Actually, my issue with Winslow is more the seeming needlessness of the escalation. Pushing her to where she found Mjollnir II is one thing. That's plot convenience. The drug dealer accusation... seemed a bit far, even for the Trio. At this point in canon, they were dumping juice on her and doing the "Cry yourself to sleep for a week" thing.
Now, I get not wanting to repeat those exact scenarios, but the drug dealer thing is on another level.
But...aren't they roughly the same? From the Trio's/Emma's perspective, at least? Remember, the 'Cry yourself to sleep for a week' was basically the crown jewel of emotional abuse as far as the bullying was concerned. And this time around, the Locker wasn't nearly as outwardly bad as it was in canon. As awful as the Locker was, the psychotic break and subsequent week in a psych ward was overwhelmingly a result of Taylor actually triggering, which didn't happen here.
For all intents and purposes, that was pound-for-pound the worst thing that Emma had ever done to Taylor over the course of the bullying. And Emma clearly knew it, too. She waited a bit over a year to actually use it as ammunition during a time when Taylor was convinced that nothing was sacred, and it's not like it was something that Taylor had forgotten about that Emma had tucked into the back of her memory. When things were still-eh. I'll just quote it here:
I didn't want to think about the month that had followed, but fragments came to mind without my asking. I could remember overhearing my dad berating my mother's body, because she'd been texting while driving, and she was the only one to blame. At one point, I barely ate for five straight days, because my dad was such a wreck that I wasn't on his radar. I'd eventually turned to Emma for help, asking to eat at her place for a few days. I think Emma's mom figured things out, and gave my dad a talking to, because he started pulling things together. We'd established our routine, so we wouldn't fall apart as a family again.
It was a month after my mom had died that Emma and I had found ourselves sitting on the bridge of a kid's play structure in the park, our rear ends cold from the damp wood, sipping coffee we'd bought from the Donut Hole. We didn't have anything to do, so we had just been walking around and talking about whatever. Our wandering had taken us to the playground, and we were resting our heels.
"You know, I admire you," she had said, abruptly.
"Why?" I had responded, completely mystified about the fact that someone gorgeous and amazing and popular like her could find something to admire in me.
"You're so resilient. After your mom died, you were totally in pieces, but you're so together after a month. I couldn't do that."
I could remember my admission, "I'm not resilient. I can hold it together during the day, but I've cried myself to sleep for a straight week."
That had been enough to open the floodgates, right there. She gave me her shoulder to cry on, and our coffee was cold before I was done.
Point is, it was something of a breaking point for Taylor. It was at that point when she resolved to meet with the Undersiders, and it's no small coincidence that she decided to 'infiltrate' them at that point, too. Nothing quite like realizing that your single closest friendship has officially vanished to drive you to seek out new friends, even under the flimsiest of pretenses.
The drug abuse accusation and frame job has also been done to death in fanfiction.
While I realize this wasn't the focus of your post, I feel compelled to ask...has it, though? I'm trying to think of stories when Taylor has been accused of being a drug addict and/or dealer to get her in trouble at school, and I can't think of very many at all. If I increase the category to 'Taylor is falsely accused of something to get her in trouble at Winslow' then the number increases, but not even all that much.
While I don't particularly enjoy them, I find the response in this thread to be odd. That said, its not entirely unrealistic. In canon, Emma, Sophia (as Shadow Stalker), and Allen conspired to threaten assault charges against Taylor to get Taylor and Danny back away from the bullying issue. A false drug abuse report is not that far fetched.
No, they didn't. Let's not throw out words like 'conspired' when we really don't have any reason to do so. You could say that Emma and Sophia may have, but not really Alan, and that's on top of Taylor not exactly making it difficult for them.
Granted, if I was coming up with criticism (which, uh, I suppose I am) for the recent chapters? It would be regarding Blackwell's characterization. Fanon would have you think that she was cackling as she literally shredded Taylor's transfer requests and conspiring with Sophia's caseworker to have a gun planted in Taylor's locker right before a 'surprise' inspection. But in canon, Blackwell's big scene had her offering outright to have the Trio suspended on a very distinctive lack of evidence from Taylor, even when the reason for the meeting had been Taylor cold-cocking Emma in public. Meanwhile, Taylor's own request boiled down to "Transfer me to Arcadia (which was so non-viable a goal that she may as well have also requested that she be transported there via unicorn) or do nothing because I don't care anymore," and during the conversation she 'hypothetically' asked if her bargaining position would be stronger if she brought a weapon into school. Taylor fumbled that conversation
hard, which isn't terribly surprising given that she was still sorta-kinda concussed at that point.
So back on topic, the idea of Blackwell all but actively conspiring with Taylor's bullies to screw with her is a rather toxic bit of fanon. Taylor already has enough problems at school that have nothing to do with any kind of active malice from the administration or teaching staff. It doesn't even really make much sense for her bullies to want to involve the staff, either. That just drastically increases the odds of them actually being caught and punished.
