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Coil

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One of the really underrated subtle details in worm is that the reason coil having a snake theme is actually a subtle reference to his power and how snakes have 2 penises. A penis = a timeline.

Wildbow is a genius

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A Brockton Bay without Coil is an interesting scenario to me, because it would so severely shift the power balance that the city would be utterly unrecognizable when compared to canon.

Because unlike how fanfic commonly depicts Coil, he is a known factor. His powers aren't. But Coil and his mercenaries are one of BB's 3 powerful gangs.

Take him out of the picture (let's say the asshole has a brain aneurysm) and the entire structure of the criminal world in Brockton would be radically different from canon.

For example, there's no Undersiders. Rachel would likely remain a solo villain, extremely distrustful of anyone and everyone, though she could end up in a team, maybe with Trainwreck since Wildbow does say that they'd have gotten along. Alec would've just kept drifting along, piecing together his own personal morality based on not wanting to be his dad. Brian'd still be an enforcer for whoever would hire him, trying in vain to save up enough to get custody of Aisha, though I could see him making a small team of his own. And Lisa probably keeps pickpocketing until somebody realizes her potential, hero or villain.

So many factors of canon would be completely non-existent without Coil (no Dinah kidnapping, no Trainwreck infiltrating the Merchants, no Chariot in the Wards, probably no Leviathan attack, so on) that the creation of an interesting AU just from that is a gold mine for a fic.

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Something interesting about Coil is that he at least nominally checks a lot of the boxes on the “evil overlord with standards who looks after their minions and offers dental yadda yadda yadda” tumblr discourse gestalt. He makes deals, holds up his end in almost all situations bar the Dinah one, provides nearly unlimited material support to the villains under his control up to and including decorating their lairs for them. He accepts feedback and criticism graciously, and when Imp tries to haggle herself a territory in a crisis situation he goes along with it without even gesturing in the direction of making an example out of her for her insolence.

None of this is because he has actual standards or ethics or emotional attachments, which is what a lot of those posts (the bogleech one, etc.) imply is going on under the hood. It’s just that he’s identified supporting, providing for and being lenient with his minions as the fastest path to continuing to have minions. Also, his power lets him simulate brutalizing his minions for their annoying fuckups without having to deal with the consequences of such. The “unconditional” support also folds the exact second playing nice with his underlings gets in the way of what he wants- he’s cordial with Lisa, sure, but there’s no illusion he’d ever let her leave his employ alive, she’s too useful.

And, of course, the same pragmatic approach that makes him so great to work for also leads him to kidnap and drug children when that’s the fastest way to get what he wants, and the fact his “loyal” quirky likable minions are willing to go along with this is a shorthand for how awful they’ve been the whole time without Taylor (or the audience) noticing. And this underlying moral rot leads to the protagonists turning against him by inches and eventually killing him once they’ve rallied under a leader (Skitter) who genuinely is the kind of “great-boss, bad-guy-but-not-a-bad-guy” supervillain on personal principle that Coil presented himself as.

And despite how he presents himself- his proximity to the “good boss supervillain archetype” just... never registered in the fandom, because the protagonist is laser-focused on the atrocious shit he does and her own complicity in it. I have never seen anyone argue on his behalf because of the “nice-coded” things he does! Everyone hates him! They hate him so, so much! It’s such an interesting treatment of the archetype!