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Hereafter [Worm x Fate/Grand Order]

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While Taylor has her extreme moments far more than most have said like what she did to Triumph when threatening the mayor, even her default combat approach at the start was to swarm people with bugs that crawled into orifices and bit or stung them. Most importantly really would be that under Coil she had him get her several non Brockton native bugs.

I think Darwin Bark spiders was on there but she also got stuff like bullet ants and fire ants and there was at least one instance of her using them on thugs in her territory who broke her rules (I think it was the time that due to an emergency one of her helpers revealed her base by using the main door instead of the tunnel and 3 guys saw it and that despite it being post levi it was still in good condition with modern comforts so they tried to take it over).

I think though the main thing for people is it's jarring because all of these are in the moment things nothing sustained over time as it is implied in the chapter though it did get pointed out to her just how bad long term the mass biting was to the agents who had to suffer it even that is lingering consequences than continuous action.
 
The-Chained-One said:
fairly sure she didn't know he had an allergy and just took advantage of the situation in the aftermath
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She did take advantage of it but my remembering of it was more she did her usual choking stuff but cause she was focused on Prism it went further than she'd expected so when she noticed she stopped to use it and possibly going even further as a negotiation tool but either way as she left she knew she'd gone too far and swore to be better in the future only for it never to be thought of again.
 
CrescentSickle said:
Taylor was never one for casual cruelty.
...
As made clear by the second sentence, this is talking about a Taylor who intentionally does these things, knowing they are cruel, for petty reasons, because she is drunk on her self-righteousness. That is what I can't think of a single example of.
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Then, like I had done so many times over the past few days and weeks, I searched for a reason to justify why I was backing down. It was almost reflexive. When the bullies got on my case, I always had to take a moment to collect myself and tell myself why I couldn't or shouldn't retaliate.

For a few moments, I felt adrift. Around the same time that I realized I couldn't find a reason to back off, I realized I had already wrenched free of Lisa and Alec's support and crossed half of the room at a run. I reached for my bugs and realized I'd been using my power without thinking about it. They were already gathering at the stairs and by the windows. All it took was a thought, and they started flowing into the room in greater numbers. Cockroaches, earwigs, spiders and flies. Not as many as I might have liked, I hadn't been using my power for long enough to gather those from further around the neighborhood, but it was enough to count.

Bitch saw me approaching and raised her fingers to her mouth, but I didn't give her a chance to signal her animals. I kicked for her face like I might kick a soccer ball, and she aborted the whistle to cover her head with her arms. My foot bounced off of one of her arms and her entire body recoiled as she flinched.

Because I hadn't slowed down before reaching her, I had to use my hands to stop myself from running into the wall. A line of red hot pain ran down my arm at the impact, starting at the point where the Rottweiler had bitten my wrist. Reminded of the dogs, I glanced to my right, and saw the largest of them standing, ready to come to his master's aid. I brought a large share of my bugs in between myself and the beasts. The last I saw of them before the swarm blocked most of my view, the dogs were rapidly backing away from the swarm, startled.

Finding myself standing over Bitch, braced against the wall, I pressed the attack. Her arms were covering her face and chest, but I saw her exposed ear as a target and brought my foot down on it. Her head bounced against the floor, and blood bloomed from the top of her ear. The sight of the blood almost stopped me, but I knew that backing down now would give her a chance to set them on me again with a whistle. My toe found her exposed stomach, and as she drew her knees upward to protect her belly, I aimed a sharp kick between her legs. I managed to get kicks to connect firmly with ribs three times before she brought an elbow down to protect it.

I didn't get a chance to do any more damage, because the dogs had gotten over their fear of the bugs and were closing in, circling around me and Bitch as the swarm extended. I abandoned my assault on Bitch to step away and face them. I knew I could set my bugs on them, but something told me the dogs weren't about to yelp and run away while their master was being hurt. I might have the swarm attack them, but if the pain of the bites and stings didn't stop them, they'd attack me and I'd be in the same situation I'd been in a minute ago. I doubted Bitch would call them off a second time.

I won't say that it's moment when she is drunk on her self-righteousness, but Taylor is 100% a person for who violence is the answer.
 
Stahor said:
Then, like I had done so many times over the past few days and weeks, I searched for a reason to justify why I was backing down. It was almost reflexive. When the bullies got on my case, I always had to take a moment to collect myself and tell myself why I couldn't or shouldn't retaliate.

