quantumripple

[quantumripple]

Cockroaches 28.3 is brilliantly and perfectly unhinged.

Lung: What is she thinking? I haven't seen her for years, but she's just as I remember her. Cold and inscrutable. Capable of violence at any moment. She wants me on this "team" of hers, but I'll need to stay on my toes just in case she still wants to try anything

Taylor: I wonder if he's still mad at me for rotting his junkular area? Nah he's probably madder that I totes one-upped him in the city domination game. Also wow look at Amy's Dad hubba hubba awoooooga. Looking respectfully, of course

[quantumripple]

I feel like every single time I come into contact with Worm I find a new Taylor (or Lisa or Rachel) word to add to my mental library. And every single time I'm reminded that I don't make her internal narrration dorky enough.

Anyways I pay tribute to this post with another Taylorword/phrase: Junkular area (worm 28.3, yes this is how she refers to rotting off Lung's bits)

arc 7: taylor you are such a little freak. never change

[quantumripple]

Yea this is incredibly misleading. I had a look at the source of this graph and it was classifying anti-isreal (the state) protests themselves as hate speech. As well as classifying calling what Israel is doing as genocide as hate speech as well.

There are definitely lefties that are antisemetic, and they should be called out harshly. But it does a disservice to capitulate to the narrative that "the left" is antisemetic.

Honestly, being unable to separate the state of Israel from judaism as a whole is literally an OG piece of antisemitism.

I get an iteration of this ask like once a month, and it's always some form of "why do you care so much about leftist antisemitism when neo nazis exist"

And there are two main reasons.

1. Antisemitism is still antisemitism regardless of who does it. The left isn't less harmful in their antisemitism simply because it's coming from the left.

2. I am a leftist myself and care deeply about the left. Ignoring the harm to jews it causes, it is genuinely scary seeing people on the left abandon leftist values for right wing rhetoric wrapped in a thin cover of leftism.

[quantumripple]

It’s so hard out there sometimes

Keep fighting the good fight o7

Okay so I was just gonna ignore it cause like, not my business, but this new worm contest Gaylor is hosting is absolutely killing me. I open Ao3 to look for new Lisa fics (a futile endeavor at the best of times) and I'm bombarded by incest porn, bug-rape trio revenge porn, and fucking nazi porn. Oh, and way too much of it is underage, of course, because nobody has ever heard of the concept of an "aged up AU".

"Oh the worm characters barely act like kids anyway—" THEN NOTHING WILL CHANGE WHEN YOU AGE THEM UP!

Also I'm counting Taylor/Dragon as age gap because I don't care if she's "technically" only eight, she's not human and clearly a similar age as Armsmaster. Also, even if her being eight is the hill you wanna die on, it's still age gap porn just worse now.

Anyway I think I glossed over the nazi fic a bit so let me elaborate, becuase it's Rune/Kid Win. EXCEPT! For some god forsaken reason, the author decided that wasn't problematic enough, so they made Kid Win a trans man. Nazi/Trans man! That's the fucking ship! And the fic has Rune using slurs!

I'm so fucking tired of this.

[quantumripple]

I love that Taylors “first resort” solution to literally every problem is kissing.

Saw your bully on the bus? Kiss hunky friend to make her jealous

Plague? Smooch your besties

Need a way to keep people out of your way while you’re infiltrating the Illuminati? That’s right, kissing again

….. if you think about it her solution for Scion was “make him think he’s getting a smooch from his long lost love then take the rug out.”

[quantumripple]

So true bestie. You tell ‘em 😤

Top Seven Myths About the Locker (Number 4 Will Surprise You)

The Locker Incident, as it’s frequently capitalized, is a staple of worm fan fic for reasons I still don’t understand. In canon Worm, Wildbow didn’t write the locker scene. Taylor gave a brief summary of it while discussing her trigger event, but otherwise it remains in the background of the story.

This has widely been considered a mistake by fans who don’t know what they want.

Harkening back to the first comments on the first chapters of Worm, people have been clamoring for locker scenes. Phrases such as “start at the beginning” and “you have to show their origin story” are bandied about, but at the end of the day, it’s a mystery as to why people want so desperately to read about Taylor being shoved into a locker for the Nth time.

Maybe they just like bullying Taylor? Trio-core if true.

Regardless, this trend has resulted in a variety of fascinating bits of folklore and fanon, and I figured it would be fun to run through a few of them.

