worm and anthropocentrism
(or: "on bugs, dogs, goblins, and rats")
ever notice how rare powers in worm are that *don't* focus on humans? they either only work on humans, or they specifically don't work on humans (see: the manton effect), with exceptions mostly clustered around the "both" area, instead of somewhere else
true exceptions are rare, but there's strong indications that this has nothing to do with the shards, and everything with their hosts; most people only really care about people
it's there that the exceptions start to show, like rachel, whose powers only work on dogs, although this is in a way just replacing anthropocentric thinking with canicentric thinking, or the nilbog, which is just solipsism with extra steps
and, of course, taylor. taylor "i like how my power shows me how small we really are" hebert, taylor "doesn't give a shit she's battered to shit and went blind a couple of days ago because she can just see through her bugs' eyes instead no big deal" hebert
it would be incorrect to say that she doesn't care about people. she does! it's just that her care is on a very fundamental level disconnected from most people's version of it. and of course it is! she's disconnected, only withholding revenge on her bullies for personal reasons, and one of the first things we learn is how she's been feeding her bugs intentionally to her black widows to breed more for silk. bugs who are functionally extensions of herself. she's killing and getting eaten from the start. it's even more obvious when she makes her spiders eat dead rats against all of their instincts; that's taylor doing the eating, feeling every second of it.
but you know what really cements it? not anything taylor did. no; remember how she theorises she can only control animals below a certain intelligence-threshold? well fast-forward to the echidna fight. the clones. all with the same powers as the originals, the same passenger, just different restrictions.
and there's one taylor-clone who controls rats.
smart, social mammals.
intelligence had nothing to do with it
between the fact that her swarm is an extension of her body, her callous attitude towards her own body, and the fact that there is no real restriction beyond what the passenger imposed, of course it ended the way it did
of course everyone else became part of khepri's swarm
her control of people and her control of bugs is identical, instant, total
none of regent's slow and methodical emotional integration, none of pretender's hijacking of an unconscious body; both of those still care about their subjects' humanity, their interiority
and taylor just doesn't give a shit
she just cares about what you can do
it's not malice
it's just revoking special treatment
because on our own we're all so small