For a few moments, I felt adrift. Around the same time that I realized I couldn't find a reason to back off, I realized I had already wrenched free of Lisa and Alec's support and crossed half of the room at a run. I reached for my bugs and realized I'd been using my power without thinking about it. They were already gathering at the stairs and by the windows. All it took was a thought, and they started flowing into the room in greater numbers. Cockroaches, earwigs, spiders and flies. Not as many as I might have liked, I hadn't been using my power for long enough to gather those from further around the neighborhood, but it was enough to count.

Bitch saw me approaching and raised her fingers to her mouth, but I didn't give her a chance to signal her animals. I kicked for her face like I might kick a soccer ball, and she aborted the whistle to cover her head with her arms. My foot bounced off of one of her arms and her entire body recoiled as she flinched.

Because I hadn't slowed down before reaching her, I had to use my hands to stop myself from running into the wall. A line of red hot pain ran down my arm at the impact, starting at the point where the Rottweiler had bitten my wrist. Reminded of the dogs, I glanced to my right, and saw the largest of them standing, ready to come to his master's aid. I brought a large share of my bugs in between myself and the beasts. The last I saw of them before the swarm blocked most of my view, the dogs were rapidly backing away from the swarm, startled.

Finding myself standing over Bitch, braced against the wall, I pressed the attack. Her arms were covering her face and chest, but I saw her exposed ear as a target and brought my foot down on it. Her head bounced against the floor, and blood bloomed from the top of her ear. The sight of the blood almost stopped me, but I knew that backing down now would give her a chance to set them on me again with a whistle. My toe found her exposed stomach, and as she drew her knees upward to protect her belly, I aimed a sharp kick between her legs. I managed to get kicks to connect firmly with ribs three times before she brought an elbow down to protect it.

I didn't get a chance to do any more damage, because the dogs had gotten over their fear of the bugs and were closing in, circling around me and Bitch as the swarm extended. I abandoned my assault on Bitch to step away and face them. I knew I could set my bugs on them, but something told me the dogs weren't about to yelp and run away while their master was being hurt. I might have the swarm attack them, but if the pain of the bites and stings didn't stop them, they'd attack me and I'd be in the same situation I'd been in a minute ago. I doubted Bitch would call them off a second time.

I won't say that it's moment when she is drunk on her self-righteousness, but Taylor is 100% a person for who violence is the answer.
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No one's claiming she doesn't resort to violence quickly. Quoting a passage where she gets brutally attacked and retaliates doesn't really have anything to do with the odd passage from the most recent chapter that everyone's got a problem with.
 
memoryofglory said:
Quoting a passage where she gets brutally attacked and retaliates doesn't really have anything to do with the odd passage from the most recent chapter that everyone's got a problem with.
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I would say literally kicking Bitch in the head when she is down goes a bit farther than retaliation for an attack.
On latest chapter: i agree that wording can be improved a lot, but i also agree with core sentiment "Warlord Skitter had no chill and no brakes, and _possibly_ made life very uncomfortable, if she decided that this is most optimal solution".
 
Stahor said:
I won't say that it's moment when she is drunk on her self-righteousness, but Taylor is 100% a person for who violence is the answer.
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More like, to Taylor, violence is the question, and the answer is always yes.

And if that don't work? Use more violence.
 
Stahor said:
I would say literally kicking Bitch in the head when she is down goes a bit farther than retaliation for an attack.
On latest chapter: i agree that wording can be improved a lot, but i also agree with core sentiment "Warlord Skitter had no chill and no brakes, and _possibly_ made life very uncomfortable, if she decided that this is most optimal solution".
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You know normal dogs can kill people or scar them for life right? Taylor wasn't doing any worse to Bitch than Bitch just did to Taylor. Now that's not good, but it's not really 'farther than retaliation' like you claim.
 
James D. Fawkes said:
The point Taylor is making to herself is that the past version of herself didn't know how to do anything but escalate. She then gives examples of how she might have decided to escalate if she had to be passive-aggressive instead of more directly combative – how she could have convinced someone to do things her way if she couldn't afford to do physical harm and the threat of a biblical swarm didn't sway the obstacle in her way.
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Nitramy said:
More like, to Taylor, violence is the question, and the answer is always yes.
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I'm going to quote Ryuugi on this, because I think his statement on the nature of Taylor's character arc in worm is pretty telling.

