I Somehow, In What Was Probably A Moment Of Poor Judgement, Convinced My Mother To Read Worm.

>be me, pizza guy in shittiest port town on Earth Bet

>terrible tips and get robbed for pizza so often I have honest to god decoy pizzas

>get called to deliver to this weird old warehouse like three times a week and have to roll the dice on how it's gonna go

>there's this whole Burger King Kid's Club worth of diverse teenagers that live there and I never know who I'm gonna get

>worst kid there is the one that answers the door 90% of the time. I hate this little fucking shit

>black haired boy. Dainty little prince pretty boy type. Always the one who calls the orders in, and always gives some stupid ass fake name like he's fucking Bart Simpson. "I.C. Weiner" and "I.P. Freely." That kind of shit.

>like half the time I think I'm delivering a depression-meal since he's dressed like he just woke up, and I'd feel bad except he makes some smartass remark every time, and since I see him every other goddamn day, it's almost always the same joke. Also tries to get free pizza by saying it's 30 minutes or free, except no one has done that program since like 1993, so he's pulling shit from tv. I don't need a fucking comedy routine from a kid in cookie monster pajama pants. Bad tipper. Whatever cash he has in his pocket.

>he's on the shitlist because, and I don't know how the fuck he does this, but every time the pizza is "late", this fucking kid trips me somehow. Or I drop my phone or the pizza bag or keys. Swear to god this kid has Home Alone tripwires or something.

>and every time it happens. Every fucking time. This little bastard says "have a nice trip."

>would say he's a cape, but every cape I've ever met has had some kind of presence, and I'm not giving that much credit to someone with a four-hair teenage mustache

>hate this smug little fucker and I'd have him blacklisted if this fucking building and its weird teenage polycule didn't make up like 50% of our orders for the neighborhood. 0/10, I hope you die

>be me, Brockton Bay pizza man. Deliver to welding building. Name on order is "Dick Hardly." Little prince opens the door. He has a sidekick. Black girl counterpart. They give me matching shit-eating grins. I hate my fucking job.

Grue’s is a floating black skull

Rachel’s is a dog that looks like Rollo

Taylor and her eldritch buddy

I really love how Taylor can either hold a grudge forever or have it disappear alarmingly fast, and it all depends on if she acts on her anger at first. Like she forgives and is willing to work with Sophia after the bullying, Lung after he tried to kill her, Rachel after she tried to fuck her over, Defiant after the everything. Like most people wouldn't forgive all those acts and trust those people afterwards, but she hardly even considers otherwise because she believes that people should work together against unbeatable foes despite their differences and when she fights alongside someone she kind of just forgets the things they've done.

When she acts on something though, when she acts immediately in an irreversible way the people she lashes out against are immediately marked as 100% irredeemable evil bastards in her mind. Alexandria, she doesn't regret the murder in the slightest despite the fact that it had consequences and Alexandria isn't a being of pure evil. Since she killed her she has to convince herself that it was right and just and that she doesn't regret it, which erases any nuance Alexandria had in her mind that would lead to her forgiving her. She does this again a buncha times throughout the book. Against the C53s in the Cauldron raid she thinks about how everyone in the crowd could be innocent, forced to go along with the mob out of fear that they'll be next and with no chance or choice of getting away and being peaceful. But then she dangles a disintegration knife into all their faces to kill Mantellum and suddenly they're all monsters who delighted in torturing innocents and all voluntary members of the mob and none of them deserved any mercy because they're Evil Bad People, so she'll never lose sleep or forgive them.

Aisha points something like this out in 29.5 actually, she says her and Alec had an argument over it because Alec was annoyed at how quickly and easily Taylor stopped being mad at her bullies and didn't want revenge. I think Alec equated Sophia to Heartbreaker in his mind because they caused both their respective triggers, and he can't fathom the idea of someone not wanting to slowly torture and kill their Heartbreaker to make them feel an ounce of the pain he felt, and honestly Alec is the normal one here I think? I think most parahumans would get revenge on the people who caused their triggers in a heartbeat if given an opportunity, and honestly poor Alec imagine trying to understand and make sense of your dulled emotions and Taylor Hebert is there as the worst example ever with her weirdo decisions. Aisha defended Taylor and her choice to not get revenge but she still got revenge for Alec because she hold grudges for herself and other people.

