they have their own reasons, and they're more liable to double-cross our protagonist when it's expedient for them. No offense, but that's….kind of just a word salad. The Harry Potter series was written over the course of ten years, and Rowling didn't spend a couple hundred or thousand words each book explaining how the magic worked all over again. Readers of that series had no trouble keeping up. I've written that way too, as have many authors of long-running fanfics. That's when you go back and read chapters you've already written, even if they make you cringe, to make sure you stay consistent. "I like the characters and so that's good characterization" doesn't hold water. I like Simple Plan, but that doesn't mean their music is particularly complex or challenging (it isn't). It just means I like the way it sounds. And again, look at Harry Potter. Even the most minor characters have intriguing backstories and are fleshed out enough to become the subjects of at least a handful of fanfics. Luna Lovegood didn't even show up until the fifth book, she had a couple of scenes, and became an instant sensation. A large cast is no barrier to character development. No, and I don't think I should have to. What's in the story is the story. Everything else is extra until the author adds it to the story proper. If I had to read the entirety of Pottermore to properly understand and appreciate the Potter books, or if I had to read every single interview with Gerard Way to make sense of Umbrella Academy, I would consider that a failure of communication on the part of the creators. If the author wants something to be part of the story, they need to make it part of the story. They can't expect the audience to do homework in addition to regular reading.

But before too long, they're going on lovely buddy-buddy shopping sprees and having a grand old time as gal pals. Regent is, objectively speaking, a monster, but Taylor gives him a pass because he's on her side—and one of his most monstrous acts is portrayed as a super cool act of justice because it's against someone who was mean to Taylor. I'm really having a hard time understanding what you're getting at here. Maybe so, but exploring one somewhat outlandish quandary well does not, in my mind, make up for the dozens more quandaries that were essentially settled with "Taylor was right and so the ends justify the means," to say nothing of those that were glossed over or dismissed altogether. Eh….the fact he explains it multiple times throughout the serial, and tweaks it each time, sort of made the classification system lose its luster for me. Besides, I'm more of a characters sort of reader. The classification system can be nonexistent and every single parahuman can have the power to blow up the universe for all I care, so long as the characters are well-developed and, if not likable, then at least interesting to read about. Taylor, the Undersiders, and most other characters in that serial were not story people I was eager to spend a lot of time with.

I honestly don't think it is. The perspective a story is told from does not mean the author and audience should be encouraged to get on board with everything the character does. And they are encouraged to do this, for the bulk of the story; when Taylor does something morally questionable, the justifications she gives for her actions are often shown to be right. Only characters we are supposed to dislike, for one reason or another, question what she is doing. This is not the narrative of a character whose justifications are entirely in her head; this is the narrative of a character whose justifications we are meant to support. Furthermore, interludes might call her methods into question (when they are, again, from people we're not supposed to like) but they drive home the fact that they work. When an interlude is from a friend of hers, Taylor is shilled almost to the point of parody. If the justification for Taylor's actions is meant to be entirely in her head, these interludes would have been a prime opportunity to show us a different, far less rosy perspective on what she's doing. Instead, they're used to tell us that, yes, everything Taylor is doing is right and good and while her methods might be questionable, her good intentions justify the means.

She doesn't trust Coil from the outset and Tattletale is her friend. Armsmaster is a cremhole whose very, very reasonable anger toward her is portrayed as self-centered and wrong for a hero to have. Many of those people are shown to have ulterior motives that stand between the greater good and everything else, Piggot is a cremhole who we're not supposed to develop more than a very grudging respect for, the Wards and other heroes are demonstrated again and again to be useless. Taylor is the only one whose methods are deemed necessary by the author and whose goals are always worth following. And why are you listing Dragon if she doesn't count? Edit: I think what I’d point out regarding the examples you gave is that those characters are only shown in a more flattering light after their goals and/or methods begin to align with Taylor’s, or they begin helping her in some way.

I love exploring the complexities of right vs. wrong, and I felt Worm didn't do that as much as it purported to, because all of Taylor's assumptions about people turn out to be correct. If she thinks someone has good in them or hidden depths or what have you, they wind up becoming her ally in one way or another. If she thinks they're irredeemably evil or self-centered or just plain useless, she winds up being right about that too. I feel like a truly morally grey world would have its protagonist be dead wrong about some of the people and organizations she chooses to trust or distrust, to show that good people can present obstacles for the protagonist and that evil people can help for selfish reasons. Taylor as a character also rubbed me the wrong way. It's established early on that she's being bullied pretty severely (which….I know that bullying in public schools can get bad, but the complete and total apathy of everyone on staff was over-the-top—and I say that as someone who worked at a public school and saw firsthand just how little administrative staff members want to get involved in things like bullying) and yet she almost immediately indulges in a pretty unkind inner monologue toward two students who are even lower in the pecking order than she is. While that's a believable trait, it's not one that put me on good terms with her. I also didn't feel the worldbuilding rang true. It's meant to be a world where parahumans have been a part of daily life for over 30 years, yet it feels more like one where they just showed up six months ago. I mean, if they've really been a part of the world for over three decades, and the mechanisms of becoming one are known, shouldn't there be measures in place to prevent people from triggering? Shouldn't schools be cracking down much harder on physical bullying to prevent trigger events, and shouldn't prisons be considered a last resort because of the high likelihood of offenders triggering? Shouldn't there be capes supervising community service and doing other boring duties like that? Why haven't city residents moved further inland to have a better chance at avoiding Endbringers like Leviathan? I can see why some people love Worm, but I actually think Umbrella Academy (show and comics) does a much better job of exploring moral complexity with morally grey characters.

I don't think I'd quite call it traumatic, mildly or otherwise, but she'd definitely want to wash it off as soon as possible. Being covered in glitter would be more distressing for her. More so if it was done to her as an intentional callback to her days as Funtimes. also i'm super going against the grain here but i've read worm and did not like it sort of sorry sort of not bye