#Rachel Lindt

[phantomstatistician]

Fandom: Parahumans Series

Sample Size: 659 stories

Source: AO3

Note: I could not find an image for this ship without possibly stealing someone's artwork.

[gardengodd]

They're silly

[bug4932]

lisa felt the need to request no tongue bc her shard told her exactly what taylor did to that poor girl

[n0brainjustvibes]

the worm couple ever for valentine's day!!

[ty-bayonet-betteridge]

ok no but jokes aside can we talk about rachel for five seconds. can we talk about how wildbow wrote a masculine woman with severe mental disabilties and DIDNT make that her entire character. can we talk about how shes a complete character whos aware of the gaps that her disability creates but has found ways to get around those gaps. can we talk about how her arc DOESNT involve "overcoming" those disabilities, how by the end of the story shes still illiterate and still cant read human social situations or cues and she doesnt Care. how she makes genuine friends with Taylor not because she was willing to "look past" those disabilities and "treat her like anyone else" but rather because Taylor made an active effort to understand how Rachel engaged with the world differently from everyone else. because Taylor was patient enough to keep putting energy into being her friend, even though Rachel made it difficult at times, because she knew her worst moments didnt define their friendship despite still being part of who Rachel was. because being friends with somebody who has a social disability IS work a lot of the time and treating them like you do the rest of your friends isnt doing anyone any favors, and you have to actually Try, and it will be hard on both of you. im rambling at this point but god. Rachel is excellent social and learning disability representation is all im saying

[ewingstan]

Take the following observations:

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—

[senviva]

wormgirl portraits in different styles

[canoziro]

non-human undersiders sketchs

[junebugtwin]

this too is yuri

[outerspace-iiinnerspace]

[gardengodd]

rip rachel's dogs

[bug4932]

rachel, i wish you were born a boy

[megamuscle885-blog]

I saw a post cross my dashboard about the poster discovering Bitch and Biter's relationship in Worm's epilogue and their dismay at Bitch somehow being hetero (and I'm sorry I couldn't find you again, I forgor to like the post) and I just want to let you know that it's okay.

She used him like a dildo. That's how much she thinks of Biter (who also has partial expansion jutsu as his power btw) and their relationship. He's a good fuck. He scratches an itch. Yeah. That's pretty much it. He doesn't really get Rachel, or Earth Gimel, and misses civilization, so he fucks off. He never spends the night, she doesn't like him holding her afterwards, and there's very little romance, not that Rachel would care for romance anyway.

But compare that to Taylor? Her first kiss. A kiss that broke an evil witch's spell and reminded her who Taylor is, and what they as a relationship are. She asks Rachel to remember the Greek food, and how she felt. And Taylor gets up in her face, deep into her personal space, touches her for maybe the first time in Rachel's life in a way that wasn't gnashing and biting and violence to survive foster care and on the run. Taylor fights tooth and nail every step of the way to get closer to Rachel - who acts exactly like an abused dog would, by barking and biting at anyone who gets too close - just because she can't stand by and let Rachel disappear into her loneliness.

Rachel punches her for it, and Taylor takes it in stride. Taylor's been punched before, both by Rachel and by people who have been close and intimate with Taylor. She doesn't resent Rachel for it, and even expected it for crossing her boundaries unexpectedly. She was ready to die if this didn't work. She would've preferred to die.

Bitch takes a while to speak up, and the first thing she brings up is that she'd've used Bentley to break Taylor. I always read a lot of regret in that. Lisa and Taylor both talk about how Rachel would've found her dogs, turtled up in her territory and continued to be isolated and paranoid, something that would've fulfilled the S9's goals of ripping apart everyone's connections.

But their bond prevails, despite Rachel's fear of intimacy, and Taylor's terrible past involving girls she loves.

Tattletale specifically requests no tongue.

[fran-valz]

The Undersiders's halloween group costume

[silberzunge]

Number one takeaway I had from worm was... damn these bitches gay

[meowmeow1meow]

redraw of a wolfspider piece i did a whille ago that i didnt really like one of my favourite dynamics in worm they just understood each other