Chimera-like-creature - Slug-filled Bathtub

To be clear, riley would do better bottom surgery

see when people try and nitpick me because i call my dog "my dog" when it's technically "the family dog".......well first of all i still call my brother "my brother" and not "the family boy". although maybe that should change. second of all sorry i'm still thinking about the family boy. btw i fell asleep while making this post last night and i think you can tell

As a worm fan I have to speak up about the best character in worm, the greatest hero in worm, a tragic and severely underappreciated character (I've seen like 1 fanfic with him in. And it was a pretty mediocre one imo) and a character I seem to be the only fan of.

The most powerful man in the world. Kevin Norton.

This is gonna be a big ramble and I have not planned this out and it's gonna contain a shit ton of worm spoilers so ignore if you don't want to be spoiled.

And considering its involved in his backstory, trigger warning for homophobia, rape, homelessness, and partner abuse.

Kevin Norton, unhoused gay English man.

We get 2 versions of Kevin's backstory, the one he tells Lisette and the one from scions interlude.

I'm pulling this from memory so please forgive me for errors.

To her he says essentially he went to college, got a girlfriend. Lived with her for a while, and eventually realised he was gay. When he informed his girlfriend it didn't go well, got abusive, and eventually he left, to live on the streets. There he, eventually, found Scion (and Duke, his dog, the more important character). Scion at the time wasn't exactly a hero. He had healed Vikare and his sister and he definitely wasn't a villain, he just sortof floated around. Kevin goes off on him about all Kevin's been through, how dare he look sad etc. And tells him to help people. And Scion listens, and begins to help. Later he meets with Scion a few more times, to talk to him.

Then there's scions interlude. Its about the same, with one slight difference. He explicitly mentions that he has been raped. I don't believe, off the top of my head, that it's made explicit it was his former girlfriend, but l feel that's very obvious.

I live in Britain, and I've seen a lot of people on the streets like Kevin. I doubt any of them are talking to alien god beings but many of them are on the streets for very similar reasons to Kevin. LGBTQ+ people get kicked out a lot when they come out, many do end up on the street like Kevin when the homophobia from their family or partners becomes too much. There are also a lot of people with abusive partners who end up on the street, or who, upon realising they are LGBTQ+, get a very negative response.

He is a character who's suffering a lot. But, and I don't phrase it like this to minimise it, it is a mundane sort of suffering. He didn't end up on the street because Behemoth sent a lightning bolt through his house, or the slaughterhouse nine altered his face to look like Jack Slashes, or even a possible but still unusual form of suffering like Taylors locker.

The tale of Kevin Norton (minus scion) is one that no doubt countless people are going through now. And I know it's kinda tiring that a lot of stories of LGBTQ+ people revolve around our suffering, but idk, I'm fine with it here.

And yet, and this is the thing that sticks in my brain and makes him so intriguing to me, he doesn't ask Scion to fix it. Kevin Norton dies of a disease (cant remember which), and he knows Scion could cure it. The first thing he did was cure a man's cancer. And Scion could easily give him whatever he needs to live, whether directly with his powers or by just yknow, asking Scion to take him to a nearby hero team and going 'hey, I command Scion and made him a hero, I've saved millions of lives through this, can I have a house'.

So... why doesn't Kevin ask for that.

There's 2 answers I can think of, the selfless (but still kinda depressing) and the full on depressing.

The first is that he recognises scion has so many people to save and doesn't want him wasting time he could be spending saving 10 peoples lives to help him live better. In this interpretation, Kevin has made his peace with living on the street, and with his eventual death.

The second is that Kevin Norton is tired. He has suffered a lot, he has lived on the street for years, he has borne the emotional burden of being the man who commands the strongest hero in the world, and he has discovered that he could have done so much more, if he had just phrased things differently. In this interpretation, Kevin Norton just doesn't want to go on.

There's other possible interpretations, but in truth I think it lies somewhere between these.

There's something tragic about him that captures me. The greatest hero in the world, who has likely saved more people than any member of the triumvirate, and he likely dies alone, bar perhaps his dog, with only one other person knowing what he did. His last act as a hero, is to pass on the torch, an act he clearly feels guilty about, knowing the burden its been for him.

And that's captivating to me. And I don't know if I've even fully explained why.

I like to think he died after hearing of Behemoths death. He would know he had fixed his mistake, and performed a last, great act of heroism.

And there's something to say about how, for only a small kindness of money and a few minutes, he made Lisette the most powerful woman in the world. I try, when I can, to give money and time to the people I see on the streets. But I don't always have money, or time, and whenever I walk away I always feel a great amount of guilt. I'd like to think the little helps I give make as big an impact as Lisettes to Kevin's, but I doubt it. We don't have alien god beings.

Perhaps his rant to Scion was unfair. He didn't know Scions perspective or history. Scion could have suffered a lot. But it was very real. An outburst of a man so powerless and suffering to one who seems to have all the power in the world and is doing nothing with it. There's something about that that resonates with me, despite having had a pretty privileged life myself.

