In retrospect, when Wildbow says he develops his characters and their abilities around a sense of irony, I am extremely unsurprised. He does not fuck around.
Tattletale and Regent are the easiest examples, if not the best ones. Tattletale gets a massive kick out of being a know-it-all, and got her power from a traumatic situation of not knowing,Ā which for all her power she will never be able to fix. Regent - the functional sociopath - wishes he were capable of empathising with the people around him, and lo, he has a power that allows him to experience the inside of other peopleās lives and bodiesĀ in the most fucked-up way possible.
Genesis, who dreams of being physically abled - who, judging by her reaction to Lukeās question probably imagines day-in, day-out what that would mean and what having a different body would mean - gets infinite bodies, but only in a projection, an empowered version of that dream. Cody, who feels he missed his chance, gets split-second do-overs that will never reach far enough. Imp, abused, wanting alternately to escape her abusers, and for the people she needsĀ to fucking acknowledgeĀ her, gains the power to be completely forgotten.
Noelle. Implied to have had a severe eating disorder. I thought anorexia, at first ā anorexia is always the first to come to mind, and āthe way she picked at her foodā sounds (to the uninitiated) like an aversion to eating, rather than a fear of bingeing. But her power suggests otherwise.
At the time she gains her powers, her recent history: she drew Cody into her life, and then pushed him away again. Afterward, he was a worse version of himself. Resentful. Spiteful. Jealous. It doesnāt matter whether that was Noelleās fault or Codyās - all thatās necessary is that a part of her blames herself for it, and we see that in her two-steps-forward, three-steps-back approach to Krouse. So when Krouse appears, shows interest, and starts finding his way into her affections, sheās so sure sheās about to do the same thing to him. Both physically and emotionally, her central issues centre around spitting things, and people, back out - worse than they were before. She gains a power that reflects that on at least two levels, and a narrative that reflects it again.
Panacea, who is constantly viewed with suspicion by her family, who absorbs the dynamic around her - her carersā response to her membership in the family - and internalises the idea that because of who she is, then simply by touching someoneās life, she will fuck them up.Ā Her power wants to make this literal. She tries to use it for the opposite.
And Taylor āĀ oh my god, Taylor.
Isolated, lonely, disgusted with her situation and her place in the world. Her total frustration with broken, uncoordinated systems.
If you know anything about bullying, youād know that it actively takes away your spoons. Itās a slow, gradual destruction, a million smaller things working against you and wearing you down little by little. Taylor confronts this directly when she dumps her records on the board.Ā
Being slowly chipped away. All the little things, working together.
Taylor gains a power that turns that principle on her enemies.
Lonely. Isolated. Looking for anyone, anything that can offer support.
A master power.Ā Suddenly, ALL THE TINY FRIENDS
Desperate for an escape, for anything she can turn to that can distract her from the total revulsion of whereĀ she is right now ā
And suddenly she can feel every insect in a three-to-five block radius, with a perfect sensory clarity that her human mind canāt even beginĀ to process. A sensory escape to something that isnāt any better.
Her frustration with the system. The application of a perfect one.
Theyāre not hypocrisies. Theyāre not contradictions. Theyāre ironies. Like the way humans develop neuroses, these powers are helpful in the most unhelpful ways imaginable.Ā
They defend vulnerabilities in ways that donāt quite work, and wind up making them bigger; raising the stakes. They take a bad situation and just find a way to turn that on others. Theyāll cover a weakness in a way that highlights the weakness or throws the user into bigger variants of the same problem.Ā
Brutes gain their powers through physical trauma and wind up as front-line combatants. Masters gain their powers through intense isolation and surround themselves with minionsĀ instead of relationships.
Capes, in Worm, are not happy people - theyāre complicated fucking messes, but fucking messesĀ each ofĀ whose issues all revolve around singular, multifaceted points.
And that echoes my experience of real people.