DISCLAIMER: the links posted are primarily to medical sites discussing and detailing diseases and wound treatment, and as such some of them have gross pictures of infected wounds. Click with caution.

Also, I’m not a doctor. Don’t take this as medical advice, don’t take this as an expert opinion. This is me reading stuff on the internet from medical journals and blogs.

1. Locked in all day/over the weekend

Taylor was in the locker for one period (about an hour and a half), approximately, maybe less, given that kids left their classrooms to watch her get taken out. Likely no more than an hour tops. This is a long time, and absolutely miserable, but... it’s not all day. It’s not over the weekend.

2. This Attempt On My Life Has Left Me Scarred And Deformed

Frequently, Taylor is described as severely injured due to the locker. Cuts, nerve damage, infections, and so on. Sometimes even death. Now, Taylor doesn’t have an auto-immune disease. She doesn’t have a heart condition. We know this, because it would have come up during one of the many times she was active or exposed to gunk. Also, Panacea literally listed off Taylor’s history of injuries during Leviathan, and not only were the effects of the locker not mentioned, but no major health complications were listed.

The contents of the locker are, as described, used pads and tampons. That’s it. That’s all there was. She also threw up in it. No nails, or needles, or even pencils or the like. Could she have gotten a cut from being shoved in? Sure. Could she have scraped herself enough for an infection? I guess, why not. But like. Those are minor injuries, and as mentioned before, she wasn’t in for that long. The locker wasn’t life-threatening nor was it a murder attempt. The bullies didn’t try to kill her. They just wanted to humiliate her.

Also, she wasn’t eaten alive by bugs. That’s insane. Very few bugs eat people, and even less eat people alive. In fact, Taylor never once mentions bugs during her description of the locker. Is it reasonable to assume that there were bugs in there? Yeah, sure, that makes sense. But Taylor didn’t mention them, because they don’t matter.

Also, before anyone brings up this quote:

> Madison opened the locker, and the rancid smell of it wafted around me. I would have gagged if I could breathe. 

Sophia shoved me inside, planting one foot between my shoulder blades as she hauled back on the rope. My unbroken fingers scrabbled for purchase, found only trash and cotton that tore when I tried to grab it. Bugs bit at my flesh and there was nothing I could do to stop them.

This is from Scourge 19.1, and it’s literally an Echidna induced fever dream, and that scene also includes Taylor being brutally beaten by Madison and Emma, which isn’t canon, otherwise we would have heard about it at some point when the bullying was story relevant.

Further... 

3. Psych Ward not Emergency Room

She was taken to the hospital after she was released, due to a mental breakdown caused by her new bug senses. She attacked the janitor in a panic, because she was feeling all the bug senses and had no idea what they were. The ambulance came, and took her to the psych ward. Not the emergency room, the psych ward. Because any injuries she had were minor. Additionally, she spent about a week in the psych ward under observation. If she had a more serious injury or illness, they would have seen it in time to stop it.

Because...

4. Sepsis/Toxic Shock Syndrome, Because Tampons Are Icky and Gross.

One of the more common bits of fanon is that Taylor got life threatening illnesses from the locker. Sepsis and Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS), specifically. Why? Because there were gross tampons in the locker, and if you leave a tampon in for a long time, it can cause an infection that can lead to sepsis. Now, let’s talk about how infections work, because clearly nobody understands this.

Let’s start with TSS. It’s true that if you leave a tampon in for too long, you’re at risk of TSS. But also, if you leave anything in the vagina too long, you’re at risk of TSS. The specific cause in this case is the bacteria entering the uterus via the cervix. I can already hear the screams of “it can enter the bloodstream through open wounds!” Yes this is true, one of the three bacteria known to cause TSS could do that.

As an aside, TSS only affects about 1 in 100,000 people. It is rare. The majority of people fight off the infection long before it reaches the point of TSS, and typically the ones who don’t are people who are already at risk in some way. (Elderly, young children, immunocompromised individuals, and so on.)

Now, let’s talk about infections and incubation periods. Staphylococcus aureus (staph) is the bacteria most likely to cause sepsis, and it’s the one I’ll be using for this example because it’s specifically noted to grow on used tampons, which is the thing everyone is obsessed with regarding the locker. Anyway, the incubation period is how long it takes for the infection to set in properly, which for this particular bacteria, is 4-10 days. 4-10 days, not less than an hour. Even the quicker bacterial infections take about 4 hours on the low end, and as established, she was in the locker for less than an hour, and picked up by an ambulance right away.

