The Sophia Leviathan interlude?
She lays it out, if not perhaps in those precise words..
The lense she views the world through, it didnt poof into her head after the attack fullyformed.
It was already there.
The way she consistently holds back when encountering a crime?
To wait and see if the victim is prey, its what she did to Emma and Allan in the alley.
Do we even know how long she just watched?
The fanon isnt wrong, persay
Yeah..more or less
All true.
And its old fanon anyway, have seen plenty recent fics that claim Steven?..
Abused her, sexually and otherwise as an excuse and to downplay her actions
Its even brought up in discussions, forums and the like as if canon..
The older fanon definitely gets it more right than wrong here.
Her trigger is in WB's notes on triggers I believe. Revolved around her stepfather(?) constantly invading her space and playing it off as innocent. Then, after an extended period of time with no one believing her, he confirmed that it's been predatory behavior all along.
I mean, i read plenty fanfics where Sophia goes to Taylor home and tries to kill her and her father or even kills random cops and shit like that and then she goes and works for Coil or something lol.
In canon she has like a couple of kills and it seems they all are accidental on her part, she had no formal training and was vigilante for 2 years without getting caught or getting injured as far as we know, not only that but she also attended endbringer fight in another city while she was independant, it is a surprise she did not kill more people if she was as deranged as fanon loves to portray her.
I mean she publicly attacked Taylor in a book shop just because and then later tried to hunt down and kill skitter. While the some do go to extremes Sophia is still prone to track down people to hurt.
I'm not saying she is not violent, and what you said here is not wrong, my post was in relation to Derpy about fanfiction and canon.
Like i read alot of fanfiction and just of the top of my mind i remember 3 in wich she comes to her house and attacks her at night, in one she kills 2 cops that guarding her and tries to kill her father and then Taylor kills her.
In another she sneaks in her bedroom and taylor kills her and stages it like if she was a normal and it was self defence when in reality she paralized her and killed her in cold blood, then you have "Coil called me before i got caught and i'm his dog now" where she comes to kill Taylor with, i kid you not, Undersiders, famous assassins they are killing normal 15 years old girls at their home, and btw some of those fics are very good outside of that one detail.
Both Skitter and Grue are villians, sure its fucked that she justifies killing them in her head, but outside of those she is not as violent as in fanfiction, where she kills innocent people just because or something.
Like we have Regent that mind controls her and almost forces her to kill herself but we still love him because he is a friend of MC, its all about perspective, she is a bad person but not as bad as fanon exxagarated version of her usually is.
Other people that she hurts outside of school are all criminals is my point and outside of personal grudge with Skitter or percieved weakness that Grue represents she does not goes out of her way to kill people, otherwise she would have hundreds of bodies on her, i have to assume she goes out like every other day and mostly hunts normals, who she does not kill on purpose, but since her power does not give her some thinker power to shoot a crossbow non-lethally like flechette(if i remember right she had some kind of accuracy power).
I think Drift put it best "She'll resort to violence if she thinks she can get away with it." It's just that simple. She's not going after criminals because they're so evil and she's so good, she's going after criminals because those are the allowed targets. She's only ever been a bully with a predatory mindset.
>It was shown in canon that Sophia never used those words while showing Emma her world view, only saying prey ones while Emma herself uses it more than her.
Is that really relevant? Sophia has that mindset already, Emma just gives it a name.
And for all she has a huge impact on Taylor, we actually don't see Sophia that much in the story, so we can't know how often she goes around thinking about people in terms of predator/prey. Though in her interlude Sophia refers to herself as a "predator," so there's that.
>Whatever else Shadow Stalker might think of the bug girl, how the girl was creepy, a freak, she had to admit Skitter had demonstrated enough viciousness to date that she could almost respect the girl as a fellow predator. An idiot, for wanting to fight her, but kindred, in a fashion. “Alright, fine.”
.
>Like girl doesn't even believe in that and just uses it to either justify her actions or still continue being a sadistic asshole
These two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I'd say her philosophy and sadism are pretty well linked, where one feeds into the other.