Letting go of hatred to someone isn't something other people can really do like Taylor. Going back to Aisha, she fucking despised Bonesaw during Gold Morning and hated how she got a redemption, but Taylor was fully willing to work with someone who sawed her skull open for the greater good when it would be completely fair for her to never want to get help from her. Idk what my point is here I just think it's really neat that unless someone is her enemy right then and there or unless she already killed that person and sorted them into the Bad Person Category, Taylor is willing to forgive anything and everything to make sure everyone works together.

These images from J. Michael Straczynski's Rising Stars gestures in the same direction I was gesturing with that Aquaman post- there's a really interesting archetype in superpower fiction consisting of characters who "Step Outside" in the way described here. Superhumans who remove themselves from society- not in a "kneel before me" way, but simply out of recognizing that participating in society in a conventional manner offers them significantly less than it does an average person (though not nothing- insert that MP100 monologue about "can you make a soda can.") Libertarians who fuck off to the moon and carve a Gadsen snake visible from earth, that kind of guy.

Invincible featured the title character gradually sliding into something adjacent to this as he realized that he was just sort of going through the motions by attending college and so on, when his girlfriend can wish a house into existence and the Cecil throws money at him to do stuff he'd do for free. The entire main cast of The Power Fantasy is doing something like this- you're most likely in no danger if you see one of the Superpowers walking down the street but most of them probably haven't paid for a meal in years (unless they insist on paying, which wraps back around to having the same dynamic as not paying.) Superman yo-yos on the topic of how accountable he makes himself to human governments, but I strongly doubt he got a permit for that fuckoff-huge fortress in the arctic. And so on. Obviously not all superhumans can get away with this- Spider-Man is held back from becoming a full-time bank robber by way more than just his conscience. But whether they could get away with this is a great characterization question to ask of any superhuman, and it's a door you can't really close once it's open- any decision they do make from that point forward will be implicitly contrasted against their everpresent option to just Hit Da Bricks.

I was about to make a post about the general stress of living in the world of the Power Fantasy caused indoor smoking to have a longer life, but it turns out bans on indoor smoking only really started after the turn of the millennium. They’re younger than me

God's Favorite

Lucy wakes to the soft tapping of rain against her window, and she is God’s favorite. She knows this in the absent sound of her alarm, and she knows this in the yawning rumbles of thunder, and she knows this before she touches her phone alight to the notification screen.

8:43 am. Far from the 4:30 am alarm she’d needed to heed to make it to her flight. Her screen is awash with airline notifications.

She scrambles from bed. Her urgency is an apology. Lucy skips the shower and skips the hair washing and paints on deodorant before stowing it back in her carryon and calling her uber.

“Crazy weather,” her driver with the big mustache remarks. His windshield wipers swish through a river of rain.

“Yeah,” Lucy answers. She glances at her rumbling phone. She glances at the rumbling clouds. The road is clear. It shouldn’t be, not this route and not at this hour. A gas main broke somewhere up the highway that feeds this street. A freak accident. 2 injuries. It’s kept this road clear for just the locals since it happened. Lucy encounters no traffic enroute to the airport.

There are pockets of planes grounded across the runways, barely visible behind the sheets of downpour. They look like herding animals, herbivores, standing stock-still in brace against the weather. Lucy stares at them only a moment while the driver pulls her carryon out of the trunk. She grabs her jacket closed against the wind, and grabs her carryon handle, and thanks her driver. The rain does not reach her here, though the wind does.

Inside Lucy drags her bag past the help desks swarming with the orderly filings of people in disarray. Parents leaning too hard on help counters with kids pulling on bag handles. Hurried conversations and requests and arguments. The electronic boards are awash with deeply red DELAYED and CANCELED. The airport is choking. Lucy, who God loves, glides through security unimpeded.

At gate-side, Lucy finally looks to the large red board of DELAYED and CANCELED etchings to confirm what she knew without even checking her phone notifications. Gate A14. Her carryon wheels pitter and patter across tile as she walks, striding quickly, with apology.

When Gate A14 comes into view it is smothered with the weight of two or possibly three flights worth of people. There are people asleep clutching backpacks and curled on the floor. There is a four-year-old girl with her face buried in an iPad and a mother having a phone call whose clipped urgency infects Lucy. There is a man leaning over the counter to talk to the gate agent, and his hands pulse with each tensing of his fingers. “…to the hospital before she…” Lucy makes out, or thinks she makes out. She doesn’t hear the gate agent’s response, but she can read the defeated shake of her head.

