#any errors or omissions in this post are due to me reading interlude 27 like 3 hours ago

[operator-report]

In middle school, I read a short story for English class called Flowers for Algernon. Maybe you’ve read it, too. In the story, a disabled man named Charlie is given a medicine that cures his disability. Over the course of the story, he comes to realize that his “cure” is temporary and that he will “regress” into being disabled again. The story makes it clear that this is a tragedy. As a disabled teenager when I first read it, the story affected me deeply.

I’d like to talk about David and Noelle. 

Content warnings for discussion of suicide, self-harm, ableism and eating disorders below the cut. Spoilers for Worm through arc 27. 

When I was first reading arc 18, one of the things that stuck out to me is how much time the story spends on Eidolon. For me, it was the first time I paid much attention to him - prior to that, Eidolon was just an extremely powerful background character to me. But in arc 18, we learn that (1) Eidolon is losing his powers and (2) he believes that fighting Echidna will allow him to tap into some sort of reservoir to bring them back.

We find this out, of course, through Tattletale exposing him, which is always an extremely embarrassing event for Tattletale’s target. It makes it extremely clear that what Eidolon is doing is pathetic. He is going to kill a teenage girl so he can feel something. 

Which would be messed up enough, right? We don’t need to make this even worse, right? Wrong. Because Wildblow has spent the last several thousand words building up the Case 53s as X-Men style metaphors for oppressed groups, and one of the forms of oppression that Wildblow generally writes well is ableism. I think you can consider most, if not all of the Case 53s as disabled in some way. I think the link is extremely clear with Noelle.

Noelle doesn’t get her powers from traditional Cauldron human experimentation - at least, not directly. Instead, she and Krouse are facing what is, to them, a no-win scenario. They’re quarantined with limited access to medical care. Breaching this quarantine would permanently render them criminals. If Noelle survives her surgery, which is a pretty big if, she’ll become disabled, in a way that both Krouse and Noelle agree is ugly and undesirable. She won’t be able to do “boyfriend-girlfriend stuff” because she won’t be “any good to look at, after.” 

Krouse and Noelle are terrified of death, yes, but they’re also terrified of disability. They are desperate for control over Noelle’s body, control that, as of that moment, only the state has. (Remember the quarantine?) Krouse pressures Noelle into drinking the vial. Noelle is cured. 

Noelle’s cure does not last. In attempting to assert control, her body becomes uncontrollable. Her body is her trauma and her eating disorder made literal. She still needs care.

Worm would be bad if this is why her life sucks. But Worm does something better, instead. Noelle goes through hell, not just due to the sheer difficulty of having her power, but because of the way her teammates and Coil treat her. They talk about Noelle like she’s already dead. They’re ashamed of bringing her the food she needs. When Krouse “includes” Noelle in a discussion in arc 12, it’s mostly perfunctory. They do not believe Noelle is human any longer. They lock her away.

Noelle doesn’t want to be put in a cage. Noelle doesn’t want to be dehumanized. In interlude 18, when we get insight into Noelle’s thoughts, we learn that what Noelle is angry about is the fact that Krouse locked her in a concrete bunker and placated her. When she tells people not to look at her, there’s a coda to that sentence that she doesn’t get to verbalize: don’t look at me like that. 

This is the person who Eidolon is going to kill. 

Via the Simurgh, this is a person Eidolon has unknowingly created.

A few thousand words of Worm go by. It’s Gold Morning. Eidolon is fighting Scion. Now, at the end of the book, we finally get substantial insight into David, the man behind the mask. 

David takes a Cauldron vial to cure his disability. David sees this as the only way out, after an unsuccessful application to join the military, and then, an unsuccessful suicide attempt. David is bearing an immense amount of shame and internalized ableism. David is worried that father’s friends are watching him. (Don’t look at me.) David cleaves the world into two kinds of people: those who can have jobs, who are liked and respected because they are useful; and people like him, who are useless.

It’s a terrible way to think. Without that worldview, how could a person not take the vial? David wants to be used, because David wants to be useful. He never gets the independence he craves – not when he’s in that level of debt to Cauldron – but he gets to be useful, and that’s one of the best things you can be.

Like Noelle’s, like Charlie’s in Flowers, David’s cure doesn’t work. His abilities are wearing off. He is essentially told, when Doctor Mother administers his booster shots, that his medicine is too expensive. 

Cauldron creates Noelle. David, as Cauldron’s soldier, has a role to play in her creation. David knows exactly what he is doing to Noelle. It happened to him. Worm fandom talks a lot about David being a father. He’s a father in more ways than one. (David’s father is always watching him.) (Don’t look at me.)

Cauldron never cures David’s ableism. In his world, you can be useful, or you can die. David asks Noelle if she wants to win. Noelle tells him no. You can have a job, or you can kill yourself. When David tries to kill Noelle to help himself, isn’t that a mercy?

Of course it isn’t. It goes without saying that all of this is extremely fucked up. When it comes to disability, “cure” is a complicated concept. I’m not going to get into all the ways it can be treated; this post is already a thousand words long. But I do think that Worm, through Noelle and David and the concept of the Cauldron vial, provides an extremely vivid picture of the problems with cure. 

Under ableist logic, when you have a disability, a cure is something you’re expected to want. Without it, the story goes, you can’t be useful. You can’t do boyfriend-girlfriend stuff. The expectation is social, like the act of staring. Your desire for it should drive how you organize your life – it is control, like a quarantine. David is crushed by that expectation. He throws his lot in with Cauldron, the cure-makers. The expectation is passed along to Noelle, and even though David can recognize that inheritance, he cannot imagine any other way to respond to it other than attempted murder.

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that Flowers for Algernon is a tragedy. The reason that story has stuck with me so long is that I keep going back and forth as to why. Is it a tragedy because Charlie goes back to being disabled? There’s a good chance that’s what the author intended. I don’t know. It would be a pretty shitty story if that were the case. Is it a tragedy because people only treat Charlie well when he’s “cured,” and when that stops, he’ll go back to abuse? Seems plausible. I don’t think there’s one right answer. Regardless, when you’re disabled, there’s an immense pressure to seek out a cure, and a cognizable loss when it is withheld. The fact that Worm captures that social pressure and social loss so well is extremely compelling for me, and I’m going to be thinking about these characters for a long time.

#worm #parahumans #wormblr #eidolon #noelle meinhardt #any errors or omissions in this post are due to me reading interlude 27 like 3 hours ago #shoutout to tumblr user artbyblastweave for writing excellent eidolon meta that inspired this one #i would also give a shoutout to my friend who convinced me to read worm but i already shout at her enough. enjoy. thanks for the worms