#gauntletposting

Bonus: Cuff with her regular / Worm hair color

Arc 10 (Part 1 - 10.1 - 10.11)

Carol really coming back to try and reclaim the “Most Hateable Ward Character” throne. Hard Boil has made a pretty secure hold on that spot, but Carol is really, really trying here.

(10.1) “Mom the fuck up!” LETS GO SVETA 🗣️ TALK THAT SHIT

Liking how Ward keeps up the slower slice of life moments Worm had early on but kinda dropped after Leviathan (even if pacing at times does feel a bit weird). Sveta and Victoria’s day at the mall was a nice breather and developing her plotline

It’s feeling like Sveta’s the next focus now that Rain, Ashley, Kenzie, and Capricorn have had their moments and Chris has left the team. That could be good, but then considering how the interludes of the rest have gone, could be sad

Kenzie had a crush on Chris? 🥺

Doodle Idea: Chicken Little staring into the camera with a fisheye lens effect

Undersiders are back again! And Imp lost an arm maybe?

March time? And she’s working with the hate crime cape? Damn maybe she isn’t as cool as I thought

And Faultline Crew’s back! Brockton Bay reunion

Tattletale borrowing Coil’s strategy of “leaking key info to sabotage the enemy”, now let’s see if it pays off better than it did against the E88

(10.6) Rain. Phrasing 😭. The rest of Breakthrough just going 🤨🤨🤨 killed me

Not Swansong scheduling Kenzie’s playdate she really is becoming her new mom

Sveta dysphoria :(

Was confused by the surprisingly intricate animated telenovela descriptions until I realized it was Kenzie making an auto rotoscope animation camera. Its on the smaller side of ridiculous cameras she’s made but still damn she is creative

Sidepiece and Disjoint almost sabotaging Breakthrough by making them look like freaks watching the video in public

Never ask anti-parahuman movements who they hire as muscle

(10.8) Victoria’s perspective on the Undersiders’ territories is interesting. Wonder what she thought of Skitter’s territory, which to my memory was relatively crimeless and provided for the community

(10.X) “Rex. Rex dead.” Why’d you do that power :(

(10.X) Golem Mention‼️ Nice to see he’s still active. Wonder if any of the others still are

(10.10) ^ Clueless

Poor Chicken Little, it’s like if Taylor joined the Undersiders with like 10 Alecs and Imps. He gets along better with them at least.

(10.X) I still got Monster and No Longer You to finish (they’re like in different states of completion atm)… but Chicken Little kinda has enough Telemachus energy that a follow up to We’ll be Fine might be put in the queue

(10.10) Oh hey its more Brockton Bay Reunions. Hi Weld Hi Laserdream Hi Vista Hi- GOLEM AND CUFF???

They’re still together, kicking warlords’ asses (as Weaver’s bootcamp taught them), Golem seems to be doing better and more comfortable with himself. Chicago Wards stay winning (except Wanton in the nebulous “maybe died onscreen” realm)

(10.10) Victoria and Sveta are Chicago Wards fans too, instantly elevating them in my internal ranking of Breakthrough (they were already at the top)

Everyone else outside of the Undersiders daring not to mention Taylor’s name after GM and then there’s Cuff who’s just “Ugh, Weaver.” It’s funny and also kinda fits with that fic I’m writing (also poor girl is never living the New Delhi V incident down lmao)

(10.10) TECTON MENTION‼️ Hoping he’s alive and still in the cape scene since the way Cuff said it feels a bit ambiguous. Same for Grace and Romp (thinking about it the latter could’ve maybe gotten along with the Major Malfunctions pretty nicely)

(10.10) Theo being the one to tell Victoria it was good she punched Nazis is great even without my bias. Helped him get a wakeup call kinda like Rain had without needing something like the mall incident

(10.10) Nice little coincidental cameo before we move on- THEYRE STILL HERE? I don’t dare get my hopes up past this arc but I am being fed

Dear god who invited the S9 crime scenes to the reunion too that is horrifying

Part of the reason I like this ship is because these two were surprise favorites in the latter half of Worm, and I thought the mentions of them getting together in Arc 26 and 29 were cute. Though thinking a lot on the two characters (and probably a good bit of headcanon tbh), I started to appreciate it a lot more.

For Theo’s end of things, he’s always been burdened by expectations. His father tried to mold him into the next leader of the E88 from a young age, but Theo pushed back against that, instead wanting to be a hero. And then he got that, and a lot more than he asked for, accidentally becoming essentially a hero of prophecy thanks to Jack’s promise. Suddenly he wasn’t just a hero, he had to be *the* hero, live up to impossible expectations and save the world. And he was treated based on those expectations. His friendship with Weaver was pretty much based on the fact Taylor had to train him, try to make him the guy who could defeat Jack Slash. And then he failed, just barely missing the mark, and those expectations came crashing down around him. He distances himself from his team, and is mostly sulking in the background for the opening acts of Gold Morning, though one person does make an effort to reach out to him.

Aside from maybe Purity (who has her own set of issues), Ava is one of the few people in Theo’s life who likes and cares about who he is, not who he could be. And at his lowest point, where he feels he failed everyone, she’s trying to do what she can to help him recover and see he’s not a failure. And she does succeed eventually, as we see him up to fight a couple chapters later in the arc.

(Also it’s really funny and sweet that the meek girl from Arc 24 was able to almost convince Taylor “You can’t tell me what to do” Hebert to drop everything and talk to Golem, made a doodle of it a while back)

On Ava’s side of things, there’s admittedly not nearly as much to glean from just her characterization in the text alone. Like I said, she’s one of the few who appreciates Theo for who he is, regardless of expectations put on him by others. Their stories aren’t so different, only that her nemesis of sorts (Behemoth) was killed just as she was starting out. And after that fight she’s terrified, choosing not to attend the Khonsu fight. But Theo keeps pushing himself, trains knowing he’ll have to fight things that are arguably worse than the Endbringers when it comes to pain and fates worse than death. I like to think his inspiration is what led to the much more confident Cuff we see after the timeskip (though the Taylor Hebert Bootcamp probably also helped there). The main other thing we know is she had a previous boyfriend who she broke up with due to the pressures Weaver put the Chicago Wards under (which is probably a whole separate post to get into). So maybe their relationship is something that lets them both have a sense of normalcy in the insanity that is late Worm.