#hive 5.2

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

He wore a mask that was little more than a piece of sheet metal cut and shaped to resemble a wolf’s features, attached to his head with straps of black leather.  He had a chain threaded through the belt loops of his jeans, sporting a heavy metal belt buckle.  The buckle featured a wolf superimposed on a swastika – the same image he had tattooed on one of his biceps.  The opposite arm simply had ‘E88’ on it.  Outside of the mask and the belt buckle, you couldn’t really say he had a costume.  He was shirtless, shoeless, and hairy.  His blond hair was long and greasy, and he had thick hair on his chest, stomach and arms.  Harpoon-like spears and metal that curled like fishhooks radiated out from his shoulders, elbows and knees, all bristling with barbs or wickedly serrated edges. Nobody, to date, had ever escaped the Birdcage, the name that had been coined for the supervillain prison in British Columbia.  Hookwolf, though, had escaped on no less than two occasions while being transported there.  He was a killer, and thought nothing of murdering people if they didn’t fit the Aryan ideal.

One thing that Worm did that I think a lot of people weren't really remembering at the time of writing it is that for all that (then, and even now) our popular image of Neo-Nazis is of skinhead tattooed gangster brutes, akin to what this knife-brained shit has going for him -

Neo Nazis always did have the more 'respectable' seeming sorts, like Max Anders (even if I gather he doesn't really believe in those ideas).

2015 and 2016 and 2017 sort of helped remind everyone that Neo Nazis can, on the surface, look like any normal dude wearing a suit and tie or whatever. That you need to be wary even if they don't have the swastika tattoo and the confederate flag bumper sticker and the shaved head and so forth.

But yeah, you also need to be wary of them if they do have all that shit, and Fuckwolf over here is why.

“Not something I’d pay attention to.  I’m more of a cat person.”  The sardonic comment elicited a few chuckles from the room.

Is this Wildbow engaging in heinous anti-cat propaganda, or just riffing on the whole 'villainous mastermind with a big fluffy pet cat' meme?

Because if it is the former, then that really does became Wildbow's greatest sin ever and he shall burn in hell for it! (/s)

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

Grue went on, “You know what you did wrong?  You didn’t fucking tell us.  You let me fucking go in there and talk to those guys and get caught with my pants down.  I had to fucking defend the actions of my team without knowing what the fuck people were talking about.  It made me look weak.  It made all of us look weak.”

Objectively, I should feel more bad for Rachel than I do, given... everything. But I can't really control which characters I glom onto and which I don't. If it wasn't for the dog thing, I'd probably have a bit of an easier time, if she was just a gruff, uncommunicative bitch of a person, but the fact that she basically thinks like a dog or so we're supposed to believe makes that a bit harder, among other things.

But she really does win the 'Kylia's Least Favorite Undersider' contest every day running so far. She seems to create as many problems as she solves.

Of course, this whole scene isn't really making me like Brian either, because he's saying shit like Rachel 'made' him do stuff, which she did, and didn't, and Brian isn't actually meaning it the way it sounds, but fuck if it all doesn't really work for me. Because it really fucking doesn't work for me.

“You’re frustrated, I get it,” Tattletale spoke.  Bitch was staring in the window of the bookstore, avoiding eye contact while she rubbed her neck.  Tattletale went on, “You don’t feel like you did anything wrong, and if you had another chance to do things over, you feel like you’d do everything the same way… yet people are pissed at you.” Bitch met Tattletale’s eyes.  Her tone was a combination of irritation and boredom, “And people are taking turns chewing me out and spewing psychobabble shit at me.”

oh ffs Rachel.

And yet, okay, yeah, I can respect why that shit pisses her off too, tbf. But still, christ on a bike, she's a bitch, and not in the fun way a character can be a bitch and still be likeable.

I imagine it's possible she'll grow on me if she grows on Taylor, since we do have to remember we're getting all things through the lens of Taylor (who doesn't really like Rachel much either at this point, far as I can tell), but equally, I just think she's just the opposite of a blorbo for me. I want to put her in the Horse Plink forever, or w/e.

I knew it would be hard to turn on them, to pull off that grand betrayal and turn their information over to the Protectorate, once I had the information I needed… but when I thought on it, I knew I could bite the bullet and do it.  I would have less regrets in the long run.  I could even be proud of it, in the grand scheme of things, maybe. More and more, I was seeing the day I turned that information over and said goodbye to the Undersiders as the day I wanted to transform myself.  Start transforming Skitter into a hero in the public eye, doing what I could to repair my image, and redefining Taylor into someone confident and outgoing and brave.  If I could cut ties with the Undersiders and take that plunge, I knew I could change myself. But, strange as it sounded, I would feel worse about handing their information to the Protectorate if this sort of negativity was what I was leaving behind when I did it.  I knew it made no sense, but I wanted to be able to tell myself I’d had one successful set of friendships, before I severed ties for the sake of doing the right thing.  I could only hope that the sore feelings would fade.  Even when I’d had friends, it had just been me and Emma.  I didn’t have enough experience to really know one way or the other, as far as how groups of friends handled these sorts of sore feelings and resentment.  It sucked.

Yeah, it's fucking weird that the idea that she'd actually leave the Undersiders worse off like this would upset her, but given everything it does track. And it's probably just the start of further rationalizations 'I need to make this friendship thing work right before I turn on them, right' and 'just a little longer' and 'just a little longer' and then boom.

I'd be very curious about the planning - was Taylor being friendless the part that came first and then her being so eager to glom onto the Undersiders, etc, what came from that, or (more likely, I'd assume) Wildbow needed a reason for this character who wants to be a hero at the start, and - throughout her entire run as a villain - who does want to help people and protect innocent people and so forth, to join the villains and then not turn on them, and giving her such a shitty fucking civilian life was the solution?

Probably a bit of a chicken and egg, but there is the anecdote that Saruman exists just because Tolkein needed a reason Gandalf couldn't meet Frodo in that one town whose name escapes me but had the Prancing Pony Inn.