Something really interesting about Worm is that Taylor is one of the only people whose actually interested in saving/helping people. Like I actually think even when she's a crime lord her motivations are closest to what a superhero should ideally be.
The Protectorate and their allies aren't interested in saving people. They're fundamentally supercops whose job it is to find people breaking the law and fight them. Everything we see the Protectorate and Wards do involves fighting someone. They have a very similar mentality to the propagandistic mcu heros, where being a superhero means finding a bad guy whose as powerful as you and using your powers to kill them or arrest them. When the Wards see a bunch of corpses that the Travlers found their plan is to arrest the Travlers rather then working with them. The Protectorate/Wards/Prt do not in any way make the communities their in better.
But Taylor does a lot with her powers that just exists because she wants to help people, even in ways that have nothing to do with benefiting herself or fighting anyone. She uses her bugs to remove rat infestations. She gives people supplies after the leviathan attack. Her entire motive for going into Merchant territory is to save someone's brother who came to her because there was nobody else to come to, and she actively stops her mission to save someone else. Her entire plan when she realizes all glass will shatter in Brockton Bay is to warn as many people as she can, and to help the survivors get medical attention. During the Echidna fight she's concerned with when casualties start getting high. Like, for all her many, many, flaws, she's someone whose fundamentally driven to save people, and ironically she has a greater ability to do that as a villain then she does as a Ward.
Even her main three motivations throughout most of her arc, preventing gold morning, exposing cauldron, and saving Dina, aren't based on fighting anyone. Like, they require fighting people, but the goal is fundamentally to help people, even if her actions are very far from pure she's unique in her motivation.
No wonder the people at her school defended her when she was unmasked. From their perspective she's been keeping them safe and alive for the past few months, and meanwhile the average person would probably have zero positive interactions with the Protectorate in their lifetime.
