Welp, there goes Vicky. I don’t think what would be worse: Either forcibly happy and in love with Amy, or living the “And I must scream”-trope trapped in her body. Now her only hope is probably Bonesaw, and I think she now prefers death over being touched by Amy ever again. Will Taylor blame herself when she hears of this?

Yeeah, Victoria’s situation really sucks. It’d be a mercy to be truly insane in there.

Let’s be real, the answer to “will Taylor blame herself” is rarely ever “no”. In this case, I think she’ll put a lot of the blame on Amy, but she’s not going to ignore the fact that she’s the one who put Victoria in Amy’s grasp.

What do you think about the fact that one apparently can just ask to go to the Birdcage? And that Dragon is “mastered” into following the law and did it anyway? Amy’s thoughts probably went like this: I did horrible things -> I am a villain -> I go to the Birdcage, because that’s where villains go, like my father. I think she does it in part to lessen her guilt, somehow atone for her fuckups. Do you think she will be happier, or regret it and feel trapped? Will Marquis’s presence help?

Yeah, that’s absolutely how her thought process went. I don’t think I ever actually questioned why she’d do it, knowing her.

The only real question I have about her thought process is whether or not she wanted to meet Marquis in the Birdcage or went “well, that’s gonna suck, but I deserve that fate. we’re both horrible people so I guess we belong together”.

I do think that she’ll find herself happier than she thought she’d be with Marquis. He’s a good guy, for all his villainy.

The other people around them aren’t that great, perhaps, but I feel like they might want to avoid messing with Marquis’ daughter unless they can take him on too.

Feeling trapped? Sure, that might happen. And she might regret giving up the outside world. But she might be happy nonetheless.

Besides, feeling trapped is really nothing new for her.

“We beat Marquis by taking advantage of his weakness to girl power” makes for a better news story than “we beat Marquis because he sacrificed himself for his daughter”. PR is very important in the parahumans world, as Piggot has proven. Dragon was probably just going by the official story, since she wasn’t established yet when Marquis was captured. And as far as I remember, the only difference between the BBB and New Wave is that NW are unmasked.

Fair enough!

So, now might be a good time to mention the main reason why Wildbow gave up on his Guts & Glory drafts: they were just too dark. Imagine if this had been the main plotline of Worm, instead of just a subplot.

too dark

for Wildbow

(Okay but seriously, it’s true that the main plot is a lot less dark than some of the… adjacent plots. With the Undersiders there’s hope even in the darkest of situations. Most of the time.)

Canon detail here but they didnt want to arrest Amy, even when she volunteered to the Birdcage. She basically had to underliningly threathen to unleash a world wide apocalyptic plague to convince Dragon.

Oh wow.

And Amy probably thought she might end up doing that someday, too, if she wasn’t confined.

Marquis broke the scythe he was using so he wouldn’t accidentally kill Brandish, and that’s what Brandish was intending to happen when she threw her body in the path of the scythe.

Marquis was at a disadvantage because he didn’t ant to hurt women. Or did you think the extremely sharp bone scytte just dismatled itself by hitting Brandish? It was hitting Manpower before and he’s protected by a forcefield, it would ahve gone through Brandish. Marquis dismantled it on purpose to avoid hurting her.

Oh! Brandish’s move makes a lot more sense now.

I was curious about what you said, so I did a quick check, and the BBB apprehending Marquis using an all-female team was actually just an assumption that Amy (apparently mistakenly) made based on the stories her family told her.

Ohhh.

That would explain it. Thank you.

Yeah, there are two Alans so far in Worm, even if the thought of Brandish casually chatting with Mannequin (who is supposed to be dead) is funny. Mr Barnes is better than him, but still a dick as we saw in the school scene with Taylor. He is not above using his knowledge and status as lawyer to protect Emma from the consequences of her crimes. As he is now back, when and how do you think will Taylor see Emma again?

Within a couple Arcs, but it’s the “how” that’s really interesting. They have no reason to cross paths at school anymore, and Taylor’s mostly in costume when she’s out nowadays. How could they cross paths in a way that actually makes a difference?

Hmm.

What if it turns out Alan and Emma have settled down in Taylor’s territory?

It’d also be pretty interesting if Emma somehow found out about Skitter’s identity.