Lucy’s carryon wheels clunk where the smooth tile of the terminal shifts to carpeting. She doesn’t think to grab a seat because there are no open seats. So she positions herself in a way to unmistakably say she is at the gate, threading between stagnant suitcases and kids splayed on the floor. Lucy approaches the rain-splattered windows, and like a conversation shy upon being overheard, the thunder recedes from her advance. The rain draws to a polite close. The clouds split along a seam and pull away, as if they were only ever a wave that had transiently crashed to shore. The sky is beautifully blue.

There is a stirring hopefulness in the air. Other passengers have pushed past Lucy to stand closer to the window and peer outside, as if their confirmation of the changing weather can convince the airline of what to do next.

The gate agent puts down the phone receiver of a one-sided call. She pulls the microphone close and with grainy clarity she announces, “Boarding for Flight A1874 to Detroit will begin in 10 minutes.”

On the walkway, through the gap between the throughway and plane, Lucy sees the puddles rising with steam. They throw the iridescent spectrum of a rainbow up into the sky.

In a backlog of hundreds of flights, Lucy’s is the first out across the runway. This is because God loves her. She only wishes It loved her in a way to fix her broken phone alarm.

…

In childhood Lucy had heard “God loves you” and “Jesus loves you” in the placative ways that Sunday School teaches its children. With jingles and crayon-drawings of sheep and shepherds and a decorated ornament, crafted each Christmas Eve.

Lucy had long since fallen out of it and had thought very little of her parents’ tepid god for the last 10 or 15 years.

It was last spring, 27-years-old, that Lucy had found her way out into the marsh. Mud sucking her boots and gnats plicking in swarm against her skin. Where she sat her tailbone in the muck and folded her arms over her knees and buried her face in her legs to cry. And cry. And cry. And there with the mugginess sopping her skin and the humidity coiling her hair, God decided It loved her.

It loved her with a parting of canopy for the robin-blue sky. It loved her with the chirp of cicadas. It loved her in the way a dog circles its owner and nudges a wet snout to palm, because It was here, and It would make her feel better.

Lucy’s seat is the window seat beside the man with the tensing fingers. He fiddles with a phone in his clutch until he locks it in airplane mode and stows it, to look at no more. Lucy wonders who this man knows in the hospital, and she wonders why God doesn’t love him more than It loves her.

…

In March, Marco breaks up with her over a plate of fish that is too dry. In the moment, Lucy wonders if it’s her fault, because of the fish. But that’s not it. The signs were there, in all the subtle and stuttering moments Marco had pulled away. Each little moment like a slightly missed step, on a staircase growing ricketier each month.

Marco leaves and everything is so quiet, to the point that Lucy thinks her own sounds are pretty stupid, and pretty embarrassing while she’s coiled snail-like and snottily-sobbing into her pillowcase. She thinks absently of how she has to wash the pillowcase now, and that’s fine, because she was going to wash her linens this weekend anyway. She sobs so hard she’s almost screaming. Oh, and kitchen towels. She’ll wash the kitchen towels too.

She’s alive enough the next morning to throw all her linens and her kitchen towels on the floor of the laundry room. And maybe Marco breaking up with her is fine, because his birthday is December 25th and who wants a husband whose birthday is the same day as Christmas?

Her doorbell rings. And somehow it’s Marco again. She opens it to him, and he smells like a wildfire.

“Sorry, Lucy, this is awkward,” and Lucy believes he means it. He’s clutching a jacket around himself for what looks like security more than warmth. His apartment burned down last night. A resident fell asleep with a cigarette lit and dangling from her fingertips. Unit right below him. All his stuff burned, or filled with smoke, or is now logged up with water. He’s been sitting outside on the cobblestone for the last few hours, watching the blaze, on the phone with insurance. His landlord hasn’t responded to him yet. He’s cold, and he’s smokey, and can he shower here maybe? Can he stay for just a day or two, maybe? Sorry. This is awkward. He has no family on this coast. He really has nowhere else to go.

“Sure.” Lucy lets in Marco who smells like a wildfire. She adds the towels to her laundry list because they will smell like a wildfire too once Marco has used them. When he is clean, Lucy asks him nice questions. He asks her nice questions back. She helps him figure out something strange on the insurance form. He starts cooking dinner before Lucy realizes he’d entered the kitchen, because she was busy with the linens and the towels.