For those unaware, if you clean the wounds right away, the chance of infection goes down by a lot. In this case, within an hour or two counts as “right away”, given the incubation periods.

Regardless, we’re looking at 4 days on the low end for the infection to set in... and from there, septic shock can set in as little as 12 to 24 hours from that point. 

Four and a half days. Not one whole hour.

Additionally, the treatment for sepsis—and infections in general? Antibiotics. Once more, she’s in the hospital for a week. If she has an infection, they’ll just give her antibiotics.

So please stop going on about septic shock already.

5. Taylor Triggered Because of the Gross Bugs

Taylor triggered not because of the contents of her locker, nor because the experience was That Bad, but rather because nobody helped her.

"All I could think was that someone had been willing to get their hands that dirty to fuck with me, but of all the students that had seen me get shoved in the locker, nobody was getting a janitor or teacher to let me out."

This is from Shell 4.3 when she’s discussing her trigger event. A bunch of people saw, and none of them told a teacher or tried to help. According to a reddit post from WB, enough time passed before her trigger for her to realize that the people who saw her didn’t get help. That is what caused her trigger. Not the bugs, not the tampons, not the enclosed space.

6. Bioterrorism

It wasn’t bioterrorism.

... do I really have to elaborate on this?

I’m going to start with a definition, because the fact that people even call the locker bioterrorism means that we need one. “Bioterrorism involves the deliberate release of bioweapons to cause death or disease in humans, animals, or plants. Biological weapons may be developed or used as part of a government policy in biological warfare or by terrorist groups or criminals. Biological weapons can initiate large-scale epidemics with an unparalleled lethality, and nation-states and terrorist groups have used dangerous and destructive Biological weapons in the past.” - from an article on the National Library of Medicine website.

Do you want me to define “bioweapon” too? I’ll give you a hint, used tampons don’t count. Bullying isn’t terrorism either, you wanna know why? Because it’s not politically or ideologically motivated. Bakuda threatening to blow up her school isn’t even an act of terrorism, because there was no grand agenda, no political message, and no reason for the terror. Although, Bakuda bombing the city would count as terrorism, so I’m comfortable using that as a benchmark. Or we could use a school shooting as a benchmark, because a lot of those are politically motivated and could reasonably be counted as acts of terrorism.

So, is one (1) student being shoved in a locker an act of terrorism?

It’s a rhetorical question, you don’t have to answer.

Now, with that insanity aside, let’s talk about biohazards, because the contents of the locker being a biohazard are the reason it gets called bioterrorism. I’m not going to give a formal definition for this, but basically, a biohazard is biological material that could be hazardous to someone’s health. The US classifies biohazards across four levels, with differing safety precautions needed depending on the severity. Class 4 biohazards are typically fatal, while Class 1 biohazards are basically just normal illnesses. Note that biohazards are defined by the illnesses, not by the type of substance.

Human blood and waste products are a biohazard. This is a fact, and I have no interest in debating it. The risks involved with contacting human blood are contracting blood-borne illnesses, specifically by getting the blood in an open wound, nasal cavity, or swallowing it. The precautions for dealing with blood are gloves and face masks, and then you have to wash your hands afterward. At worst, blood could be classified as a Class 2 biohazard, mainly because there’s a risk of HIV or the like... if the blood already has HIV. 

And only if it gets into the bloodstream.

Is it gross? Yes. Could Taylor get sick? Yes, and the hospital probably ran a blood panel while they had her there, because they always run blood panels, so if she picked something up they would see it.

Does that make this bioterrorism? Fuck no.

Also, a biohazard isn’t actually a thing to panic over; not inherently. You wanna know what else is a biohazard? Spit. Urine. Mucus. Stinging insects. Decomposing plant matter. Basically anything biological that could carry a disease. Additional link on biohazards and safety precautions.

7. The Locker is Unrealistic

The locker is literally based on a true story.

