something that always bothered me about the worm fanfic scene is that they always try to cram everyone together. There's always the scene where taylor meets lisa in a coffee shop or whatever. I get it, it's a fanfic, you can't just make up a character for her to meet.
But one of the things i always liked about worm was that it stayed away from the comic trope of making everyone connected. Like, if Worm was a comic book, Armsmaster would be her teacher, She'd end up being friends with Kid Win, Cherie would attend Winslow, Annette would end up being still alive and a secret agent for Cauldron but with amnesia or something, over-the-top soap opera shit, right?
What I always liked was that in Worm, Taylor's just some girl. She only knows one hero out of costume, and it's the girl who ruined her life. Her dad's just the head of hiring for the union. Her mom was just a college professor. If you asked the mayor about Danny Hebert, he'd say "who?" A lot of fanfics have him be like seinfeldian rivals with the mayor, but like he just writes petitions. If you asked Lustrum about Annette Hebert, she'd have no clue who you're talking about, because Annette was just like a member of her organization.
What I'm trying to stress, is that in superhero comics, everything's connected. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone's a super genius, or met at The Science Expo, or their dad was a famous crime fighter. Comics have all these sorts of big dramatic irony reveals. In comic books, there is never a character who's just some guy.
This sort of thing is great for making everything feel connected, and it's good for keeping out extraneous exposition.
But Worm doesn't do that. It's all just like. They're just regular ass people. Of course they don't know each other. They live in a city with 300 thousand people, none of them would have ever met each other if it weren't for capeshit.
And, I mean, it does remove a lot of the potential for shenanigans but it really does a lot to make everything feel more real.
There's also something there about capeshit being a metaphor for shared trauma where like these people would not know each-other were it not for shared trauma.
The undersiders, the great team, the bestest friend team, they don't meet if not for capeshit. They have no connection to eachother outside this. These are kids who would have never met, they would never have come within 20 degrees of separation were it not for the fact they have powers. This is integral to worm's worldbuilding. It's maybe the closest you ever get to a positive aspect of gaining powers, and yet for so many capes there is no undersiders, just the fighting and loneliness and eventual violent death.
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