You made a big fucking deal about that Taylor is a girl of unbreakable will. She was worthy not by virtue that she went for what she felt was right in all instances despite the unimpressive guise of her power. despite the universe throwing it's best hooks and straights right in her face she stood up with a grimace, her knife and her swarm.
This Taylor? This Taylor is acting submissive, dizzy and actually downright pathetic if you want to be blunt. This is NOT Mjolnir behaviour. This is not even the behaviour of the canon Taylor who threw herself at the villains with a suicidal resolve because she thought she didn't have anything else worthwhile in her life.
Did...did you read the first chapter? When Odin was literally consulting the Loom of Fate to trace the path that Taylor would have followed if left to her own devices? And similarly, do you remember how Worm canon began? This is that Taylor. Except this time, she doesn't think that she has a power every bit as worthless as her own self-image, so she isn't trying to unconsciously kill herself. Also, what the hell is "suicidal resolve"? Taylor Hebert is not Shirou Emiya. The latter was out to help others no matter what it cost him. The former was out to die, and if she happened to help others in the process, then that was icing on her suicide-cake.
She wasn't given Mjolnir because of shit she'd already done. Odin sent it because he saw what she was capable of on the Loom of freaking Fate, and rather than leaving her to be broken by her destiny, he sent her an alternative source of power that wouldn't necessarily lead her to ruin in the process.
This is the behaviour of a drug addict. "Everything is awesome when I hold the hammer, finally I'm someone great and powerful. With this hammer I'm great."
Well, yeah. Unlike in canon, Taylor actually
likes her powers from the get-go. The fact that she hates most of her civilian life and takes refuge in her cape life is completely understandable. And...I mean, I guess you could call it "the behaviour of a drug addict," insofar as you can call doing literally anything that you enjoy and getting additional satisfaction from it by virtue of its contrast with other, less-pleasant activities.
There is no fucking way in the nine hells this would be considered worthy behaviour. She isn't doing it for others even, she is going good for her own sake, for her own glory. God dammit, she is using the hammer for the same reason Thor did when he was judged as unworthy of it.
Oh, right. Because that's why she was literally getting kittens out of trees and helping old ladies across the street. Because she was doing it "for her own glory."
The canon Taylor threw herself out into the cape world because it was litterally the only part of her life she didn't hate, because her keystone drive to make the world better and her subconscious wish for death. THAT in the end made her the warlord willed with DETERMINATION that pushed through and defeated Scion.
You seem to think that Taylor was unconsciously trying to kill herself for a
lot more of Worm canon than she actually was, on top of equating 'inclinations towards suicide' with 'insurmountable determination in the face of danger.' If that was her motivation the entire time, then
holy shit would she have not deserved Mjolnir. One of the most referenced summaries for Worm is 'Doing the wrong things for the right reasons.' I don't think 'Because I'm trying to kill myself' qualifies as one of 'the right reasons.'
This was the biggest reason why I was very doubtful when it was a second Mjolnir (outside the fact that... you know SECOND MJOLNIR) instead of some other enchanted weapon of great power similar but ultimately different from Mjolnir since Taylor and Thor are VERY different people.
...what? It's not
exactly Mjolnir. Thor still has that. Again, the first chapter of this story had us watch as Odin commissioned a Mjolnir-equivilant, like he's done before in Marvel comics. If memory serves, there are at least two Mjolnir equivalents out there. They're not named that, and they're not shaped exactly like the original, but the powerset they bestow is basically the same, and the worthiness clause is also in place.
When the AU elements came I assumed it was to enable Taylor to walk a parallel path that still lead to her fate of becoming the girl filled with DETERMINATION that Odin obviously saw as worthy. But that doesn't seem to be happening.
Because the story's barely started, and Taylor is still a fifteen year old girl in the midst of an almost comically awful targeted bullying campaign? Odin saw her
potential. Taylor, as she is right now, is not the summation of her potential as seen on the Loom of Fate. Why would she be?
Make me understand. Am I getting the story wrong? Was the point of Odin's manipulation not to let Taylor walk the path she would but to become a completely different person from what he saw?
...at this point, I genuinely feel like you skipped over the first chapter, or at least skimmed it enough that you missed some rather key points regarding Odin's motivations.
Short version: Odin planned to go kill an creature threatening Midgard, which turned out to be an Entity. However, after consulting the Loom of Fate, it turned out that said Entity was already going to be killed by a mortal host of one of said creature's parasitic abilities. However, instead of any kind of reward for accomplishing such a daunting task, she would be broken in body, mind, and spirit, and then left to fade away to nothing while those she saved would revile her.
So instead of robbing this girl of her fated accomplishment by slaying the Entity himself, and because this was all set in motion over the guilt of having already left an impossibly brave denizen of Midgard to die while choosing himself to remain inactive, Odin forged a weapon that could imbue this mortal girl with power to still follow what had been her destiny without condemning her to being broken beneath the weight of it.
EDIT: Fixed an incomplete sentence.