“I did volunteer work with someone I'll call S. One of the most horrific incidents of bullying I've come across happened to her. A trash can was emptied into her locker before the Christmas break. Janitors cleaned the school but even with the (I have to assume) smell they didn't go into the lockers themselves. She came back to school and got forced into the locker. She threw up on herself, gouged her head on the hook built into the locker, came out, got sent home, her parents tried to kick up a fuss, nothing happened, she stopped telling them about incidents because all it was doing was making them unhappy and 'multiplying the misery'.” - Wildbow on Reddit

Is it bad? Yes. Is it unrealistic? No. If your experiences in school don’t reflect this level of bullying, then I’m very happy for you. That doesn’t mean your experiences are universal.

In conclusion

The locker was a horrific act of bullying, and it caused Taylor to trigger. It was her lowest point, because she felt isolated, alone, and like nobody cared about her. The contents are a biohazard, but that’s not nearly as serious as it sounds. She ended up in the hospital’s psych ward due to her power’s extra-sensory components, but wasn’t injured enough to need a stay in the ER—and certainly wasn’t in serious enough condition to pull Panacea out of school to heal her. She may have gotten a minor illness, but was never at serious risk of sepsis. Taylor was in the locker for about an hour, give or take fifteen minutes.

It was not bioterrorism. It was not a murder attempt. She wasn’t in there for the whole school day, or a weekend, or all of winter break.

Oh also, you don’t actually have to write a trigger event. You can skip it like canon did. You can just start later when things start happening. It’s okay. Nobody will be mad.

[quantumripple]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63674848/chapters/163225021

Pack Bond: The Undersiders biker AU that no one asked for but which, frankly, I'm astonished nobody has made yet.

Apparently Tumblr is the vanguard of Wolfspider or something? On this one (1) day I will feed y'all some good dog food

[quantumripple]

Yupppppp. Gods you cooked here.

I'm so done with this particular bit of fanon, and I wish I could click my fingers and make it disappear forever.

The Popular Fanon of the Unwritten Rules, and the Nazi Apologia it Perpetuates

I. Introduction

Fanon. Love it or hate it, there’s a lot of it. This isn’t something exclusive to the Worm fandom, either. Fanon has existed since the moment people started thinking about what they were reading, and spreading their own versions of it. Off the top of my head, The Divine Comedy incorporated some of the author’s “fanon” views on the Catholic Church.

In a more contemporary sense, a lot of fanon exists to either fill gaps in the original source, or to “fix” things that were deemed wrong. These two categories of fanon are more likely to be accepted by default, either due to a lack of canon to contradict it, or due to a general agreement that the way the source portrayed X was bad. There is a third type of fanon, however, which is the type I personally find rather distasteful: the fanon where something from the source is taken, and then misinterpreted so often that people start to assume it's canon. It’s worth mentioning that these three broad categories are not mutually exclusive, and in fact there’s often a degree of overlap between them.

This third category is what I’ll be focusing on, as a lot of misunderstandings of Worm’s setting come from things like this. Some of these fanons can be harmless, at least in isolation, while others erode the core themes that Worm set out to explore. And then, of course, there’s the fanon that ties directly into the spread of harmful ideas and ideology, subjective as that is.

I am, of course, talking about the Unwritten Rules and the fanon surrounding them.

Now, I should clarify that using the Unwritten Rules fanon in your fic doesn’t make you a Nazi apologist. Most fanon isn’t used with intent like that, and is instead just fic writers playing a game of telephone with stuff they saw in other fics, because they find it fun or convenient. The problem is that some of the things being telephoned down the fanon pipeline are steeped in racism and apologia, or can be used to facilitate them, and repetition of these fanons dulls the response to what, in other contexts, would (hopefully) be met with horror, or at least discomfort.

II. The Unwritten Rules

In brief, the Unwritten Rules are the idea that there’s a harsh divide between capes and their civilian identities, and that preserving that divide is important for maintaining the status quo. Assault gets home from a long day of work, takes off his mask, and then can go out to eat without worrying about a villain attacking him while he’s going through a drive through. Lung can take off his mask and put on a button-up shirt, and go shopping at the local grocer.

The Nazis can come home from a long day of lynching minorities, and go to the local pub for a pint without worrying about their crimes coming back to bite them.

If you haven’t already seen the ways this is fucked up, don’t worry, I’m not done yet.

