One of the things I enjoy about the Undersiders is that, sans Taylor, the story that they’re supposed to be the protagonists of is clearly something in the orbit of It’s Always Sunny, a story about a pack of unhinged, dysfunctional assholes who are constantly having whacky hijinks that they barely slip away from the horrible consequences of. More than any other faction in the city, the personalities on the team lend themselves to a sitcom dynamic- Grue as the “why-me” protagonistic straight man, Lisa as the high-energy-low-common-sense co-lead, Alec as himself, and Rachel as the unhinged weirdo, with all four thinking they’re the only sane person and taking turns being right about that.
Taylor comes in and alters the genre of the story they’re in by sheer force of compartmentalizing, goal-oriented, consequentialist protagonistic will, and it’s really interesting to picture a version of the timeline where they never picked her up and proceeded to just stew in their own Undersiderishness until the bottom fell out in one direction or another. Alternatively, it’s interesting to picture a dynamic where Taylor stays with the team long haul, because she really was the lynchpin catalyzing their character development; it’s a lot less that they were a friend group who added Taylor and more that they were four coworkers who each individually formed strong bonds with Taylor.
inspired by idkhow - SPKOTHDVL :] also loosely inspired by this piece by @artistatthedisco that made me really wanted to do big swirly interlocked lettering. the lettering didn't quite come out how i intended but ah well... practice will eventually pay off!
A Lisa I’ve had swimming around in my wips since I read Ward 10.x
There’s something about her sitting alone in the dark with a computer being semi-comfortable but also just being the absolute worst to herself and her migraines that gets me 🙃
Taylor kissed Rachel to cure bonesaw's miasma (wildbow 2012, part 14.11)
Taylor could have spit on a bug and had it fly into Rachel's mouth to cure the miasma (@ty-bayonet-betteridge, 2023)
Wildbow has stated numerous times that neither of these characters are supposed to be taken as queer.
Taylor kissing a girl on the lips in a scenario when there were other options she likely would have thought of to cure her is Gay
These three observations all seem to contradict with each other, such that we cannot take them seriously without one of them giving. Most would place their doubt on 3, claiming that wildbow intentionally created a yuri moment for his readers and then backed away from the implications this would have on the larger story. However, careful reasoning reveals that there is no necessary contradiction:
A normally gay action isn't actually gay if all your alternatives in the situation would be more gay.
The most-often stated alternative for what Taylor could have done involved flying a bug down Rachel's throat.
Taylor's swarm is noted numerous times to be an extension of her body.
We can thus conclude there is no contradiction between are initial quartet of observations as long as we accept the following: Taylor having a bug fly down a girl's throat is more gay than simply kissing them.
With this out of the way, we can turn our attention to a section from 19.7:
We have an instance of Taylor doing what she was fully capable of doing in the miasma incident, and sticking a bug down her teammate's throat—in this case in order to stop talking. Based on our above reasoning, we can conclude that Taylor did the equivalent of dipping Lisa into a surprise kiss sloppy style to shut her up. The fact that this strategy worked and Sundancer did in fact nuke those guys is an important piece of evidence for my ongoing theory that Worm acts on the logic of a romantic comedy—
So this is a thing that me and @penelopetheverytrans collaborated on, I did the doodles for the sprites and she put the video together. I hope y’all like it, makes me laugh :)
so i spent the better part of the year making my own action figures. rendered in blender. made their little wigs like u would a doll wig cap. except so so tiny.