Skitter (Worm)

[[File:Skitter_by_ariirf.jpg|link=https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/cx31ed/fanart_i_painted_skitter_hope_you_like_it/|frame|Skitter.

Credit to Ariirf]] Skitter (AKA Taylor Hebert) is the main POV character in the online web serial Worm, written by Wildbow. Like many other characters in the serial, Skitter is a "cape", a person with a super-power, which in her case is the ability to control animals with simple brain structures. This can include a wide vareity of invertebrates, such as worms and crabs, but appears most commonly as control over insects and spiders, thus her name. Skitter has the ability to control the movements of these creatures; she may completely take over an individual insect, or direct a large swarm of them using gestalt commands. She can also access the senses of the creatuers under her control, and she frequently uses insects to track and listen in on others. Her power is limited by range rather than capacity and seemingly has no maximum number of creatures which can be commanded. A teenager and aspiring hero, Skitter develops into an anti-villain over the course of much of the serial. Sometimes portrayed as a major antagonist from other characters' points of view, Skitter is a villain who frequently attempts to do the right thing by evil means.

Brief History
Skitter begins the story in a relatively normal way, as a high school student. It is implied that she is a good student, but her schooling has been severly disrupted as she has been the target of frequent and vicious bullying by a trio of her classmates. As the school system and her teachers have been unhelpful stopping or even noticing the bullying, Taylor has developed a distrust of organized systems and authority. She and her father, Danny, are relatively close, but are still recovering from the recent death of her mother in a car collision.

After a particularly foul bullying incident, Taylor develops her power, as the majority of "capes" in Worm develop powers after a traumatic incident. Telling nobody, Taylor spends the next few months learning the details of her power, making her own costume, and training for action. After around six months she heads out on her own, intending to become a super-hero while simultaneously using her heroics as a way to escape her terrible school experiecnes.

However, her first escapade does not go as planned. After preventing the gang of a notorious local super-villain, Lung, from attacking and killing "kids", she meets several other capes. The first is Armsmaster, a leading member of the Protectorate, a formally-recognized organization of adult capes who fight crime and act as super-heroes. While Taylor prevented the attack, she would have been killed by Lung had it not been for Armsmaster's intervention. As Taylor is not yet formally recognized as a hero or villain, Armsmaster haughtily takes all credit for Lung's defeat and recommends that Taylor join the Wards, a Protectorate-like organization for under-age heroes. After Armsmaster departs, Taylor meets the Undersiders, a group of villainous teenage delinquents composed of four capes. Grue (Brian), a confident, practical, and athletic boy, seems to be an unofficial leader in the group, alongside Tattletale (Lisa), a friendly girl with a knowing grin. The two have the powers of "darkness generation" (creating a mist of utter sensory deprivation) and "information extrapolation" (the ability to accurately deduce a great deal of information from relatively small details) respectively. The Undersiders also include Regent (Alec), a boy with the power to cause unwilled movements in others for a short period of time, and Hellhound/Bitch (Rachel), a socially-stunted and aggressive girl with a preternatural ability to train and understand dogs, as well as the power to temporarily mutate them into large monstrosities.

Thinking Taylor saved them from Lung and his gang, the Undersiders attempt to recruit Taylor. After some thought, she accepts, intending to learn more about the Undersiders and betray them to Armsmaster and the Protectorate in order to become a superhero. However, she soon learns of a hidden "boss" who is directing and bankrolling the Undersiders. The Undersiders know of this "boss" but do not know who he or she is, with the exception of Tattletale, who will not say. Taylor thus begins her villainous career, doing several jobs with the Undersiders in order to identify their "boss" and turn him in, earning the name "Skitter" in the process. However, in so doing, SKitter becomes formally recognized as a villain and criminal, and loses her favor with Armsmaster due to an incident involving Lung's captivity. Now "stuck" as a villain, Taylor is forced to try to continue doing what she sees as right, fnding friendship with the Undersiders and several other capes along the way.

She soon becomes the conscience and eventual leader of the Undersiders as several major events rock the city in quick succession. She becomes a rival of Armsmaster and several other heroes, such as the techno-wizard Dragon, the Superman-esque Alexandria, and the humorously-named but powerful Clockblocker. Multiple villainous groups, such as Empire Eighty-Eight (a Neo-Nazi gang), the Merchants (a gang of hard drug addicts and pushers) and the Slaughterhouse Nine (a roving group of cape serial killers) also target Skitter and the Undersiders in large part because of the good they are able to do outside the restrictions of the law. All the while, Skitter hopes to be a true "hero" by doing what is right, whether or not the law agrees with her.

Personality
Skitter starts the story very shy and awkward. The constant bullying has prevented her from developing friendships and she dresses in dark, baggy clothing to avoid attention as best she can. She also appears to struggle with her own femininitiy, as she does not appear traditionally beautiful (save for her hair) and the bullies prevent her from acting as many high school girls do. However, she is also fiercely intelligent, resourceful, and persistent. Her school experiences have also made her rather secretive and sneaky, both of which work to her advantage in much of the serial. Finally, she has a tendency to jump headlong into projects without considering the cost to herself, a trait which drives much of the story.

Over the course of the story, as she become more established as a cape, Skitter becomes more and more confident and open. She becomes a respected individual and leader, and is able to effectively achieve her goals despite superior numbers, small odds, and powers far stronger than her own. However, Worm is an excellent but dark story, and the things Skitter sees and is forced to do will begin to change her. She becomes more distant from Danny as her secret villain life dominates her "civilian" life as Taylor. She becomes more pragmatic [[File:Skitter_by_neoworm-d9mp6r7.jpg|thumb|312px|Skitter.

Credit to neoworm (Deviantart)]]and desensitized to violence over the course of the story and becomes known as someone who is prone to bouts of extreme violence. Skitter also becomes more and more regretful; though she acknowledges that she felt she made the right decisions, she is burdened by the moral compromises she has to make to achieve them. Frequent betrayals and complex politics among capes further taint her reputation and trust of others.

Skitter is ultimately a tragic character, and the cost to her well-intentioned villainy is high. However, her villainy ultimately achieves good far beyond what heroism might have accomplished in similar straits. Infrequently, Skitter gets to see the true good she has done in powerfully-written and unforgettable scenes which, though they do not completely reassure her, confirm that through villainy, she is doing good.