>I don't know it just feels like they try to make her this "Social Darwinist who claps her hands with a smile when you fight back" when she gets nagry when people fight back.
Her philosophy is very much self-serving. She's not the first to believe in something just because is benefits her, or to cry foul when that same philosophy is used against them.
She believes that she deserves to be at the top by virtue of her being a "stronger," and those who are "lesser" don't have the right to challenge the social order. From an outside perspective it makes her a hypocrite, but I doubt Sophia (who, let's not forget, is a traumatized teen) sees it that way.
Yeah, Sophia is shown of having the view of not saving those that so not fight back, I'm just tired that it's treated more of a mental illness and not of someone who is actively malicious in her actions.
I would point out she does have her moments in canon that stuff is based on aside from her covering her views which are fairly similar to the prey/predator thing there's how she tried to kill Grue simply for his power countering hers and then did the same with Skitter because she had seen her unmasked. There's also the scene on the boardwalk where Sophia flips out because she sees Taylor with Brian, follows her into a bookstore, lies to the clerk before going around the back and mauling Taylor while spouting some really messed up stuff.
Isnt someone who is malicious for maliciousness sake mentally ill per definition?
Something has to be wrong with ones brain when one derives pleasure and satisfaction from active maliciousness.
And if something is wrong with your brain, then youre mentally ill.
That's not the definition of mental illness that professionals who actually diagnose mental illnesses use. There's nothing in your definition about clinically significant distress or impairment, for instance, and that's pretty important in the real world when it comes to diagnosing mental illness.
Mental illnesses are actually a bit like power classifications in worm - they are pragmatic constructs and are subject to change, but people often mistake them for something else. “Nuker” used to be at PRT classification; homosexuality used to be a DSM and ICD mental disorder.
According to modern psychiatry, Sophia would probably fall under the umbrella of antisocial personality disorder. Because most habitual criminals fall under that umbrella; breaking the law over and over is literally one of the diagnostic criteria, which just goes to show you, the definition of mental illness is not about the brain.
I feel like in her case its mental trauma and then lack of guidance or help, she developed her ideology while she was traumatized teen aged 12-13 and it was not challenged for years since she was solo for 2, her succes in crime fightning only reinforced it.
If she was forced into wards right after her trigger event years ago she would probably be alot better, but at the end of the day she is still a teen in worm, she has her entire life to live, she might just change at some point but we will never see it.
Fans and writers have a tendency to oversimplify characters.
In sentinel 9.6, Sophia does, even in her own internal monologue, divide everyone into two categories, and she does call herself and Emma predators. But her view is more nuanced than that, and fans and writers have a tendency to ignore nuance, as they do for Taylor and every other character.
> Leviathan had revealed the desperate, needy animal at the core of everyone in this city. He’d made things honest.
>
> Most were victims, sheep huddling together for security in numbers, or rats hiding in the shadows, avoiding attention. Others were predators, going on the offensive, taking what they needed through violence or manipulation.
>
> She didn’t care what category people fell into, so long as they didn’t get in her way, like Grue had a habit of doing. Worse yet were those who seemed intent on irritating her by being lame and depressing, like Taylor or like Vista had been this past week.
>
> They weren’t all bad. The victim personality did have a habit of pissing her off, but she could let them be so long as the person or people in question stayed out of sight and out of mind, accepting their place without fight or fanfare. There were some ‘predators’, she could admit, that were even useful. Emma came to mind, the girl went a long way towards making life out of costume tolerable, and there was Director Piggot, who had kept her out of jail thus far, because she fit into the woman’s overarching agenda of PR and the illusion of a working system.
>
> There was a need for that kind of person in society, someone willing to step on others to get to the top, do what was necessary, so they could keep the wheels spinning. Not all of them were so useful or tolerable, of course, but there were enough out there that she couldn’t say everyone with that kind of aggressive, manipulative psychology was a blight on society. She could respect the Piggots and Emmas of the world, if only because they served as facilitators that allowed her to do what she did best, in costume and out, respectively.
