#this is the first time i've articulated this thought abt her so hopefully it hits the right notes

[lakesbian]

Re: this post https://www.tumblr.com/lakesbian/715722672922902528/i-think-the-best-society-would-not-be-happy-if

I would LOVE for you to elaborate on how Amy’s whole character concept ties into this!

amy is an absolutely terrifying example of the fact that powers are 1. randomized and 2. designed to be useful in combat.

you have the people who randomly trigger with something horrifically powerful and then immediately pull a nilbog and take over a small town. you have the people who hide or downplay aspects of their power to avoid demonstrating how much damage they could do, like crucible only using the "bubble forcefield" part of his power and not the "can cook the absolute shit out of anything, or anyone, he traps inside his bubble forcefield" part of his power.

and then, as chance would dictate, you have the amys. the people with horrifically powerful abilities desperately trying to keep the amount of harm they're capable of doing under lock and key. the people trying very, very hard not to use their powers in the worst way possible. and that's fucking difficult--as chevalier observes in his interlude, powers drive you back to your lows, back to the circumstances under which you triggered.

(and every time amy uses the full extent of her power on victoria, it is when she's been driven back to the circumstances of her trigger. she triggers because she was terrified victoria was going to die and leave her alone. she impulsively changes victoria's brain because she's terrified she's going to leave victoria and be alone. she makes victoria into icktoria the wretch because she is, again, terrified of letting victoria go and being alone.)

amy is, in many ways, almost designed to piss people off. she's got one of the scariest, most useful, and most plot-important powers in the entire story. people can't hear about amy without having an opinion about what they would do with her power, and that applies to characters within the setting. there are a million different terrible-glorious things she could do with it, and yet she's...a generally pathetic, unlikable teenage girl, who has to be wheedled into giving taylor useful bugs during a slaughterhouse nine attack, who makes spiteful threats about what she could do while firmly restricting herself from healing brains. she fucking irritates people. she's got power most other people could only dream of, and all she does with it is stand around bleeding from her finger-stumps firmly rejecting anyone with an idea about how she should be using her power.

and everyone should actually be really grateful for that, because literally all of the alternatives for how she could be using it are worse.

no one would make fully good choices about having her powers or directing her in how to use them. imagine if someone like taylor or saint or rachel had amy's powers. imagine how very quickly that would all go to shit. amy's power-related decisionmaking skills are obviously awful, but they're still good enough to keep her alive and get her to the right spot to actually use her power to its full extent during gold morning. she's holding one of the most important cards in the game, and despite everything, she doesn't totally fumble it. i don't think many other characters could have done the same in her spot.

and the reason she doesn't totally fumble it is that for vast amounts of her life, she's keeping its actual intended usage under tight wraps. as far as society is concerned, she's panacea the healer. takes care of your physical injuries and neatly avoids doing anything that would make you think about how powerful she actually is, helpful or otherwise. (no viruses which make you immune to this year's flu being released into the air! we don't want people realizing that means she could release another black plague, too.) the random citizens she's healing don't know that she could turn them into something out of a junji ito comic or man after man*. they don't know that she could fine-tune their brain until they're ready to compulsively fight to the death for her. they're not thinking about how she could kill them with a touch of her pinky finger, they're thinking about how she's panacea, the healer, the cure-all girl.

they're not thinking about the fact that her power isn't supposed to be for healing. it's supposed to be for creating wretches. it's supposed to be for tapping people and making their hearts stop. it's supposed to be for hurting people in ways you did not know it was possible to hurt someone. it's supposed to be for conflict. every cape in worm is walking around with a loaded weapon sewn into their body and mind. amy is a horrifying and deeply compelling subversion of the healing-superpowers trope. worm's token healer cape, the cape with the white robe and the miracle touch, the panacea, is also one of the setting's scariest weapons.

and in worm's setting, every weapon, every power, can't help but be used. amy was carrying the weight of idolized, godlike power on her shoulders. everyone in the setting is lucky that she only faltered and never completely fell. society would not fucking be happy if they found out how much damage amy is capable of casually doing.

*the speculative evolution book seasons greasons is from. it is not good. but go look it up so you can visualize what i mean by 'turn them into something out of man after man.'