Speaking of privilege, this is sortof a tacked on note but there's something interesting to note about the stories 2 more impactful (in setting) gay male characters.

We have Legend and Norton.

Legend has a lot of power and influence, he has a husband and an adopted son. He definitely suffers from homophobia, not taking that away from him, but he lives pretty well. His suffering doesn't come from his living situation, but from external forces: Endbringers, supervillains, the weight of the entity over his head, the lies of his teammates etc. He has done good. He has saved many.

Norton suffers because of his living situation. He suffers very directly from homophobia, as essentially the cause of his living situation. Other than Scion he likely hasn't really been directly impacted by Cape stuff much. He has done good, he has saved many.

They both have such drastically opposite lives, and you can see it in their relationship to the being that plays an important part in both their stories. Scion. To Kevin he's a seemingly mentally broken man who has saved thousands under his direction. To Legend he's a Venus fly trap, an entity appearing heroic waiting to destroy hundreds.

Under a certain perspective, you could argue both are right.

You could also make a point about how privilege can shield you from some of the worst impacts of homophobia and seeing that by comparing them etc etc but I find such conversations often end up being very dismissive and suffering Olympicsy, and don't feel entirely qualified to talk about it as I am a not out trans woman, not a gay man, and only know about that effect of privilege in relation to homophobia second hand, from discussions other people have had. If other people want to talk about that who have more experience there, feel free.

There's more to say about these two characters, but I can't grasp it right now.

One last point I want to make.

Fiction... does not treat people living on the streets very well. It would have been very easy to have Kevin being a raving man, wearing a tinfoil hat and ranting about how powerful he is. And many other stories would have.

And to a degree, he does initially come off as such, and it appears that Lisette, for a moment, thinks he is after hearing him talk about being The Most Powerful Man and so on.

But he isn't. We get in his head and he's never treated as anything but a human being in a terrible situation.

I don't know what else to say about this part of it other than that his interlude is very well done, and while there's a lot you can, and people have, say about how Wildbow handles certain subjects, I think he did well here.

Also he has a cute loyal dog and one of the best interludes in worm.

I stan Kevin Norton

hey does anyone else's copy of ward look really weird now

New story, new Tattletale🖤🤍💜

OBSESSED with how Ward dives into Tats and how she’s changed since GM. Get this woman some industrial strength excedrin and a therapist please

Also just got to her interlude in my read through and lord, love me some good Ace rep. We do not get enough and I love her story’s subsequent focus on other types of bonds (familial/platonic). Anyway: she!

@basket-of-radiants

Zed seems like he’d be part of the shadow wizard money gang and loves casting spells.

The thing about Alexandria’s death, right, is that I’m not sure if it’s, like, possible? If Skitter could literally have pulled that off given how their respective powers work, or whether you can justify Alexandria having lasted this long at all without someone pulling off something similar. It’s been a while since I’ve read Cell, and I should probably read it again.

 But I’m inclined to be charitable because of all the other levels on which it works very very well thematically. Skitter meeting (and killing) the woman she once looked up to the most, albeit at a distance and as a civilian. Skitter killing the personification of everything she’s come to hate about Authority, but then functionally taking her place as the person in authority strongarming and killing to advance the goal of saving the world. Skitter going apeshit because of how strongly Alexandria’s behavior maps onto the kind of person she hates most in the world, going apeshit because she believes her friends are being murdered, and at the end of the day, what else does she care about? Skitter consciously choosing not to rescind the kill order her bugs are carrying out before she passes out. On that note, the fact that Skitters bugs can operate independently of her, and that she’s abnormally difficult to read due to offloading her emotional reactions into her swarm, both coming back with a vengeance in a chekov’s gun kinda way. I like everything surrounding the killing! And I like everything that spills out from it. So if the killing itself does not work I Do Not See It.

Thoughts on Pale arc one:

People seemed to like my posts about Pale, so here are my thoughts after finishing the first arc:

Oh my god, I did not know that this was a horror story. I thought this was urban fantasy + murder mystery and a lighter break from the author’s usual stuff. 1.z was one of the most tense things I’ve ever read. The devouring song was so wonderfully creepy and the ritual really felt unwinnable. Despite that I still expected Gabe to survive tho and the moment he threw up I was so shocked and had to stop reading for a bit.

That out of the way; I fucking love this story and I would be surprised, if this isn’t my favourite book, when I finish reading it. The characters, the dialogue, the worldbuilding, the magic and the pacing are all fucking amazing.

From the protagonists Verona is my favorite so far; she is so great: She is a weird loner who hates work and people (so relatable). Is she aromantic or just a depressed teenager with attachment issues? I don’t know and neither does she seemingly (very relatable). She doesn’t feel totally human and wants to leave all of her humanity behind (so very relatable (look I said it three times; it’s a curse now)).

Im binging arc two now.

having audio processing issues is so humiliating like yeah i heard you and yeah i was actively listening but the problem is i dont know what the fuck you sayed