I'm 26 arcs into Worm: The Stick Up Brian's Butt
So Iām listening to the Weāve Got Worm podcast and they keep talking about KingBob, the guy on reddit who really related to Alec and ended up understanding him (and by extension Aisha) far better than most of the other readers.
I havenāt really gone into this on this blog, Iāve been reading Worm for like six months now and I donāt update that often, but throughout this read Iāve been the KingBob to Brian. Itās gotten to the point where I actually took a few mental health breaks from reading Worm. I know a lot of people thought Brian was boring and dumb. Iām almost done with Worm now and I feel like the inclusion of Brian this story elevated it, for me, from a fun superhero story to something intensely personal, something that was almost a struggle to read. I know from spoilers that Brianās part in this story is almost over. He isnāt my favorite character (Dragon) or even my favorite Undersider (Aisha) but I felt like I should write something before this is over. It wouldnāt be an honest blog otherwise, as infrequently as I post.
But Kuno, you say. Youāre a 22-year-old white female engineering student. Why the hell is this the character you relate to?
For a collection of dumb reasons that add up to a large part of who I am. From the time I was eleven to the time I was about twenty-one, I had night terrors. Seven times a night sometimes, I dreamt vividly of the people I loved getting hurt, hurting me, getting killed, killing me. My students and pets melting in my hands. My mom and I clutching each other on the freeway as weāre stopped in traffic, a terrorist approaching our vehicle with a shotgun. We donāt make it. The dreams made life almost impossible. Seeing people during the day and being absolutely certain they would die before I saw them again. It didnāt matter how many times I saw them come back okay. They never would.
Iām afraid of everything. Every missed phone call is a sudden death. Every text message brings terrible news. Every possible situation brings danger, but if my friends go, I canāt let them go without me. Something could happen. Theyād be safe as long as I could see them. If I was looking at them, everything would be okay. Some child psychologist I spoke to at a young age noted I was a ānatural leaderā. To this day, I lead because I am a control freak. I am afraid of what would happen if I let someone else be in control.
Interlude 15 fucked me up.
My fatal flaw extends from this. Iām terrified that people will see me as weak. I dated a boy on my robotics team when I was in high school. I treated him like shit in public because I didnāt want anyone to think I cared about him, even though he was my boyfriend. What would they think of me if they saw there was a person I treated as an equal? Horrible things. I became a better girlfriend to another boy, years later, because someone mentioned to me they thought I could be a good girlfriend, and that it was rough, calloused girls who were the weak ones. It was the perfect two sentences to convince me that for people to see me as strong, I had to be a good girlfriend.
In the Weāve Got Worm podcast, Scott and Matt always mention that each of the Undersiders brings the team down somehow, their inputs to every situation silly or stupid. I was confused. I always thought Grueās avoidance of conflict, always taking the slow, deliberate path, was the right way to go. Then I realized that, to many, this behavior indicates brokenness. Maybe theyāre right.
Yeah so I said Iād talk about the stick up Brianās butt in arcs 25 and 26. I donāt think he has much to say for the rest of Worm so here we go. Iām building off a lot of what the WGW guys say, but I think I can take it a little farther.
So in arc 10 the WGW guys point out that Brian resists letting Taylor back on the team until the precise moment when it becomes apparent that everyone else wants her back, when he suddenly changes tactics to talking about how they āneed her for offenseā. They make the imo correct deduction that this is because heās afraid of looking weak. Everyone knows Taylor likes him, so, logically, to be Stoic Leader Man he should want her to go away. He needs permission to want her back on the team. Once he has that permission, he is all for it.
I know that sounds convoluted but trust me as a person with exactly these issues this makes perfect sense.
Arc 11, Brian has still not decided to be Taylorās friend again. This is because sheās on the team to be offense. Their friendship doesnāt help nobodyās offense. When Lisa calls him and tells him he needs to lay up on her, that to be her friend would be good, he goes directly to Taylorās house and declares themā¦ best friends. Because Lisa has given him permission to do so.
I hope youāre following because Iām aware this is stupid.
In arc 12, Iām gonna veer a little to the side. Letās talk about Brianās second trigger, just so that I can educate the public on exactly how this came around. Keep in mind that trigger events happen from a long period of a specific type of stress coming to a head. And that Brianās previous trigger happened from feeling like he maybe couldnāt help Aisha for a long time, and then suddenly being hit with the fact that he definitely couldnāt help her.