In canon, as presented by Tattletale, the Unwritten Rules are something of a gentleman’s agreement to not cause too much trouble. Don’t kill, don’t rape, and don’t go on a bombing spree, and the heroes will go easier on you. “A game of cops and robbers.” There is some truth to what she’s saying, in that it’s easier for the PRT to keep the status quo stable if they can take people in without every fight leaving a trail of bodies in the streets. Villains also want to limit their destruction, because otherwise they can’t make as much money. It’s a mutual, unspoken agreement that society is good for both sides, and neither wants to see it torn down around them; don’t escalate and others won’t escalate in response. Hence Bakuda being attacked from all sides. Hence the Nine getting attacked by everyone every time they show up.

Hence the government unmasking Taylor in an attempt to capture her.

It’s not black and white, however, as immediately after Tattletale’s speech about how the unwritten rules work, the Undersiders and Wards fight. A no holds barred all out fight where Kid Win uses a gun rated for S-Class fights against the Undersiders. A fight where Taylor attempts to drown Clockblocker in bugs. A fight where Grue hits Vista so hard she falls unconscious. A fight where Amy attempts to kill Skitter, and threatens her with fates worse than death while captive.

Anyone who’s read superhero comics is familiar with the “face blindness” tropes, where heroes and villains alike can hang up their coats and relax between issues. The Unwritten Rules are a pretty direct implementation of this trope, and a way for the story to comment on and deconstruct it.

Anyway, now that I’ve done a bunch of discussion on something a lot of people broadly understand, let’s focus on how the exaggerated fanon surrounding the Unwritten Rules acts as a breeding ground for the normalization of Nazism as an ideology.

III. The Apologia

First, let’s consider how severe the problem is. Heroes playing along, refusing to arrest villains in their civilian identities, is much more common in fanwork than it is in canon, just to start. (In canon, Armsmaster was eager to learn the Undersiders’ civilian identities so as to better arrest them. In Pick A Card, Mouse Protector stops trying to arrest Taylor after she accidentally sees Taylor without her mask on.) In fanfic, The Rules also manifest with villains being unwilling to cross certain lines, even giving up their own teammates for breaking the rules in more extreme cases. At their silliest, the Unwritten Rules are treated as something all capes know and respect, like commandments carved on a pair of stones handed down to them by god (Cauldron).

Interestingly, it’s far more common in fanfic for the Nazis to “respect the Unwritten Rules” than it is for the ABB or the Merchants.

Frequently, I’ll see people and fics talking about how working with the Nazis is reasonable if it’s to protect the sanctity of Unwritten Rules. Kaiser and his lot are “civilized” for respecting the rules. The heroes are forced to play along and ignore the Nazis, because otherwise they’re breaking The Rules. Any hate crimes committed in costume don’t count, actually, and it’s not unreasonable for Assault and Victor to drink at the same bar. If you see Stormtiger washing his tights at the laundromat, you just look away because The Rules are more important.

First of all, this is insane, and not how law enforcement works. Second of all, this is insane, and not how the PRT operates even in canon. Third of all, the idea that the status quo the Unwritten Rules represent is more important than the ideology of Nazism is insidious and horrifying, as is the idea that following The Rules could be more important (to the fandom, or to the characters in the story,) than saving minorities from literal hate crimes.

Because that’s what it means when someone says the government should team up with the Nazis. They’re saying that the lives of minorities, people terrorized and killed by The Empire, are less important than the game of cops and robbers.

You might feel reminded, at this point, that the Unwritten Rules do serve a supposed purpose in canon, but fanon frequently treats them  like a game, like cops and robbers, and not as a necessary evil. The juxtaposition between people dressing up in spandex and fighting/committing crime is lost when you treat the crimes themselves as a game you can put down and walk away from, when stealing money from a bank, selling drugs, and lynching minorities are all seen as (equally valid) parts of an elaborate performance.

IV. A Doylist Perspective

Who’s the performance for, anyway? Who benefits from the Unwritten Rules? Not the heroes, who have their ability to serve and protect stymied if they actually follow these rules. Small-time villains benefit, in theory, but they can’t actually stop other people from breaking the rules against them. Small-time independents, similarly, don’t have the benefit of friends and allies to go on the warpath for them in the event that they get smothered in their sleep. Uber and Leet, for a canon example, were minor villains who needed to fold in under Coil for protection after they crossed too many lines.