Ryuugi said:
To try to bring this back around to Worm--Worm is both really good and shockingly terrible about this in different ways, but it's good in the ways that matter most, if that makes sense. What I mean about that is, it's good at applying this to the main characters, both in the sense that actions have consequences and in showing what brought them to the choices they made. Part of that is simply the advantage of being a main character, of course, but Taylor tries to straddle the line between hero and villain and often stumbles, but you see why the entire time. To be clear, Taylor does some really, really heroic things, but also makes some awful, awful choices, caught up in larger things, especially when she's being used. Things like Triumph? That was bad, but you did see why she did it, with Coil setting her up.

The same is also true of her methods. Taylor is kind of memed as a constantly escalating whack job, which is something of a disservice, because despite her reputation in much of the fandom, very rarely were Taylor's decisions to escalate her first choice, as such, although there were times. Pretty much every time she had a choice of awful options, she tried other ways first, and while she frequently didn't make--let's say--moral decisions, she made understandable decisions. When they were fighting the Nine, in order to participate with the group effort to do so, they were told to give up their territory, which she couldn't do because she was determined to save Dinah, as an example, but she tried to reach out to the PRT and other capes multiple times regardless, with some of her bigger plans being only after everything else fell through.
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Taylor absolutely does do some awful stuff in several different cases, but Dismissing all the various times she had the door slammed in her face as she tried to find a way around escalating as "past version of herself didn't know how to do anything but escalate" does a Massive disservice to Taylor's character. I'll say it again, Taylor doesn't need to win an argument with Nero. If she wants Nero to come with the team, they can do that. If they want Nero to not come with the team, they can just f*cking leave and Nero has zero methods of stopping them. There's no need for fighting, or bullying, or torture or what have you. If Nero was an actual servant, with commensurate power level to the point that Chaldea can't just immediately dismiss her without a fight, then we could maybe start talking about Malicious Compliance, but she's a vanilla human in Fate, sit down girl.
 
Stahor said:
Then, like I had done so many times over the past few days and weeks, I searched for a reason to justify why I was backing down. It was almost reflexive. When the bullies got on my case, I always had to take a moment to collect myself and tell myself why I couldn't or shouldn't retaliate.

For a few moments, I felt adrift. Around the same time that I realized I couldn't find a reason to back off, I realized I had already wrenched free of Lisa and Alec's support and crossed half of the room at a run. I reached for my bugs and realized I'd been using my power without thinking about it. They were already gathering at the stairs and by the windows. All it took was a thought, and they started flowing into the room in greater numbers. Cockroaches, earwigs, spiders and flies. Not as many as I might have liked, I hadn't been using my power for long enough to gather those from further around the neighborhood, but it was enough to count.

Bitch saw me approaching and raised her fingers to her mouth, but I didn't give her a chance to signal her animals. I kicked for her face like I might kick a soccer ball, and she aborted the whistle to cover her head with her arms. My foot bounced off of one of her arms and her entire body recoiled as she flinched.

Because I hadn't slowed down before reaching her, I had to use my hands to stop myself from running into the wall. A line of red hot pain ran down my arm at the impact, starting at the point where the Rottweiler had bitten my wrist. Reminded of the dogs, I glanced to my right, and saw the largest of them standing, ready to come to his master's aid. I brought a large share of my bugs in between myself and the beasts. The last I saw of them before the swarm blocked most of my view, the dogs were rapidly backing away from the swarm, startled.

Finding myself standing over Bitch, braced against the wall, I pressed the attack. Her arms were covering her face and chest, but I saw her exposed ear as a target and brought my foot down on it. Her head bounced against the floor, and blood bloomed from the top of her ear. The sight of the blood almost stopped me, but I knew that backing down now would give her a chance to set them on me again with a whistle. My toe found her exposed stomach, and as she drew her knees upward to protect her belly, I aimed a sharp kick between her legs. I managed to get kicks to connect firmly with ribs three times before she brought an elbow down to protect it.

I didn't get a chance to do any more damage, because the dogs had gotten over their fear of the bugs and were closing in, circling around me and Bitch as the swarm extended. I abandoned my assault on Bitch to step away and face them. I knew I could set my bugs on them, but something told me the dogs weren't about to yelp and run away while their master was being hurt. I might have the swarm attack them, but if the pain of the bites and stings didn't stop them, they'd attack me and I'd be in the same situation I'd been in a minute ago. I doubted Bitch would call them off a second time.

