Fanfic / Evil And Ham

Evil and Ham is a Worm/How It Should Have Ended crossover fanfic by QAI521.

Official summary: In one world, Taylor Hebert became a villain by accident. In another, Taylor gets some mentoring in villainy.

Or, the one where Taylor ends up in the Vilain Pub during her Trigger and gets some career advice. Brockton Bay is not ready at all.

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This fanfic contains the following tropes:

• Affably Evil:
  • Taylor is struck by how strange it is that the worst villains in the multiverse are as a whole much more polite and intelligent than the trio bullying her.
  • She tries to cultivate a similar reputation since it helps her plans.
• Alpha Bitch: Deconstructed. Emma has no real friends besides Sophia and once her "attack dog" is sent to juvie, her powerbase crumbles completely.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: The villains are all eager to share their expertise with Taylor to help her become a great villain. However, they make it clear that they aren't 'asking' if she wants their help. Either she's one of them, or she's a hero who wandered into the wrong pub.
• Animal Eye Spy: Maleficient uses her crow Diablo to check on the PRT and Protectorate's response to the death of Skidmark and Merchants.
• Backstab Backfire: Discussed. As others point out, not only could it result in Arachne getting reputation for backstabbing, the handler could have reported the stolen files, putting the entire PRT and Protectorate on her trail.
• Beneath Notice: Coil is this on the local cape scene right until somebody drags him into the spotlight.
• Big "WHAT?!": Calvert has an internal one when he realises someone framed him.
• Blind Obedience: Miss Militia has shades of this, combined with Selective Obliviousness and Protectorate, Right Or Wrong. In her defense, those strategies absolutely worked for her- she was taken from a war-torn country where she triggered because, as a child soldier, she was made to scout for land mines. The system that took her in and gave her the life she has now is not perfect, but she latched on to it since it was much better than what she had before.
• Breaking Speech: Just before leaving Winslow for the last time, Taylor tells Emma just how many enemies she's made in the school with her behavior, and how the only thing that was holding them back was fear of Sophia. And now that Emma's rabid attack dog had been stripped of her probation and sent to juvie, they were free to act. Before Taylor leaves she can already tell that some members of Emma's clique are already thinking of cutting ties to save themselves.
• Breaking the Fellowship: Defied. Brian wants to dissolve the Undersiders after Dinah's kidnapping comes to light, since they would be on everyone's shit-list. Lisa frankly tells him that Coil would sooner kill them .
• Broken Pedestal: Taylor loses all faith in heroes when she learns that Sophia is a Ward.
• Bullying a Dragon: The Merchants, with the only one of their capes there being Skidmark, attack a trio of unknown individuals that are clearly capes.
• The Chessmaster: Arachne. Everything she does somehow furthers her goals, often without leaving any links to herself.
• Create Your Own Villain: Sophia ends up causing Taylor to go villain.
• Dead Fic: Not updated since the spring of 2019, leaving a cliffhanger at Dinah's kidnapping, and the SpaceBattles.com thread was the victim of a Thread Necromancy incident.
• Death Glare: Piggot gives one to Sophia when her inaction in a rape case was discovered.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Implied with Emma's hangers-on's reaction to her bringing up Annette's death to hurt Taylor.
• Enemy Civil War: After Skidmark's death, the Merchants split up into multiple factions. Most notable are the ones led by Squealer and Mush, who don't have anything holding them back from fighting each other.
• Engineered Public Confession: Arachne tricks Shadow Stalker into saying that she wouldn't help a rape victim she didn't consider strong, then gets a rape victim she didn't help to come forward and sue her.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • After her debut, Protectorate concludes that Arachne is someone that Triggered due to the actions of a hero by being caught in a cape fight.
  • Coil thinks Arachne may be a vanguard of a larger organization, especially in the aftermath of the Merchants' massacre.
  • After Taylor witnesses Dinah's abduction, she finds her wallet and makes the connection to Brockton's mayor. Unaware of Dinah's Thinker abilities, she concludes Coil is attempting to manipulate the mayor through her.
• Establishing Character Moment: Discussed. Taylor very carefully plans her debut as Arachne, knowing that it will make or break her reputation as a villain. It goes off spectacularly.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • When Joker offers Taylor a glass of beer, Palpatine destroys it immediately, because Taylor is underage and the Villains may be evil, but not irresponsible.
  • Taylor checked. It's perfectly acceptable for a villain which is why she decides to help Dinah.
  • The Joker, despite his disgust at the villain scene of Brockton, chooses not to show the city what a real criminal is like, because he knows that this city is Taylor's, and it'd ruin her education.
  • Averted with Brian. He only cares about Dinah's kidnapping because it was made public and can hurt Aisha.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Or at least a lesser evil, but Coil has no idea why Arachne does anything since she wouldn't directly profit from those actions, in money or political power.
• Eviler than Thou: The villains of the pub are disgusted by the fact that most supervillains in Brockton Bay never amount to more than property damage and street crime, and decide to teach Taylor how to do villainy properly.
• Evil Is Hammy: The villains hear about Taylor's world, and they are disappointed at how dull the villains are. When Skidmark attacks Zoom, The Joker, and Maleficent are amazed at how Skidmark doesn't even try a good monologue.