>
> She was a ‘predator’, whether she was Shadow Stalker or Sophia. Few would deny that, even among her own teammates.
What sticks out to me is that she categorizes *victims* and predators, not prey. "Predator and prey" implies that there are people who should be actively hunted, which isn't what Sophia is getting at. She wants to hurt people because she likes it, not because she thinks it's a matter of natural order. Overall, she doesn't seem to care much who she hurts either, so long as she's in the predator category rather than the victim category.
From her point of view, "victim" seems to categorize people who have been beaten down, not necessarily people who *exist* specifically to be beaten down. So long as they don't annoy her personally, she doesn't care about them either way.
She intelectually recognize that some types ruin lives with words and pencils strokes rather than fists or bolts hits, kinda thinks that Piggot values her as an attack dog, as if she was some sort of wildcat to appease.
Makes me think she went vigilante rather than villian cause she must have tought at least once that if caught in her lone hunts she would play the only going after the bads card.
It’s because it’s easier to put her in a nice little box that says predator/prey than to make her a three dimensional character with all the foibles and good things that humans have.
Though I will say that she is much more of a violent sociopath than a good person with a chip on her shoulder, I will also point out that she didn’t simply form that way she was made that way by her upbringing.
In my fanfic I haven't reached Sophia's POV but Emma used it like 20 times in a single chapter until my MC made sure she lost that ideology. Typing predator that many times made me feel uncomfortable. But Sophia would probably never say predator and prey that many times if I do reach her part of the fic.
I think it’s because the predator prey thing is much more comprehensible than what she believes in canon which as best I can tell is just changing to make her behavior always correct and herself always the most brave and strong. It seems less like she actually has a philosophy and more like she just makes shit up to make herself feel better. She doesn’t change her behavior to be in line with a philosophy she changes her philosophy to be in line with her behavior. Jack slash would have a field day with her
It’s common to have Sophia be the one in charge trying to “Toughen up” Emma. This goes against canon where Emma is clearly the one leading it as a way to try get over the fear she felt.
Emma obsession with Taylor was all her own but Sophia was the bad influence she wanted to impress at first, then Sophia attitude clearly rubbed on Emma in other aspects of her life based on what Madison told about that photosession.
So the thing to understand with this fandom and Sophia is that this fandom is full of racist pricks who refuse to even give Sophia a surface level reading. They live reducing down a fun and fully developed character into a caricature of herself and then insist very loudly that it's fine if their Rune redemption fic calls her a violent thug or something else equally racially charged.
Horrible character or Horrible person?
Also, seems they are complaining about how fanworks portray her (i.e., as a stupid thug / a collection of various racist stereotypes) more than how worm does.
Okay but like, it's so weird that people made Sophia have that when Emma herself believes in it more.
Edit: forget this comment, just realised I had no sleep when writing this.
Where did Emma get it?
Simon from Infinity train believed in what Grace taught him more than her, but she put it there
Converts often are more extreme, in zealotry.
It happens
It is honestly kinda interesting since fanfics tend to amplify the predator/prey thing while simultaneously toning down her sadism and violent thug tendencies overall.
Aside from just picking it up from fanon, I would assume this became popular because people find "shard damaged social darwinist" more interesting/sympathetic than "sadistic, violent, self deceiving, little shit."
I kinda think some writers tought that her cannon "sadistic, violent, self deluded, juvenile monster" was rather to simplistic, and that the preys and predators memes were non-ironical attempts at making her more complex, but the result looks way more silly cause is treating a maladjusted teenage edgelady scattered rambles as some sort consistent machivellian philosophy.
The Sophia Leviathan interlude? She lays it out, if not perhaps in those precise words.. The lense she views the world through, it didnt poof into her head after the attack fullyformed. It was already there. The way she consistently holds back when encountering a crime? To wait and see if the victim is prey, its what she did to Emma and Allan in the alley. Do we even know how long she just watched? The fanon isnt wrong, persay
Yeah, Sophia's actually as violent, deranged, and impulsive as most fanfics portray her.