I won't say that it's moment when she is drunk on her self-righteousness, but Taylor is 100% a person for who violence is the answer.
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This supports what you quoted me saying more than it serves as a rebuttal. After being attacked by Bitch, she doesn't resort to using her bugs. She thinks about it, and she uses it as a deterrence, but she doesn't use them. She immediately flips the situation around on Bitch and begins speaking her language, because literally nothing else seems to work.

That's not being needlessly cruel, and it's not even using the maximum amount of violence or cruelty she is capable of. She's intentionally holding back and not escalating it to the point where she'd break Bitch by both beating her up and attacking her with the swarm.

And that's after being threatened by, what she thought at the time, either a genuine attempt at her life or an attempt to hurt or maim her in a way that could have ended up with her dead.
 
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If anything, if Taylor had reflected on her stubborness to not give up a fight/argument, even to the point where she regretted escalating, that might be what you intend James.
 
Let's stop the argument Riiiiiiight there. Almost all the points made were at least okay, but we don't need to debate (Want to? Oh absolutely).
Instead I'll just imagine Rika, Ritsuka, and Taylor's reaction to Charlie and his Pals. Since This One is a terrible author, and wants to see an omake, does anyone feel up to it?
 
TheStranger said:
I'll be honest. Rika's character is kinda...grating, I guess? Don't get me wrong, she's fine as a character and a much-needed ray of sunshine in the group next to Mash, but her whole genki girl deal kinda gets tiring after a while.

And I have half a mind to wonder how long she can keep it up as they progress through the Singularities, much less the Lostbelts. There's a difference between genuinely being a source of relief, and being a source of relief because they got no other choice.
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The thing is she's kind of grating to other characters as well. The jokes are good and do provide a bit of humor though.

When it comes to keeping it up, we know it's a coping mechanism. The only way she couldn't keep it up is if she's so lost in despair that there's nothing left. Which is actually something that Taylor helps with. She's the anchor.
 
EmperorArthur said:
The thing is she's kind of grating to other characters as well. The jokes are good and do provide a bit of humor though.

When it comes to keeping it up, we know it's a coping mechanism. The only way she couldn't keep it up is if she's so lost in despair that there's nothing left. Which is actually something that Taylor helps with. She's the anchor.
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Rika isn't unaffected by her environment, either. The jokes are there, but you'll notice that the more stressed she gets, the fewer and far between they tend to get, and the more down to earth she starts to seem. She's also not immune to honest temper and anger, although her fuse tends to be a bit slower burning than most because she can spit out an off-color joke to ease off the pressure.

Rika started out as a way for me to have my cake and eat it, too. To split the canon Ritsuka down the middle so I can have both the nutjob and the serious character without having the protagonist seem like he was jumping back and forth almost at random. But I can't have my major characters be static and flat, I'm almost incapable of it, so she wound up getting a lot of depth when I sat down and asked, "Well, why is Rika the way she is?" The end result was, as we saw in her interlude a while back, "Rika thinks she's the only person there who realizes exactly how ridiculous the whole situation is, so she's matching the absurdity with absurdity because it's the only way she can deal with being the Only Sane Person on the team."

And that all started from me wanting to have her there in Babylonia, cheering as her brother throws himself at Quetz from a hundred feet up, "From the top rope, Ritsuka comes down with a meteoric elbow! How will Quetz get out of this one, ladies and gentlemen?"
 
James D. Fawkes said:
And that all started from me wanting to have her there in Babylonia, cheering as her brother throws himself at Quetz from a hundred feet up, "From the top rope, Ritsuka comes down with a meteoric elbow! How will Quetz get out of this one, ladies and gentlemen?"
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OK, but only as long as you have Taiga right there with her so they can trade color commentary.

Taiga's lines for Santa Quetz's NP remains one of the best things DW ever did by a pretty hefty margin.
 
James D. Fawkes said:
Rika and Nero getting along really is a scary thought.
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Is it really? I mean, is it really? In what way?

That said, i feel like Rika is going to pop Nero into Chaldea on her next summon if things keep going the way my mind think it's going.

It would be Glorious!
FunkyEntropy said:
OK, but only as long as you have Taiga right there with her so they can trade color commentary.
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My thought exactly. And now i have a weird vision of them rating Ritsuka's canon "flirt" to get her on their side.
 
James D. Fawkes said:
Rika isn't unaffected by her environment, either. The jokes are there, but you'll notice that the more stressed she gets, the fewer and far between they tend to get, and the more down to earth she starts to seem. She's also not immune to honest temper and anger, although her fuse tends to be a bit slower burning than most because she can spit out an off-color joke to ease off the pressure.

