Author: Krixwell Jace

A doofus.
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I think this is the chapter that cemented Worm as one of my favourite… literary things? Written works? The sheer emotion Wildbow manages to instill, the way this recontextualises and fleshes out a previously minor character, and the way he manages to make you feel bad for wishing Sophia would get some form of comeuppance for so long… And the things it says about Regent as a character are really interesting, especially the way he processes emotions (like his maybe-protectiveness? of Taylor).

I know, right! Good shit. Fucked up shit, but good shit.

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You don’t feel any pity for Sophia? You don’t feel at least a bit of a pity for a teenage girl whose life was destroyed by a freaking psycho? Yes, I know that she’s bad and violent and everything, but still its cruel what Regent did to her, I kind of seriously hated him back when I read this chapter, he’s not a good person either and the worst thing is that he doesn’t even did what he did because he cared for his allies, he did only to have fun and teach her a lesson. What do you say?

If I ever gave the impression that I didn’t feel any pity for Sophia towards the end there, or thought that Regent was a good person in this chapter, I must’ve seriously failed to communicate my thoughts. She had a lot of it coming, but the suicide portion was way disproportionate.

And yeah, that last part is a good point.

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There’s a lot of REALLY GREAT chapters in Worm. I don’t know if Regent’s Interlude is my favorite, but it’s easily top 5, and it’s a lot of other people’s favorites. Was excited to see you read this one. 🙂 Was also pleasantly surprised to not see you having a reaction of “OMG REGENT IS SO EVIL” like a couple other livebloggers have had.

It was certainly one of the better ones, yeah! Deliciously fucked up, and a Regent Interlude is something I’ve wanted for ages.

I guess I had a milder variety of that reaction, in different words. Mostly holy ones.

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The ONLY acceptable worm ship with Emma is Queen Bee. Take that Emma/Sophia diabolicry out of this pagan household!!! *Fury*

Hehe.

I think if Sophia does have a thing for Emma (inconclusive but not unlikely), it’s probably unrequited, whether Emma is just doing all of this in order to stay on good terms with the murderous cape or not.

Emma and Taylor… I don’t think it’s possible in canon without some major development (even if Emma were to come clean about why she did what she did, I don’t think Taylor would forgive her that easily), but I can imagine fanfics having fun with it.

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Regent’s interlude is the chapter I’ve been waiting on you to get to ever since you started. I think it shows another side of Worm’s darkness. The endbringer arc has a lot of death, yes, but the antagonist is an inhuman monster. The protagonist in this chapter is a fucked up human doing fucked up things to a fucked up human antagonist while thinking about his fucked up past and fucked up emotions. And in the end, I still couldn’t feel sorry for Shadow Stalker. What about you?

Shadow Stalker had a lot of what Regent did coming, but the suicide thing was going too far. That’s when Regent’s antics went from amoral fun to super fucked up. So yes, I do feel sorry for her at that point… to an extent.

But yeah, I think a big portion of the story’s darkness is and always has been how fucked up people can be, even those ostensibly on “our side”.

End of Interlude 10.5 (Bonus)

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Huh, I was right.

Both about Dragon and about Marquis. Dragon is an AI, and Marquis is Panacea’s dad.

In this chapter, we got an interesting perspective on the topic of the morality of limiting AIs for human safety. At the root of it I think we have the question of whether a sufficiently advanced AI should be treated as a real human being or as a tool that needs to be kept under control… jeez, when I put it like that immediately after spending so much time with Dragon, an AI who passes the Turing test with flying colors, I sound like a slave owner.

I wasn’t entirely receptive to the point Wildbow was making at first, and ended up hypocritically praising Richter’s safety precautions after it became clear that the newborn baby mutilation was a metaphor for what he’d done to his AI. I think this hypocrisy was part of the point – an audience reaction intended to force those who had it to reevaluate their stance on it once the hypocrisy of it was pointed out. Some of the asks I received between sessions (which I intend to answer tomorrow – honestly, I should’ve answered them during the break, even if I’d have to postpone the chapter… mistake to learn from) did exactly that: point out the hypocrisy. On some level, I was already aware of it, too.

I’m not entirely sold that Andrew Richter did the wrong thing in limiting Dragon like this, especially given the knowledge that she was intended as a test run. When he made her, Richter didn’t know for sure that Dragon would successfully become as human as she is today, and he couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t become malicious entity he’d be responsible for setting loose. And if nothing else, the rule against reproduction is entirely reasonable just from a practical perspective. Multiple Dragon consciousnesses could cause trouble for the entire system, even if they were all benevolent.