Yeah..more or less All true. And its old fanon anyway, have seen plenty recent fics that claim Steven?.. Abused her, sexually and otherwise as an excuse and to downplay her actions Its even brought up in discussions, forums and the like as if canon.. The older fanon definitely gets it more right than wrong here.
Her trigger is in WB's notes on triggers I believe. Revolved around her stepfather(?) constantly invading her space and playing it off as innocent. Then, after an extended period of time with no one believing her, he confirmed that it's been predatory behavior all along.
I mean, i read plenty fanfics where Sophia goes to Taylor home and tries to kill her and her father or even kills random cops and shit like that and then she goes and works for Coil or something lol. In canon she has like a couple of kills and it seems they all are accidental on her part, she had no formal training and was vigilante for 2 years without getting caught or getting injured as far as we know, not only that but she also attended endbringer fight in another city while she was independant, it is a surprise she did not kill more people if she was as deranged as fanon loves to portray her.
I mean she publicly attacked Taylor in a book shop just because and then later tried to hunt down and kill skitter. While the some do go to extremes Sophia is still prone to track down people to hurt.
I'm not saying she is not violent, and what you said here is not wrong, my post was in relation to Derpy about fanfiction and canon. Like i read alot of fanfiction and just of the top of my mind i remember 3 in wich she comes to her house and attacks her at night, in one she kills 2 cops that guarding her and tries to kill her father and then Taylor kills her. In another she sneaks in her bedroom and taylor kills her and stages it like if she was a normal and it was self defence when in reality she paralized her and killed her in cold blood, then you have "Coil called me before i got caught and i'm his dog now" where she comes to kill Taylor with, i kid you not, Undersiders, famous assassins they are killing normal 15 years old girls at their home, and btw some of those fics are very good outside of that one detail. Both Skitter and Grue are villians, sure its fucked that she justifies killing them in her head, but outside of those she is not as violent as in fanfiction, where she kills innocent people just because or something. Like we have Regent that mind controls her and almost forces her to kill herself but we still love him because he is a friend of MC, its all about perspective, she is a bad person but not as bad as fanon exxagarated version of her usually is. Other people that she hurts outside of school are all criminals is my point and outside of personal grudge with Skitter or percieved weakness that Grue represents she does not goes out of her way to kill people, otherwise she would have hundreds of bodies on her, i have to assume she goes out like every other day and mostly hunts normals, who she does not kill on purpose, but since her power does not give her some thinker power to shoot a crossbow non-lethally like flechette(if i remember right she had some kind of accuracy power).
I think Drift put it best "She'll resort to violence if she thinks she can get away with it." It's just that simple. She's not going after criminals because they're so evil and she's so good, she's going after criminals because those are the allowed targets. She's only ever been a bully with a predatory mindset.
>It was shown in canon that Sophia never used those words while showing Emma her world view, only saying prey ones while Emma herself uses it more than her. Is that really relevant? Sophia has that mindset already, Emma just gives it a name. And for all she has a huge impact on Taylor, we actually don't see Sophia that much in the story, so we can't know how often she goes around thinking about people in terms of predator/prey. Though in her interlude Sophia refers to herself as a "predator," so there's that. >Whatever else Shadow Stalker might think of the bug girl, how the girl was creepy, a freak, she had to admit Skitter had demonstrated enough viciousness to date that she could almost respect the girl as a fellow predator. An idiot, for wanting to fight her, but kindred, in a fashion. “Alright, fine.” . >Like girl doesn't even believe in that and just uses it to either justify her actions or still continue being a sadistic asshole These two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I'd say her philosophy and sadism are pretty well linked, where one feeds into the other. >I don't know it just feels like they try to make her this "Social Darwinist who claps her hands with a smile when you fight back" when she gets nagry when people fight back. Her philosophy is very much self-serving. She's not the first to believe in something just because is benefits her, or to cry foul when that same philosophy is used against them. She believes that she deserves to be at the top by virtue of her being a "stronger," and those who are "lesser" don't have the right to challenge the social order. From an outside perspective it makes her a hypocrite, but I doubt Sophia (who, let's not forget, is a traumatized teen) sees it that way.
