#lisa was sweating and her palms were covered in bruise marks from how tightly she was clenching her fists not to say anything

[dw-flagler]

i'll be honest: i actually think haeley's fault is a clever wormfic. Almost certainly not by design, the story was definitely not supposed to be that, but whatever this is my reading

Haeley's Fault feels like something that taylor would write in-universe. That's how she thinks drug addiction works. Taylor Hebert wrote that haeley's fault one night when she was especially miserable in her first year of high school and then tore the lined paper she wrote it on into a hundred pieces and threw the pieces in the garbage. She still worries that someone will find the paper and piece it together, a full year after it was put into a landfill. She's scared that someone will find the piece of paper behind it in her 100 page lined notebook and charcoal scratch it to decipher her vent short-story.

It literally makes sense though. Like, not only is it not how anything like that works, it also fundamentally misunderstands emma in exactly the right way. Emma in that fic realizes that she's ruined taylor's life, and repents and cries and stuff. As if Emma was simply bullying taylor out of some sort of misunderstanding, or that ruining taylor's life wasn't the point. Her sort of 'redemption arc' is exactly what i'd imagine first-year-of-high-school's fantasy to be.

Taylor hits rock bottom through Drugs, a thing that we know she only really understands in the abstract and fears immensely, and then Emma sees this and realizes that she has ruined taylor's life and feels bad about it.

i'm not doing a good job of explaining this but it really feels like a story written by a bullied 14 year old where she fantasizes about her former best friend and current bully coming to a realization and becoming her friend again

#i don't know why there's an extra E in haley #upper middle class white girl name #i'm so sorry for you haeleaye #worm fanfiction #lisa knows taylor wrote it and kept it a secret only through a truly herculean force of will #she had an opportunity to mention it during the merchant infiltration #but she didn't because of how it would instantly destroy any progress toward taylor not killing herself #at that moment tattletale was 78% of the way to a second trigger #lisa was sweating and her palms were covered in bruise marks from how tightly she was clenching her fists not to say anything