Marco takes the couch and clean linens. “Thanks, again, really. I can pay you a few days rent, when I get the insurance payout.” It’s no problem. Lucy goes to her room and shuts the door. It’s warmer here with Marco again. She wonders how long he’ll stay. She wonders if it will be for as long as she thinks the sound of him breathing in the other room is a comfort.

Something twists in Lucy’s chest. She wonders why God loves her more than It loves Marco. Lucy wonders why God didn’t love the woman with the lit cigarette who did not make it out of the building.

…

In June Lucy is desperately throwing together the haphazard makings of a financial report. She meant to stay up late to finish it, and get up early to make it beautiful, but she’s had a cold for a whole week now and the new bottle of decongestant she grabbed wasn’t “non-drowsy” like she thought.

Her heart is beating, and she nearly twists her ankle with a misstep in high heels, and she almost loses her grip on the shoddy makings of a too-light financial report still warm from the printer. She can spin it, maybe, that it’s intentionally light and she’d simply wanted the esteemed and respected input from the executives in the room before she produces the truly polished report this evening. And when the eyebrows are raised and she is told the report is due now, maybe they will refrain from firing her on the spot since she is still the only one who can produce the report they need.

She pulls open the meeting room door as if she is not out of breath, as if her nose isn’t red from a thousand tissues. She takes her seat so hastily that she does not notice, until she looks up properly, and sees the CEO’s seat is empty.

No one speaks. No one acknowledges her entrance. Lucy hugs the warm binder to her chest.

The door latch clicks open, but Lucy knows it will not be the CEO. She heard the click of heels before the doorknob turned.

It’s his assistant with the lovely auburn hair that curls around her shoulders. Her suit is red and her eyes are red and she stands just behind the CEO’s chair. Everyone notices her in the way they did not notice Lucy.

She speaks. The CEO’s wife and daughter were in a head-on collision with a drunk driver 42 minutes ago. They’re in critical condition, and the CEO has gone to be with them. He asks everyone’s forgiveness and grace in this time. The meeting is rescheduled for tomorrow, same time, and he humbly requests if everyone in attendance can adjust their calendar to accommodate this. This is a big ask, he knows. The board will have questions, he knows. But these are extenuating circumstances. The assistant will help with any necessary reworking of everyone’s calendars. And Lucy, can you please deliver the report tomorrow? The assistant has a sympathy card, which she lays on the table along with a black pen, and she asks if anyone would care to sign it.

Lucy signs it. The card paper is so cold, compared to the warmth of the half-finished report squeezed tight against her chest. The half-finished report should have cooled by now, but God must know she’s cold and ashen-faced, and God loves her so much.

…

In July, Lucy is a perfectionist. Her mother swears she wasn’t always like this. Her high school best friend is surprised, when in town for a weekend and meeting up for coffee, by the way Lucy triple-confirms the time, and the place, and the way she wears two watches. Why two watches? he asks. Because the alarm on one watch might fail. What about your phone? The watches are the backup, if the phone dies.

There’s something off-putting in the way she talks, and the way she asks questions of him, and the way she exclaims in joy at every piece of good news he shares. Josiah glances behind himself, more and more, and it’s because Lucy stares back there like she knows someone else at the next table.

It’s all weird, and Josiah can’t help but pull away. But Lucy pulls away first, retroactively. She can always pull away retroactively, and declare to her four walls of her room how much she didn’t need that friend, like she doesn’t need Marco, or anyone else who God may drop at her doorstep like the dead bird bounty of a cat, happy to share with the person It loves.

Lucy finishes her reports early. She wiles away the sun at her office even in the summer finishing reports far before anyone could need them. She double-checks, every time. She triple-checks. Her boss pulls her into a meeting room and with hands folded on the desk, he asks if maybe she needs to take some time off. And instantly she declares to the four walls that no-one at the company is doing this to her. “I wasn’t implying that…” but she’s not looking at him when he answers.

In July Lucy returns to the marsh. She returns with stones she’s horded up and gathered in the trunk of her car. She walks through the boot-suckling mud and she weighs stones in her arms while she hurls them, and throws, and screams, and hopes one of them might strike God in Its snout.

“I HATE YOU!” she screams. She throws all her weight into a stone whose sharp edge nicks bark. She hurls one through the bushes and another into the leafy canopy above. She is sopping wet and the cicadas chirp at her. “I HATE YOU!! GO AWAY!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!” She chucks a stone which lands in the sucking muck, capsizing like a ship beneath the algae.