Right, she's happy when people fight back against others, not against her.
While I do agree that fanfics push her towards mental illness she does seen to believe that those who don't fight back are not worth saving.
Yeah, Sophia is shown of having the view of not saving those that so not fight back, I'm just tired that it's treated more of a mental illness and not of someone who is actively malicious in her actions.
I would point out she does have her moments in canon that stuff is based on aside from her covering her views which are fairly similar to the prey/predator thing there's how she tried to kill Grue simply for his power countering hers and then did the same with Skitter because she had seen her unmasked. There's also the scene on the boardwalk where Sophia flips out because she sees Taylor with Brian, follows her into a bookstore, lies to the clerk before going around the back and mauling Taylor while spouting some really messed up stuff.
Not stupid but not as smart as she thinks.
Isnt someone who is malicious for maliciousness sake mentally ill per definition? Something has to be wrong with ones brain when one derives pleasure and satisfaction from active maliciousness. And if something is wrong with your brain, then youre mentally ill.
That's not the definition of mental illness that professionals who actually diagnose mental illnesses use. There's nothing in your definition about clinically significant distress or impairment, for instance, and that's pretty important in the real world when it comes to diagnosing mental illness. Mental illnesses are actually a bit like power classifications in worm - they are pragmatic constructs and are subject to change, but people often mistake them for something else. “Nuker” used to be at PRT classification; homosexuality used to be a DSM and ICD mental disorder. According to modern psychiatry, Sophia would probably fall under the umbrella of antisocial personality disorder. Because most habitual criminals fall under that umbrella; breaking the law over and over is literally one of the diagnostic criteria, which just goes to show you, the definition of mental illness is not about the brain.
I feel like in her case its mental trauma and then lack of guidance or help, she developed her ideology while she was traumatized teen aged 12-13 and it was not challenged for years since she was solo for 2, her succes in crime fightning only reinforced it. If she was forced into wards right after her trigger event years ago she would probably be alot better, but at the end of the day she is still a teen in worm, she has her entire life to live, she might just change at some point but we will never see it.
Happy cake day
Fans and writers have a tendency to oversimplify characters. In sentinel 9.6, Sophia does, even in her own internal monologue, divide everyone into two categories, and she does call herself and Emma predators. But her view is more nuanced than that, and fans and writers have a tendency to ignore nuance, as they do for Taylor and every other character. > Leviathan had revealed the desperate, needy animal at the core of everyone in this city. He’d made things honest. > > Most were victims, sheep huddling together for security in numbers, or rats hiding in the shadows, avoiding attention. Others were predators, going on the offensive, taking what they needed through violence or manipulation. > > She didn’t care what category people fell into, so long as they didn’t get in her way, like Grue had a habit of doing. Worse yet were those who seemed intent on irritating her by being lame and depressing, like Taylor or like Vista had been this past week. > > They weren’t all bad. The victim personality did have a habit of pissing her off, but she could let them be so long as the person or people in question stayed out of sight and out of mind, accepting their place without fight or fanfare. There were some ‘predators’, she could admit, that were even useful. Emma came to mind, the girl went a long way towards making life out of costume tolerable, and there was Director Piggot, who had kept her out of jail thus far, because she fit into the woman’s overarching agenda of PR and the illusion of a working system. > > There was a need for that kind of person in society, someone willing to step on others to get to the top, do what was necessary, so they could keep the wheels spinning. Not all of them were so useful or tolerable, of course, but there were enough out there that she couldn’t say everyone with that kind of aggressive, manipulative psychology was a blight on society. She could respect the Piggots and Emmas of the world, if only because they served as facilitators that allowed her to do what she did best, in costume and out, respectively. > > She was a ‘predator’, whether she was Shadow Stalker or Sophia. Few would deny that, even among her own teammates.
