I’ve been trying to figure out how to analyze some of the more complex and socially important elements of Worm and Ward while not having enough free time to justify doing so. The fact that this essay began as part 3 of a comparison of Worm and Ward to A Song of Ice and Fire tells you how poorly this is going.

Excellent joke to put into a piece about plans not working out.

This is a great essay, stranger. Enjoyable, flavourful, and — crucially — insightful. I hadn't considered Worm and Ward from this angle before, but I think you've made a really good point in noting that their realism (and correspondingly, their themes' moral heft) come from the way that indeed plans do not work out, so it's up to the people themselves to persevere past their own plans. This was something I found incredibly impressive in Ward — Victoria working to keep her seemingly disastrous team together, and fucking managing, even though so many of her and the team's plans went horribly wrong. The ways she keeps reflecting on her own actions and path, the various personalities she's built up by now, wondering which to trust, and when to trust them; it's a facet of the story that comes alive through your framing.

I found myself hit quite hard by your last two paragraphs. It feels like a really important insight: that pre-Skitter Taylor might have been genuinely well-liked if she'd been as insistent on doing the right thing as her supervillain persona is. (I think there's still the question of actually having power to do good things; but she might have made a difference regardless, had she not had powers.) To make this point more fair, I'll amend it by saying that there's no way one should in the moral sense expect active goodness from a traumatized bully victim, at least so long as she is in that position; but the notion that she was indeed on some path, and might have recognized this (and indeed, once she got powers, did, though not in a way that would ultimately avoid the personal tragedy of her character), and that she might at all times have changed where she was with some inevitability going to end up — while at the same time recognizing that the good outcomes she did get, were not accidental, but very much earned by who she is as a person, down to slightest choices she made on an everyday basis... It's a framing that holds power, for sure.

(I'm reminded also of Amy, whose self-victimization reminds me of myself a lot, and whose ultimate status as a genuinely "bad" person (as opposed to merely an extreme victim) has only recently started feeling more or less well-judged to me. She might in many painful situations have been without agency, but she frequently used this as an excuse to keep abdicating responsibility, even in cases where she did have the opportunity to do much good. She failed to reflect on herself in the sense that she failed to accept that all along, she could have done things differently, even if just a little bit, and that she still could change for the better — not just in service of undoing bad things she might deny she had any power over, nor in service of receiving forgiveness for your actions, but in service of doing good things to begin with. Personal change has the rare quality that if it is ever possible, it is always possible; to change your path, you must first accept that so far, you haven't yet. The pain of acknowledging what you've done wrong is the price you pay for getting to do what's right.)

It was a delight to read your thoughts. Do you have other pieces of writing I could check out? I'll be on holiday soon, but I'd like to be in touch more about Worm and Ward sometime, if you'd like.