The obvious answer to “who is this for” is that this is fiction, and the performance is for the readers’ benefit. The primary purpose of the Unwritten Rules as fanon is to give characters who might otherwise not get along a reason to interact and potentially get along. The Undersiders hanging out with the Wards out of costume, with nothing more than a few winks and nudges about cape life. Taylor going to Arcadia and hanging out with New Wave and the Wards, before going back to the Undersiders for crime. Heroes taking off the costumes to spend an evening at the Palanquin. This isn’t a problem, even if it’s not to my personal tastes. The problem comes when this is applied to the Nazis as well.

Giving the Nazis a pass, and having the protagonists casually hang out with them out of costume (it’s usually Rune or Purity for these scenes) is often used as a way to apologize for the Nazis. “She’s a relatable single mom,” people say about Purity, who never stopped being a Nazi. “She’s just a kid,” people say about Rune, ignoring the fact that she’s still a racist asshole. By having the protagonists interact favorably with the Nazis “out of costume”, authors are (often unintentionally) signaling that being a Nazi isn’t a big deal.

Or worse, that being a Nazi isn’t as bad as being Asian (when compared to the ABB), or being black (comparing Sophia’s actions as a high school bully to an organization who regularly lynches minorities).

There is actually an easy fix to this, if you as an author want to write using Unwritten Rules fanon: simply exclude the Nazis. People don’t want to hang out with them in civilian identities, because they’re still hateful bigots. The Nazis don’t get the same benefit of the doubt as someone like the Undersiders, because every single one of them has a list of hate crimes attached to them. You don’t need any justification beyond “they’re Naizs, and that’s a bad thing.”

The idea that you need to justify hating Nazis, an ideology foundationally built around hate, is in itself Nazi apologia. One cannot tolerate intolerance, otherwise the intolerance will obliterate the tolerance.

V. Why the Watsonian Matters Too

Within the fiction of Worm and its fanfics, the people who benefit most from the Unwritten Rules are the well-established crime organizations who can threaten people into respecting them. The Nazis, however, benefit ideologically from the Unwritten Rules just as much as they benefit logistically, for the same reason it’s a problem to have the heroes hang out with them out-of-costume. Saying “we can’t arrest them because they’re not in costume” legitimizes the crimes committed while in costume, and plays defense for the perpetrators, by creating a context in which those crimes are “fair play” that can’t be punished. It’s one line short of endorsing what the villains do.

The polite fiction of the Unwritten Rules is exactly that: fiction. The entire point of The Rules in canon is that everyone who can break them, does break them. Everyone. Heroes, villains, protagonists, antagonists... The Rules are worth less than the nonexistent paper they’re written on.

The fanon takes these rules literally, and as a result, tacitly endorses the Nazis.

If you’re not allowed to break The Rules, even in service of fighting literal neo-Nazis, then that’s legitimizing Nazism. There is no fence sitting with this. Either Nazis are bad and can’t exist in polite society, or the Nazis are socially accepted. If a bar doesn’t kick Nazis out, one way or another, that’s a Nazi Bar.

“What about Somer’s Rock and the villain truce?” you may ask. To which I can only respond:

I said polite society, and I don’t think a crime lord moot counts. In a room with Nazis, Coil (drugged a preteen to use as a magic eight-ball), Faultline (mercenary who attacked a mental health facility), the newly-formed Merchants (drug dealers), and the Undersiders (teenage bank robbers), nobody there counts as polite society. All of them are threats to the status quo by nature, even as they exist within the status quo, to varying degrees.

Obviously, even Coil isn’t as bad as the Nazis, and the Merchants’ drug dealing pales in comparison to even just the drug dealing the Nazis would be involved in; especially if you count Medhall. They all, regardless, are a threat to the status quo in their own way.

The Merchants ignore the status quo in favor of chasing highs. Coil wants to bend the status quo over his knee, snap it in two, and set up his own. Faultline wants money, and is willing to side with just about anyone for it. The Undersiders, Taylor especially, buck against authority and eventually attempt to take over the city in Coil’s absence; they don’t get the moral high ground here, much as I adore them.

The Nazis, meanwhile, are pushing a fascist ideology that seeks the destruction of all they deem lesser, which includes (but is not limited to) Jews, people of color, the disabled, fat people, queer people, white people who disagree with them, and women who aren’t feminine in the right ways.

Fleur was killed in her home by an unpowered white supremacist who wanted to join the Empire. After he got out of jail, the Empire welcomed him with open arms. They didn’t explicitly break the Unwritten Rules, but they didn’t take any issue with the rules being broken.