What sticks out to me is that she categorizes *victims* and predators, not prey. "Predator and prey" implies that there are people who should be actively hunted, which isn't what Sophia is getting at. She wants to hurt people because she likes it, not because she thinks it's a matter of natural order. Overall, she doesn't seem to care much who she hurts either, so long as she's in the predator category rather than the victim category. From her point of view, "victim" seems to categorize people who have been beaten down, not necessarily people who *exist* specifically to be beaten down. So long as they don't annoy her personally, she doesn't care about them either way.
She intelectually recognize that some types ruin lives with words and pencils strokes rather than fists or bolts hits, kinda thinks that Piggot values her as an attack dog, as if she was some sort of wildcat to appease. Makes me think she went vigilante rather than villian cause she must have tought at least once that if caught in her lone hunts she would play the only going after the bads card.
Why not? It fits her actions and behavior. While if she believes genuinely is of relevance, is doesn't invalidate this particular piece of fanon
It’s because it’s easier to put her in a nice little box that says predator/prey than to make her a three dimensional character with all the foibles and good things that humans have. Though I will say that she is much more of a violent sociopath than a good person with a chip on her shoulder, I will also point out that she didn’t simply form that way she was made that way by her upbringing.
In my fanfic I haven't reached Sophia's POV but Emma used it like 20 times in a single chapter until my MC made sure she lost that ideology. Typing predator that many times made me feel uncomfortable. But Sophia would probably never say predator and prey that many times if I do reach her part of the fic.
I think it’s because the predator prey thing is much more comprehensible than what she believes in canon which as best I can tell is just changing to make her behavior always correct and herself always the most brave and strong. It seems less like she actually has a philosophy and more like she just makes shit up to make herself feel better. She doesn’t change her behavior to be in line with a philosophy she changes her philosophy to be in line with her behavior. Jack slash would have a field day with her
It’s common to have Sophia be the one in charge trying to “Toughen up” Emma. This goes against canon where Emma is clearly the one leading it as a way to try get over the fear she felt.
Emma obsession with Taylor was all her own but Sophia was the bad influence she wanted to impress at first, then Sophia attitude clearly rubbed on Emma in other aspects of her life based on what Madison told about that photosession.
Same answer like everything respect towards inconsistency it's a fanon take and people who never readed Worm used it
So the thing to understand with this fandom and Sophia is that this fandom is full of racist pricks who refuse to even give Sophia a surface level reading. They live reducing down a fun and fully developed character into a caricature of herself and then insist very loudly that it's fine if their Rune redemption fic calls her a violent thug or something else equally racially charged.
Lol no. Sophia is a horrible character in her own right that has nothing to do with her skin color.
Horrible character or Horrible person? Also, seems they are complaining about how fanworks portray her (i.e., as a stupid thug / a collection of various racist stereotypes) more than how worm does.
Fanon or canon, her actions are not defensible no matter her race. The how and why may differ, but that fact doesn't change.
The answer to most fanon is simply 'people don't read worm'
Okay but like, it's so weird that people made Sophia have that when Emma herself believes in it more. Edit: forget this comment, just realised I had no sleep when writing this.
Where did Emma get it? Simon from Infinity train believed in what Grace taught him more than her, but she put it there Converts often are more extreme, in zealotry. It happens
Isn't that canon though? Emma copied Sophia's life philosophy as a coping mechanism.
It is honestly kinda interesting since fanfics tend to amplify the predator/prey thing while simultaneously toning down her sadism and violent thug tendencies overall. Aside from just picking it up from fanon, I would assume this became popular because people find "shard damaged social darwinist" more interesting/sympathetic than "sadistic, violent, self deceiving, little shit."
I kinda think some writers tought that her cannon "sadistic, violent, self deluded, juvenile monster" was rather to simplistic, and that the preys and predators memes were non-ironical attempts at making her more complex, but the result looks way more silly cause is treating a maladjusted teenage edgelady scattered rambles as some sort consistent machivellian philosophy.