worm is, by and large, a story about playing with common superhero tropes.
the trope i find the most interesting, is that of identity. that of masks.
when a character takes an alias, fans often can run away with it. we can see this in breaking bad with the oft-memed “this is the moment walt became heisneberg.” or star wars, with anakin vs darth vader. fans tend to see this alias as an entirely separate character, as someone whose actions are divorced from the original identity due to the construction of that mask.
but this is not the case. heisenberg is walt. walt is walt. heisenberg is the mask he wears, that he is a ruthless cold manipulative killer.
but he’s not. he’s an amateur. every time mike analyzes him, telling him he’s a time bomb, an idiot, mike is right. the viewer, and fandom, are tricked by the heisenberg’s persona. we can see this mask slip often, if we’re paying attention. moments where his manipulation is called out, and we can see the pure panic on his face. that panic is heisenberg. that panic is walt
similarly, vader is anakin. i don’t care about canon or non canon sith-magic psuedoscience. darth vader is anakin, consumed by grief, lashing out at the world due to the consequences of his own actions. (ignoring the nuances of palpy’s manipulation. this isnt a star wars lore post.)
worm, though, takes “what if you were the mask. what if the mask was you” one step further.
alec is jean paul, who is regent, who is hijack, who is one of heartbreaker’s children, forever and always, until only through a caring and loving hand he is able to step beyond, step out of cover, if you will, and be more then the mask. more than the identity. more than the power or attitude that labels him as a lazy sociopath. it is perhaps through this sacrifice that we see him at his most human.
tattletale is a mask for lisa is a mask for sarah. she can see, fundamentally, through and beyond the walls and masks that other people wear. their secrets, what they hide from others, what they hide from themselves. thus, she has no reason to let her own walls down. why would she need to? and thus, sarah fades away, and so does lisa, until there is only tattletale, exchanging snide comments with antares, the person who might possibly be able to understand her the most.
colin becomes so fixated on his own advancement in the prt that armsmaster burns down around him, leading him to fully enclose himself off from the world. despite this, and despite the parallels he has with the man who made him this way, he finds himself with connections. a surrogate daughter, a robot wife. he is the mask, but the mask is defiance against alan, against sphere, against mannequin. the mask says, “you are wrong. your ideology is wrong, your worldview is wrong, and in the face of a fate and world that is cold and uncaring, the only thing to do is to defy it.”
the slaughterhouse nine proudly wear the mask that says “you are your actions. so why not make those actions the worst and most harmful they can be?” the masks remain there, enforced by their leader, by the prt, by their own refusal to be anything but the worst they can be. only riley rises beyond bonesaw. only she is gently coaxed out of the shell she wears.
taylor.
oh taylor. sweetheart, beloved.
taylor, perhaps most out of all, becomes skitter. she becomes skitter to avoid being taylor, and when the prt and media decide to out skitter as taylor, she becomes weaver to avoid being skitter.
these identities are not taylor to taylor, they exist to bury taylor, to hide her deep inside. but only when she starts to become khepri does she reflect and realize.
despite all the talk about passenger influence, conflict drive, etc.
it was always taylor. she isn’t queen administrator becomes she had the QA shard. she has the QA shard because she is Queen Administrator.
it wasn’t QA that gave her the propensity to violence that sundancer flinches at. it was taylor. it always was taylor.
this is perhaps Worm’s central takeaway about identity. it’s one many fans and fanfic authors get wrong. that skitter subsumes taylor, that taylor is gone beneath that mask. but she doesnt, and she’s not.