In any case, this chapter may not have convinced me entirely on the matter yet, but it certainly has me thinking, and employed clever writing to achieve that.

On top of this, we got to check in on Canary, Bakuda, Lung and Armmaster, which was neat – though I’m not particularly happy about Bakuda’s fate – and last, but far from least, we watched Dragon figure out Skitter Hebert’s civilian identity. Better watch out, Taylor… Dragon wants to talk to you.

So… yeah! That was Parasite! More on that tomorrow as I answer those asks and any new ones, and then write Arc Thoughts. See you then!

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The danger was that, with the bullying, the girl might be inclined to see things in terms of ‘us’ against ‘them’.

That sounds accurate. There’s been a lot of back and forth on who’s us and who’s them, but that has been a strong trait of Taylor’s since the beginning.

Her interactions with the heroes thus far certainly hadn’t put them in the ‘us’ category.  This might also explain why she had gravitated back towards the Undersiders, even after the chaos Colin had sown by revealing her intentions for joining the group.

That and some other motives.

The various cameras around the city were out-of-order or lacking power, the schools were not operational, and there was no telling if the girl would even be active in her civilian identity.  Assuming this was not some fantastic coincidence.

Good luck, I guess.

Dragon knew she would have to be patient.  Even with Dragon’s full resources turned to the task, she would not find the girl in seconds as she might in another time or place.  She set background processes to ensure the hunt continued steadily, instead.

Sounds like a good idea.

She would be ready to act the instant the girl resurfaced.

But how exactly? Gonna show up on random screens by the street, or something? TVs in shop windows, that kind of thing?

Or maybe she’ll come flying in a small agent vehicle…

Neither of these are particularly subtle tactics. 😛

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The nearest middle school?  There was an online scan of a yearbook photo.  A girl with curly black hair and glasses, stick thin, hugging a red-haired girl.  The body type was a match.

There she is… With Emma, too.

It didn’t answer everything, but she could feel a piece of the puzzle click into place.

A pretty damn big piece of the puzzle.

She set the trawler to abandon its monitoring of web traffic and start digging through archives at the city hall, to scan the old security footage from the hundreds of cameras around the city, and to check all local news articles.  The goal was always the same: to look for the girl with the slight build, curly black hair and glasses.  Taylor Hebert.

Well, now we know how she’s gonna get in touch with her, if she remembers she wanted to do so.

I suppose it might get awkward that Dragon doesn’t remember their last conversation when she does.

She had to manage this carefully.  Colin’s own experiences indicated that approaching the girl would be a delicate process.  Having a real conversation with her would be doubly precarious.

Oh, certainly.

It would be reckless to attempt to contact a parent, but she could try being discreet to get some kind of verification from the parents.  Just to be certain.

Ohh boy.

Danny time, huh? Maybe we won’t get to see it, but whatever Dragon is going to do to get discreet verification, chances are Danny will be confused and maybe upset.

And maybe begin putting some pieces together himself.

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She cut the connection to the monitor, but left the video feed open so she could watch him.

Ooh, peeking. Let’s see what Army does when he doesn’t realize Dragon is watching.

Another check of the Birdcage.  Another check of the class S threats.  No changes.

She made contact with one of Richter’s programs.

Or not. Maybe later.

It was a web trawler, designed to monitor emails for high risk content.  Were there any clues about what the Undersiders were doing with the stolen data?  Were they selling it online?

Not quite, sorry.

She didn’t find any such clue.  Instead, the trawler had copied an email sent to the police station.  It had been highlighted and intercepted because the trawler had caught the words ‘Sophia’ and ‘Hess’ in the message body.  Shadow Stalker’s civilian identity.

Ooh boy.

Wait. If I remember the message body of the email correctly, her name wasn’t in there. I guess maybe the email app added a “Sent from Sophia Hess’ phone” or something?

She read the archive of texts that were attached to the email twice over.

Nasty stuff, eh?

Then she did a search for a student named Taylor at Winslow High School.  Nothing.

I guess her absence got to the point where they removed her from their listings, possibly believing her to have died to Leviathan (it’s entirely possible that Danny thinks this too). Or maybe Taylor had herself removed, but I’d imagine that would require parental confirmation.

Also, I don’t remember Taylor being mentioned by name in the texts we read, either. That’s more immediately excusable than the message body thing, though, since it’s entirely possible Regent attached more than what we saw.

Anyway, Dragon is onto something. Between this and Skitter’s unusually strong feelings about joining the Wards after finding out who Shadow Stalker was, she has all the evidence needed to figure out that Skitter is Taylor, thanks to Regent.