She throws, and her gravity heaves forward, and her boots stay stuck in the mud. So she topples elbow-deep in the mud, spattered, soaking into her chin and her shirt and her jeans and her hair. She parts her lips and tastes the earthy wetness on her skin, coppery blood, split lip. The stones are all under her. She laughs. Lucy tilts her head to the sky screaming with laughter. Joyous to tears, with the wetness drawing rivulets down the mud on her cheeks. She laughs because sopping-in-mud-and-muck is NOT the state of something God loves. This wouldn’t happen to something God loves.

Lucy goes home. Lucy showers. Lucy does her laundry. And It crawls back into bed with her. Perhaps like a scolded animal, but perhaps It did not even know It was being scolded. Lucy cannot tell.

The wine stains came out of her linens today because God loves her.

I have to wonder what happened to Labrador when Newfoundland was destroyed. Is it still a province despite having less people than any of the Canadian territories? Was it turned into a territory? Did the Québécois irredentists win and annex it? I want to know

i really like how worm commits to making superpowered characters weird. i think in most superhero media, superpowered characters are largely distinct, normal individuals with powers tacked on like tools they can use. but in worm, having a power kind of inherently puts you to the left of being entirely human. in worm, the lines between the power and the person are blurred, both literally in terms of how shards work & in terms of how powers present themselves. you can’t have a power without it altering your relationship to your mind and body.

and the “relationship to your body” bit applies to almost all capes, not just the ones who have been physically altered by their powers! whenever the experience of having a (not physically altering) power is described, it‘s phrased as being some sort of additional sense or sensation in a way that is still inextricably connected to the cape’s physical self. imp’s power isn’t just “okay, i’m invisible now,” it’s “i can physically feel my power rolling over my skin and jabbing out into the air to push memories of me away.” 

the other examples i specifically have in mind here are skitter and regent. skitter’s power isn’t just “move the bugs and make them bite people,” they’re effectively a part of her. like additional limbs. she keeps functioning in fights when her human body is knocked the fuck out on the ground because the rest of her body–a million other little bodies–is still there to work with. the fact that she has millions of extra eyeballs at any given moment means it’s not actually so bad when the two of them that happen to be physically connected to her human body are blinded, which results in my favorite Worm Out Of Context ever:

and regent has one of my favorite subtle, uncanny examples of a power that seems like it shouldn’t alter the power-haver’s connection to their own body, but does anyway. in alec’s interlude, while he’s puppeting sophia, there’s a point where the undersiders get far away enough from her that it makes it more difficult for him to control her. he starts struggling to coordinate her movements.

the uncanny part is that he starts struggling to control his own body’s movements, as well. he puts his alec-self’s earbuds in so that he doesn’t have to talk to anyone, because he knows that if he did speak, he’d start stuttering and slurring his words from loss of physical control. sure, his alec-self is the body he’ll end up in when he’s done using his power, and his sophia-self was taken by force, so there’s obviously a distinction between the two, but that doesn’t make his alec-self easier to control. his power implicitly calls the separation between himself and the people he’s puppeting into question. he doesn’t get to have a “main” body he can control without effort, he has to divide his attention between each body and put concentration into moving each of them. in that way, his own body is placed in the same category as the bodies he’s hijacked. it’s Weird!

someone: this beauty standard was constructed with specific political purpose, and effectively dismantling the power structure that justifies itself through it requires us to give up using aspects of the body as a metaphor for morality or social worth

the notes:

it’s just a personal preference, it’s not that deep, go outside, touch grass, get married, work a hard job, have kids, stop thinking

so you’re saying I have to fuck people with [trait]? you’re going to show up at my apartment and force me to fuck strangers? your analysis of beauty standards is literally rape. OP wants to fuck me specifically, a random hostile stranger in their notes. they’re turned on because their body disgusts me! (no I have never seen them but I vividly imagine their body as disgusting because why else would they make a post like this)

did you know that another society/culture/time period had a different set of beauty standards? I bet OP didn’t even realize this

actually beauty standards are evolutionary instinct and you’re anti-science. you want us to ignore biology?