Rika started out as a way for me to have my cake and eat it, too. To split the canon Ritsuka down the middle so I can have both the nutjob and the serious character without having the protagonist seem like he was jumping back and forth almost at random. But I can't have my major characters be static and flat, I'm almost incapable of it, so she wound up getting a lot of depth when I sat down and asked, "Well, why is Rika the way she is?" The end result was, as we saw in her interlude a while back, "Rika thinks she's the only person there who realizes exactly how ridiculous the whole situation is, so she's matching the absurdity with absurdity because it's the only way she can deal with being the Only Sane Person on the team."

And that all started from me wanting to have her there in Babylonia, cheering as her brother throws himself at Quetz from a hundred feet up, "From the top rope, Ritsuka comes down with a meteoric elbow! How will Quetz get out of this one, ladies and gentlemen?"
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I think we talked about this before in the thread. Ritsuka is the serious child that is situation/practicality focused, but is also a complete and total Mad Lad underneath all his "straight man in the clown show" act. Whereas Rika is his opposite; Rika's the comical child and the person/emotionally focused sibling, and underneath it she's stewing in how absurd everybody/thing around her is as what she feels as being the only sane person in the room.
Ritsuka is serious, but given the chance he'll whip out his inner shounen hero and try to punch an enemy into being his friend. Rika is a jokester, but given the chance she'll whip out her inner shoujo heroine and try to Talk no Jutsu a Beast. And they both have good odds of succeeding.
Here we go, found it.
Formerly said:
I suspect that will more or less still happen. Taylor isn't one of the Gudas, she doesn't do things like them. They have different personalities, skills, and methodologies. Taylor will never be the one that can bond and be compatible with every Servant she comes across, she wouldn't ever consider something as crazy as what Ritsuka did with Quetz in Babylonia, nor reach out a hand to her enemies not because she wants to gain something from it but rather because they're suffering. Taylor is very serious and intense and wouldn't be as apt at or tolerant of all the little hijinks that forms the bonds that ultimately save the day in the Temple of Time. Taylor just can't be that "abnormally normal person in such an extraordinary scenario" the Gudas are. But the Fujimura siblings can.
I'm placing my bet right now if this fic still ends on a punch out between Masters and Goetia it won't be Taylor who wins it, it'll be a/the sibling/s.

On a related note I kinda want to see the Gudas' development trend toward Ritsuka being the nominally more logical and grounded sibling to Rika's more emotive and impulsive character only for him to also be the one that does the absolute mad lad stuff like the "SKY HIGH RIDER-BUSTER JUSTICE BOMB!!!" Whereas Rika would get that last words scene with Tiamat, and say something heartfelt and mature like "I don't hate you, but every child has to grow up. That's our love for you, the proper way for children to repay their mothers' love, growing up right. Now step aside and watch. See what Humanity will accomplish, and be proud, mom, because your children are strong." Only to later pull an Alter Ego Tiamat summon or have her be part of the "Everybody's Here" during the ToT because Tiamat took those words to heart.
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Been rereading and the quiet confidence Siegfried has in Taylor along with Arash's easy, silent understanding is heartwarming. I'm looking forward to more interactions with them.
 
memoryofglory said:
Going by interludes? You get periodically sucked into dream worlds with different servants to fight swarms of mooks and/or evil alternate personalities.
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that may be a ritsuka/rika thing only tho, as the main character of fgo is specifically mentioned to have riduculous compatibility with... i think it was rayshifting, to the point they occasionally just do it in their sleep and enter a dreamscape or something, and in one instance a pseudo singularity in shimousa, it's like a plot point in scandinavia as well. it is very much not a normal thing, so whether taylor can also do it is up to the author.
 
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The-Chained-One said:
it is very much not a normal thing, so whether taylor can also do it is up to the author.
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Dream cycle can still be a thing for Taylor with those Servants she get along with really well. I think dream cycle is based on compatibility as well as how close they actually are with each other.

Fujimaru Ritsuka's Doki-Doki Sleep-walking Adventure is just a Ritsuka Thing though.
 
oh yeah, that's what i meant, dream cycle is normal, the dreamscape and world hopping when sleeping thing very much is not.

not sure if the occasional premonitions the fgo main character gets of the singularities when sleeping is another aspect of their compatibility with rayshifting, or if that's the counter force or what, but it could be
 
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