The Unwritten Rules are the status quo, and if your status quo bends to accept Nazis, you have a broken status quo. If a bar doesn’t kick Nazis out, one way or another, that’s a Nazi Bar.

VI. The Endbringer Truce

The other place people might point to with the Unwritten Rules is the Endbringer Truce. In canon, the Endbringer Truce is basically the heroes not arresting villains who show up to help. It’s an emergency situation, closer to a natural disaster than anything else. Even the Nine weren’t treated as seriously as an Endbringer. Any villains who show up are allowed to assist, provided they don’t take advantage of things to benefit themselves.

In fanon, people take this to mean that everyone shows up to the Endbringer fights, including having villains fly out to foreign fights, despite not even all the villains of Brockton Bay showing up to fight Leviathan. Oni Lee wasn’t present. The Merchants weren’t. Faultline and co. skipped town. Coil hunkered down and waited it out. Interestingly, the Empire showed up, likely due to the many losses of face they experienced leading up to it; they needed to boost their reputation to remain relevant and continue recruiting even with recent setbacks.

Bambina also showed up for the fight, but she was very explicitly doing it to bolster her own reputation. Overall, the average villain is more likely to use the truce to avoid the fighst, rather than risk their lives. Behemoth was another exception, with the Undersiders and Ambassadors being the odd ones out when it came to villains participating. The CUI sending some of their capes was also seen as incredibly unusual.

In fanon, it’s very common for the Protectorate to help Nazis get to international endbringer attacks. Interestingly, it’s only ever the Nazis who help. Lung stays home, Coil doesn’t care, the Undersiders wouldn’t volunteer for anything more than their home city being attacked (prior to Taylor, anyway), the Merchants (who are usually a gang much earlier in fanon) don’t do anything... so the Nazis are the only villains who tend to help. The Nazis are the ones that the heroes have to give “grudging respect” to. The Nazis are fighting the good fight, unlike the ABB (Asians) or the Merchants (drug dealers led by a black man).

I shouldn’t need to specify how this too is Nazi apologia.

Canon has a radically different take on where the Nazis fit into things - nobody works with them without qualms. During the villain truce against Bakuda, nobody was comfortable with the Nazis. Armsmaster lined up a bunch of Nazis to die against Leviathan, violating the Endbringer Truce, and the only reason anyone considers that a problem is because Taylor happened to be in the line of fire, and Tattletale threatened to make that clear. (Not that it was part of Armsmaster’s plan for Taylor to be there, of course.) Even when fighting the Nine, the heroes were unwilling to work with Hookwolf and his gang. They were willing to temporarily ignore him, but not work openly with him.

VII. Final Thoughts

The idea that the Unwritten Rules are important enough to justify working with Nazis is Nazi apologia. Stating that the Nazis exist because they follow the Unwritten Rules is also Nazi apologia. “At least they’re civilized” is a blatant pro-Nazi phrase, a tacit denial of the inherently uncivil nature of racist violence, and is often used in the context of the Unwritten Rules.

The Unwritten Rules, as a piece of fanon, are entwined with just about all other fanon. They’re a cornerstone of Worm’s fanfic community, and they’re used to justify and normalize Nazi apologia at every turn, which is a key part of the fascist playbook. They need to convince people that it’s okay that they exist. If it’s okay that they exist, then maybe some of what they’re saying is also okay. If siding with Kaiser to enforce the Unwritten Rules is worth it, then maybe Kaiser and the Nazis aren’t that bad. Maybe the real villains were the minorities selling drugs and wearing red and green. Maybe the government should work more closely with the Nazis, because they have the numbers the government lacks...

Unrelated, but OBLIEQUE is a pretty good fic.

The Unwritten Rules as presented in fanon and viewed by the fandom are, to be frank, silly. Treating a Magic Circle like a set of hard and fast rules, sometimes going as far as to treat them with more sanctity than actual laws, is so ridiculous that it should defy suspension of disbelief, even without considering their treatment in canon. Bad actors, furthermore, can use (and have used) this exaggeration of a canon concept to enforce racist and pro-Nazi fanon, and now it’s ingrained. It’s automatic. “Why not side with the Nazis? It’s logical, because the people killing them are breaking the Unwritten Rules.” As if anyone needs any justification to not side with literal Nazis.