I actually WANT to fuck people with [currently devalued trait]

we should remind people that [currently devalued trait] was valued in a different society with another brutal hierarchy based on bodily ideals as proof that [currently devalued trait] is good actually. this definitely does not replicate the exact politics OP is challenging

once I met someone with a stigmatized bodily trait and they were a bad person. I’m sharing this anecdote absent any context so others can draw their own conclusions. if you go to my blog every single post is me sharing totally real stories of people with this trait doing mean things. I’m not saying certain bodily traits create inferior morals, I’m just compulsively curating an entire blog to imply it over and over and over

I used to think [stigmatized trait] was disgusting but I’m trying to unlearn it right now. I assume anyone with that trait would feel me saying this publicly is an act of kindness I’m bestowing upon them rather than a casual cruelty just like all the other comments about how disgusting the trait is

attention everyone we have reached my personal favorite Line in worm

I stepped toward Sundancer and offered a hand to help her up.  She flinched away. Oh.  My hands were bloody.  I dropped the offered hand to my side. “Let’s go,” I suggested.

there are a lot of good Lines in worm, and while i will acknowledge that many of them are sort of objectively more powerful culminating moments than this one, this one is still My Personal Favorite. Oh. My hands were bloody.

it's been obvious through the early arcs that taylor has a lot of repressed anger: she beats the shit out of rachel, even after being bitten. she outright admits to the other undersiders that she hasn't taken subtle revenge on the trio at school because she's afraid she would take it too far/it would obviously be her. she is, initially, unnerved by violence: she's a bit scared by the gun present in the loft, it creeps her out that brian knows every way to break a person's body, she feels guilt about the idea of any civilians being hurt during the bank robbery. but she still beat up rachel, and she still shoves bugs up the wards' noses during the robbery, and she still gleefully rides rachel's dog and laughs and hollers from the joy and the adrenaline rush of victory afterwards.

the expression of this repressed anger thru violence escalates further when her concussion leads her to slapping emma in the mall. in the principal's office, when it's clear that nothing she or her dad says will garner help with the bullying, she shouts and slaps papers off the table and asks what would happen if she brought a knife to school. after she and her dad leave the meeting, she calls lisa:

“Hey.  How did it go?” I couldn’t find the words for a reply. “That bad?” “Yeah.” “What do you need?” “I want to hit someone.”

lisa invites her to a raid on the ABB so she can do that, and it's soo. Sooo Very. to watch how she cuts loose on it. she's so angry rachel notices it in how she's standing, and she's still confused about how rachel noticed. she's a confident leader when the fight goes crisis mode, she responds to rachel bucking against her orders by consistently shouting at rachel to "NOT fuck with me right now," she acts nigh-suicidally aggressive during her fight with lung, and she snarls "don't fucking underestimate me" when she takes him out using a caterpillar dipped in newter's blood.

all of this happens in relatively subtle increments. she doesn't notice how she progressively becomes comfortable expressing herself and taking charge instead of withdrawing or acting insecurely during the course of the mission. she doesn't notice that she's not horrified by dealing with newter's wound or seeing the sniper's broken leg. back in unmasked society, she was forced to consider how many of her aggressive actions were the result of the concussion loosening her impulse control--here, she repeatedly yells at bitch without a second thought. it's a place where her violence and anger isn't only acceptable but necessary. the circumstances normalize her outbursts and comfort with violence to her, leaving her blind to how alienated and dissociated and repressed and traumatized and furious and just Fucked Up she has to be to face down lung and then dig his eyes out.

when she says that she "doesn't believe in eye for an eye," in arc 4 alec asks her why the fuck she's a supervillain. his implicit assertion is clear: being a villain is, for him, about taking your revenge for being hurt out on whoever you can manage or justify, even if they're not the person who originally hurt you. and taylor thinks she's not doing that. but hey: she goes beyond just "hitting someone" and into literally taking lung's eyes as a culmination of the cathartic violence she's been engaging in as recompense for how she was mistreated earlier.

and the person who serves as a more "normal" reference point for how far taylor just escalated is sundancer: horrified by the idea of having to use her sun to hurt people, shocked by how casually violent taylor has been, flinching away from taylor when she turns to sundancer after committing that violence & tries to offer sundancer help.

because, oh. her hands are bloody. she hadn't even noticed how bloody they were getting, but they are.

deeply evocative one-line reminder of how taylor has changed in these first five arcs, without even noticing. and the best part is that, while the imagery of "oh. my hands were bloody" does convey that change in an incredibly brief and powerful way, the fact that taylor is saying it still means even she hasn't really realized. she thinks it's mainly just about the superficial, literal blood on her hands, and not the metaphorical blood on her hands that sundancer is disturbed by. it's good.