I never really got the point of revenge porn, and grimace when a story with a decent start like Manager falls into it.

 

Well I don't know about revenge porn, but I'd never say no to seeing Sophia and Emma get some kind of justice. Preferably legal justice over getting torn apart by bugs or something.

 

I quite like the whole dealing with the bullying if only because the actual series dealt pretty well with the whole super power intrigue and fights.

I'd actually quite like to see something about what I thought Worm would be like, a story about a teenage girl trying to balance her two lives and keep them separate.

 

That's a fair point. Allow me to rephrase.

My worry with any story dealing heavily with the bullying is that it will be written by someone who was bullied as a kid and never grew out of it. It's kind of like slash; I'm sure there's some great man on man fanfiction out there, but 99.9999% of it is going to be such crap as to invalidate the concept due to the writer secretly being a 14 year old girl at heart.

 

I feel like it goes without saying that when I want to read something, I want to read it done well. But I'll concede your point.

I'd in fact kind of like to see something where the bullies get away with everything. Not for anything but it making more interesting conflict.

 

I think that it will be more in line with Worm if Taylor looses control and kills Emma and Sophia at the start. It goes well with the 'Stuff always goes badly' theme that's present in canon. If it happens outside school and Taylor manages to cover it up, it could give rise to a very different hero than the one we were used to.

This view was also promoted since, I've seen few stories where the author managed to get the bullies to justice without changing some characters personality a lot.

 

I actually loved how Worm handled the bullying. Emma, Sophia, and Madison just became utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things -- for all the effort they went to in order to make themselves seem more impressive early on, they just ended up irrelevant to Taylor as she moved on. Admittedly she moved on because she was dealing with larger and more terrifying things, but isn't that what life is? I thought Wildbow actually made a really clever point about bullying by showing this. Were other people dissatisfied with the way it was dealt with?

I dunno, revenge seems like it just cheapens that entire conflict. I'm really not a fan of revenge-porn stories.

 

Ignoring your problems isn't dealing with them. The way Taylor handled it was weird too, lemme show off my Boyfriend to Sophia, that'll work out well. But punching her bullies in the face, or even subtly using her powers? Nope. I just found that weird, but in the grand scheme of things I was far more interested in other Capes/Endbringers.

 

While I was really hankering for some satisfying emotional or physical beat-down of the three bullies in the early parts of Worm, I think Emma got her comeuppance really well.

The philosophy she'd build her new life around? Taylor turned out to embody it far better than Emma ever could.



​

 

I mean, this wasn't really what I was talking about at all.

Later in the series, when Taylor goes to Arcadia and speaks to Emma, is the point when she's utterly overcome any problems she's had with bullies, and she's done it by realizing that there are more important things in the world than a juvenile power struggle. That isn't ignoring your problems, that's growing as a person to the point that things which used to seem important aren't at all, and even though the other issues Taylor becomes preoccupied with are larger than life, this is a situation which translates well into real life. If you're being bullied, the only real sort of revenge is not letting it affect you and continuing to live your life.

Bullies only do what they do because they want to feel strong, or powerful, or better about themselves. Any kind of reaction from the victim is validation of their personal belief systems. In the end, Taylor's utter indifference to Emma -- and the fact that we, as readers, are shown how incredibly small and unimportant Emma is -- is the ultimate revenge that can be had on her character.

Could Taylor have come up with some incredibly clever way to hurt Emma and crew using her power? Sure. Could she have come up with a way to emotionally wreck them, clever as she is? Yeah, I think so. But doing anything like that isn't victory in a situation like that. It's not even close.

 

After Taylor joined the Undersiders and had her late night outing with them to build up confidence, she did start hitting back a bit. Literally. I find that well done, that one part of her life flowed into the other, that she would fight back (ineffectively) as soon as she got self convidence.

Revenge porn is dumb. Taylor at the end of Worm does not care about the bullies, nobody important really does. Important people with important jobs arn't going to fall heads over heals over schoolyard bullying for anything short of emotional control.
It's just not in their modus operandi, if they'd deem it important, they'd hand it off to somebody else; Winslow for the bad case, Doctor Yamada for the good one.

Exaggerated "oh, the bullies are so evil and Taylor is such a poor girl and how come nobody did anything about the bullies and never checked if Taylor triggered sometime in their bullying campaign" is quickly becoming one of my pet peeves.

Miss Militias village was raided by soldiers, her friends and she herself used to test for mines. When she triggered with the power to generate weapons, not special skill with weapons or even combat, she mawed them down. Does she have a hate on for whatever goverment the soldiers belonged too? Does anybody go "oh, poor Hannah"?

Bakuda triggered for a bad grade. Lung triggered (or breathed in a Cauldron formula) when he saw his entire gang effortlessly killed. Bitch literally killed her foster family after she triggered because her foster mother tried to drown her dog as a diciplinary measure. Glory Girl triggered when she lost a basketball match. The Travellers were ripped from their reality, but into an Endbringer fight and a quarantine zone, not to mention Noelle and whatever the New York incident was.

Triggers are all over the place and if you're looking for someone to feel sorry for, there are a lot more obvious people then Taylor. The natural reaction to "She was bullied" is, imo, "oh, its one of those, I didn't know bullying went that far", not "that poor, poor girl - burn the witches!".

 

If you have super powers, and you let yourself be bullied, you suck.

End Debate.

 

I just don't agree with your interpretation of that. There are many ways to not let yourself be bullied that don't involve turning into a bully yourself, and by 2/3 of the way through Worm Taylor was no longer letting herself be bullied.

Do I get to say End Debate now and sound authoritative too?

 

Sure, why not?

I've been bullied qq. But seriously, fighting back against a bully isn't becoming a bully yourself, it's defending yourself. I just think it's lame to let yourself be a victim if you super freaking powers.

 

Simply moving on doesn't provide adequate closure to the issue, I feel. But playing out some elaborate revenge fantasy cheapens it. I think having them being brought to justice and properly disciplined would provide adequate closure. Expelled from school, charges pressed, etc., and once she gets that done Taylor moves on. That's all I'd like to see if someone's going to have that as a subplot.

I think Cenotaph did that to a degree by having Sophia/Shadow Stalker get investigated by the PRT, and I was satisfied enough with it.

 

Sophia did get some justice visited to her in Worm as well, though Regent was the one to do it.

 

I really can't think of a more satisfying conclusion than the actual canon "they're so tiny and insignificant" one. Schadenfreude isn't really anywhere near as good as catharsis.

 

I wouldn't call that justice. Vengeance, sure.

 

Pretty much this.

The best, if not only, way to "win" against bullies is for them to stop mattering. Getting so caught up in revenge fantasies and the desire for comeuppance just means that, in the end, your life still centers around them and their actions. It gives them the power, in other words.

It's really quite informative, and equally depressing, to find out how many people are still mentally juvenile enough to let past wrongs done to them consume their lives and dictate their behavior.