Finally, and most importantly: capitalizing “Unwritten Rules” is so fucking stupid, and the only reason I did that here was to highlight how ridiculous it is. If there’s one thing you take from this essay, please make it that.

[quantumripple]

Least misanthropic rationalist worm fan:

I NEED TO KNOW WHICH ONE OF YOU FUCKERS TALKED TO THE PRESS

[quantumripple]

Media illiteracy is a core element of conservatism. There’s something of a inherent friction between the elements that make a piece of art or media good and the precepts of conservatism.

Or to put it another way: there’s not a lot of movies where the protagonists heroically defend the status quo or return things to how they were a few decades ago.

“Purity is too sympathetic!” Is the worm fandom version of “Rorschach is too heroic!” Both about characters who would struggle to be written as more openly disliked in-universe for being morally repugnant and also half the people saying it haven’t read the source material

[quantumripple]

New fic posted from me (gonna try remember to post oneshot/snip updates over here):

https://archiveofourown.org/works/49485280/chapters/162877825

It’s a post-GM Taylor that’s washed up in night city going to clouds and getting a little bit more fantasy than she bargained for.

[quantumripple]

Omg I love this art!!!!

My fave part of this chapter is Rachel calling Armsmaster a dickhole

Grue started to stand, fell, then managed to stand successfully on his second try.  The three dogs Armsmaster had dropped were taking longer to get upright.  Angelica shook her head violently, twice, paused, then did it again. Armsmaster looked at Bitch, then slapped the pole of his weapon against the palm of his armored glove. “Rachel Lindt, AKA: Hellhound.” “Armsmaster, AKA: dickhole,” Bitch retorted.

She's just so her

your honor: I love her

behold! low effort comic recreation of one of my fav parts of the gala fight! didn't feel like coloring, shading ect, but i still like it.

[quantumripple]

Sometimes if I’m just chilling and I see a spider I’ll put my hand down on the table and let it hitch a ride on my arm.

They’re such cuties.

[quantumripple]

Also, corollary to this:

Ao3 doesn’t preserve text alignment when you copy-paste into it (or wt least it doesn’t if you copy paste from gdocs)

So if you have scene breaks that are middle aligned (like I do) make sure to set them to the right alignment in the ao3 rich text editor after you paste in your text.

Or you get sad misaligned scene breaks that hurt my soul

I’m noticing an increase in new fic writers on AO3 who…uh…mayy not know how to format their fics correctly..so here is a quick and VERY important tip

Using a random fic of mine as example..

The left example: ✅✅✅

The right example: ❌❌❌

Idk how many times I’ve read a good fic summary and been so excited to read before clicking on it and being met with an ugly wall of text. When I see a huge text brick with zero full line breaks my eyes blur and I just siiiigh bc either I click out immediately or I grin and bear it…it’s insufferable!

If a new character speaks, you need a line break. If you notice a paragraph is becoming too large, go ahead and make a line break and/or maybe reconfigure the paragraph to flow better. I’m not a pro writer or even a huge fic writer but…please…ty…

[quantumripple]

[quantumripple]

Yea sorry I think I came on a little bit strong. I do still think that stuff like qpl smugbug should count as shipping.

It is not me that’s wrong it’s simply everyone else. 💅

note that this poll is meant to represent romantic (though not necessarily sexual) ships, not your favorite QPR. If you like, say, Aisha/Alec or Lisa/Taylor as strictly platonic partners, but only in this scenario, then please don't pick it as your favorite ship!

Other less popular taylor ships (like Taylor/Alec) are not included in this poll, I will be posting a second poll with Taylor-specific ships later

make sure to tell me what you think and why you think it!

[quantumripple]

Idk it seems like a really needless specification. Especially because it comes off as an attempt to exclude smugbug specifically (I mean what other ships in this fanon are filled with as much variety of fics exploring the aroace spectrum as smugbug)

Dunno. Just feels kinda shitty tbh. We have like… the one ship in basically all western cannon that gets used to explore non traditional relationships and you’ve tried to carve them out

note that this poll is meant to represent romantic (though not necessarily sexual) ships, not your favorite QPR. If you like, say, Aisha/Alec or Lisa/Taylor as strictly platonic partners, but only in this scenario, then please don't pick it as your favorite ship!

Other less popular taylor ships (like Taylor/Alec) are not included in this poll, I will be posting a second poll with Taylor-specific ships later

make sure to tell me what you think and why you think it!