There Are So Many Strange Things Happening In My Life Right Now That It Feels Like Im In Some Other Universe.

There are so many strange things happening in my life right now that it feels like I’m in some other Universe.

Worm milks an enormous amount of emotional and thematic mileage out of not being remotely parodic.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about; I recently started watching The Venture Brothers, and in the fourth episode there’s that sequence where The Monarchs henchmen and Baron Underbeit’s henchmen are shooting the shit over beers while trying to breach the Venture compound, talking about their various traumatic backstories and the roads they walked to become henchmen. The scene is extremely funny, because it’s a bunch of guys in ridiculous costumes killing time while trying to organize an assassination, but it’s also kidding-on-the-square; once it milks some black humor out of the mere idea of expendable minions having rich inner lives and incentives driving their behavior, the show actually does evolve into more nuanced examination of the expendable henchman dynamic.

Worm, though, does something different. The book takes the idea of “henchmen” extremely seriously from the start, subtly treating it as foundational to the game from day one and inescapably tying it into the books themes of selfishness, desperation and coordination problems. As early as the second or third chapter, Taylor is casually identifying the collapse of Brockton Bay’s blue collar sector as the reason the city is so attractive to supervillains; because they know the city is full of disenfranchised workers who are desperate enough to take jobs as goons. Her father, a Union Man to his core, brings up the idea of his dockworkers defecting to hench for Uber and Leet as something laughable- but there’s a very real desperation underpinning that framing. He’s desperate to find something to talk to her about, desperate enough that he’s willing to try and laugh off a real societal problem that he feels like he’s personally failing to address, so the beat isn’t really comedic.

In fact, there are almost no comedic beats about where Henchmen come from; the question of where villains find goons is spun around from a hundred different angles; it’s always some combination of desperation, coercion, career militarism (from coils people) or, in Skitters case, forged-in-fire loyalty used as a characterization tool for the protagonist. There are a few characters who behave as though henchmen exist solely to enable their superhuman setpiece violence, and every time the narrative treats that attitude with disdain and revulsion. Worm doesn’t go out of its way to emphasize the absurdity of henchmen; instead, it views them through the lens of community organization, organizational cohesion and movement building. In arc 11, Lisa puts serious thought into the ideal squad dynamics for the minion-backed sortie to merchant territory, and that’s just business. In a show like The Venture Brothers, these same ideas would be expressed through a gag where a mastermind gripes about the surprising difficulty of managing the petty office politics of the death squads.

I haven't sat down and watched The Boys show at all really, but if Alexandria were somehow dropped into The Boys universe, Homelander would be forcefemmed within a month and lactating post now

thinking about tattletale's lair as portrayed in imago 21.7. up there with rei ayanami's shitty apartment in terms of worst fictional living spaces that are also characters to me of all time

it's my absolute favorite thing that even redditors who think i'm annoying consistently admit that the alec analysis is good. like unparalleled and deeply funny experience how any time reddit mentions lakesbian the gist of the thread is 'they're a BAD FAITH ACTOR WHO HATES WILDBOW but well you do have to hand it to them on the alec analysis'

this is exactly how i intend to write tortuga and skitter's mentorship.

I think the funniest student-mentor dynamic that's possible is "you're like the caring parent that I never had" and "I chose to never have children because I knew they would just turn out all fucked up. Wait shit."