Arc 1: The Undersiders save Taylor who was saving them from Lung
Arc 2: Brian punches Rachel for attacking Taylor
Arc 4: Taylor gets blown up by Bakuda, Brian sits in her hospital room and stares at this for presumably a while
Arc 5: Taylor looks like sheās been hanged, having fought Lung again
Arc 7: Taylor and Rachel are attacked by the ABB, Brian shows up late. Taylor is attacked later the same day by Sophia, Brian shows up pretty late. Taylor propositions the boy, he tells her he thinks of her like he thinks of his sister. I am 100% certain at this point, looking back, that this was an early indication that the second trigger process was starting towards a lack of ability to keep up with Taylor. He wasnāt just saying he thought of her like he would think of her if they were related, he thinks of her like Aisha specifically, the one his power is attached to. His little brain is drawing the equivalences already.
Arc 8: Broken spine, betrayal, yadda yadda
Arc 9: Sophia attempts murder because itās Tuesday
Arc 10: Brian pretends to not want Taylor to come back
Arc 11: Brian does his now-classic āwalks into room/why is Taylor injured/maybe she should not be doing thisā routine
Arc 12: Repeat of arc 11, except now he starts stumbling over her name. He tells her she should have let her people die. If thereās a point onscreen when he realizes there might be something going on, this is it.
Point is, this has been stewing in the background since as early as arc 1 and as late as arc 7 but probably actually started in arc 4. It wasnāt out of the blue, it was the logical culmination of the entire storyās events thus far from Brianās perspective.
Arc 13: Yeah, you know what happens here. In the final chapter, he tells her he thinks about her too much, but even though he received a new set of superpowers and a vision from aliens telling him that he probably loves her, the vision is definitely wrong and he just feels like he canāt keep up with her.
Sheās been attacked by everyone. Lung, Rachel, Bakuda, Sophia, Armsmaster, Leviathan, the Merchants, Mannequin. He doesnāt want her to keep fighting, he feels he needs to be the one to do it. At the same time, he knows heās not powerful enough. No one power is enough to deal with all of these threats.
But he doesnāt love her. That would mean he was weak.
He doesnāt even agree to have dinner with her in 15. He allows it to happen because Aisha set it up. She knows whatās going on, and she has given him permission to have this.
Aisha had to be the one to give him permission because his previous powerset was for her, and now it doesnāt work with her, either. At the same time as his second trigger was stewing under the surface for Taylor, he was losing his powerās connection to Aisha because their powers didnāt work together and he kept being forced to forget she exists. He had lived for her before, and being Super Big Brother was exactly what Brian wanted to be. Now, Aisha doesnāt want to be lived for. She wants to be her own person.
Brian spends the next several arcs simply living for Taylor.
I strongly suspect that the side effect of Brianās power is that it makes him pathologically need to be 100% responsible for others. No matter how dumb everyoneās plans are, he always has to be there. No matter how stupid it is, Coil told him being a villain will allow him to get his sister back. No matter how dumb it is, he tells Taylor she has to sit out running from the Nine in arc 13 because she might be tired. He pays for it.
Brianās powers will probably never actually allow him to get over Taylor Hebert. Itās like Taylor and bullies. No amount of therapy or time will get Brianās shard to let the fuck go.
So when the girl whom you are physically incapable of not thinking about leaves and goes to prison and tells every single person on the planet exactly how weak you are, who goes to an even more dangerous situation where you cannot follow her, what can you do?
The only possible thing. Try your absolute damnedest to pretend you never knew her.
You walk out of that meeting with the most powerful people in the world because she is there. You go find yourself somebody else. Another girl. Taylor hated her little boobs? This girl has big boobs. Taylor canāt stay away from violence? Cozen seriously appears to have never even seen a corpse.
When Taylor comes back, Brian greets her with the new girl on his arm. He tries to shake her hand. Time has passed. Thereās nothing between them any more.
The next day, Grue is presented with the choice of pushing back against Taylor and standing with the new girl, whoever she is, or supporting Taylor. He chooses Taylor.
Of course he does. The situation calls for it. The situation has given him permission.
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