• Evil Mentor: The villains of the Pub start to function as mentors to Taylor.
• Evil Plan: Discussed. Villains tell Taylor to find some kind of a goal, even an unattainable one, to have a direction and drive to move, and to carefully plan her moves so she doesn't back herself into a corner.
  • She settles on exposing the hypocrisy of the current hero system so that they will have to either crash or change by taking an advantage of the resentment among the less well-off population.
• False Reassurance: Arachne tells Sophia's PRT handler she will be given everything she's earned and a safe place in exchange for copying the Ward files for her. She gets a stack of false bills and gets drugged and framed for possession, ensuring she'll wake up in jail.
• Fantastic Racism: Piggot is prejudiced against parahumans, as per canon. It's exploited by Coil since he knows she won't bring in Thinker support or pay attention to any unpowered crimes.
• Fate Worse than Death: The Merchants who have the misfortune to engage Maleficient. She just shoved her opponents into a pillar of melted obsidian, while taking the time to make sure they would remain alive and burning in eternal Greek Fire.
• Framing the Guilty Party: Arachne does this to Coil for his kidnapping of Dinah, sending a fake ransom note to the mayor and making sure that the news leaked to the press.
• Hidden Depths: Apparently Skidmark was charismatic enough that he was the only thing keeping Squealer and Mush from constantly being at each other's throats. As soon as he dies, they go to war with each other. He was also fairly competent at setting up things like storehouses.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Trainwreck made sure that his armour couldn't be easily destroyed or taken apart by Brutes. So he's unable to take it off in time before it (and he) overheats during a fight with Spitfire's group.
• Inexplicably Awesome: Taylor somehow ends up at the Pub during her trigger, with no one sure on the how.
• Just a Kid: Piggot's opinion when she learns Arachne is no older than 20, thinking she's just some teenager on a power trip.
• Kick the Dog: Subverted. Emma tries to hurt Taylor by bringing up her mother's death. Taylor uses this to turn Emma's hangers-on against the girl.
• Manipulative Bitch: Arachne is growing into one. So far, she's:
  • Arranged for evidence of Shadow Stalker's inaction in a rape case to the surface, leading to a massive lawsuit pursued by Carol Dallon;
  • Convinced Sophia's handler to hand over heroes' personal files to her;
  • Completely destroyed Emma's confidence and powerbase in one conversation;
  • Convinced some of the dockworkers to set a trap for Hookwolf;
  • Provided Youth Guard with Wards' files, including the ones that confirm they aren't getting required support and therapy, which prompts another lawsuit from Quinn Calle;
  • Informed Wards' parents of the limited support and heavy scrutiny their children receive in the program (we see only Clockblocker's mother, who later goes to Youth Guard);
  • Got a trio of independent capes to clear out a bunch of Merchant stash houses (for a cut of the loot, of course);
  • Framed Coil for the kidnapping of Dinah Alcott, putting Thomas Calvert against the wall as the PRT's starting to realize the extent of Coil's real ambition and power;
  • She is getting mentored by Makuta Teridax, one of the greatest manipulators ever, after all, plus get tips from Moriarty and The Master.
• Meaningful Name:
  • In some myths, Arachne created a tapestry depicting gods' flaws and mistakes. Taylor wants to expose the inadequacy and hypocrisy of the current hero system.
  • Shadow Stalker's handler is named Delilah, alluding to the woman who betrayed Samson. The handler gives the files of heroes and Wards to Arachne.
• Moral Myopia: Part of why Coil is so mad about someone pulling a Framing the Guilty Party on him is that he feels that he's the one that's supposed to manipulate others and set up the board in his favor, not the other way around.
• Morality Kitchen Sink: The villains in the bar are all, well, villains. However, the type and scope of them vary wildly- from honorable villains who wouldn't hurt a child, villains who had good intentions, all the way up to literal gods of evil and omnicidal maniacs.
• Mordor: The Trope Namer shows up as the location of Villain Christmas party, complete with lights wrapped around Mount Doom and dozens of Christmas trees.
• Noodle Incident: Bonesaw once sent a package containing a custom-made virus to the Youth Guard.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The guy who delivered Arachne's... purchases, once he sees what's inside the packaging.
  • Calvert when he realizes somebody framed him and leaked Dinah's kidnapping to the news.
  • The Undersiders have a massive one when they learn why the boss needed a distraction... from tv news.
• Pet the Dog: Arachne helps one of Shadow Stalker's victims by providing evidence of her misdeeds.
• Plausible Deniability: Apparently Piggot knew about Shadow Stalker's unauthorized patrols and lethal weaponry, but did nothing to stop her since it wasn't making any problems for the PRT and was generally very effective in hunting criminals.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Taylor gives one to Emma when she leaves school, combined with a Breaking Speech.
  • MCU Mandarin receives one when he tries to enter the Villains' Christmas Party.
• Revenge Before Reason: Villains warn Taylor against doing it after she mentions framing the handler.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The delivery guy who got traumatized by Arachne.
• Slave to PR:
  • Protectorate. Piggot even lampshades this, thinking that three-fourths of their work time is taken by PR events.
  • Armsmaster to a lesser extent since he wants to be a famous hero.
  • It even gets lampshaded at the pub. When Taylor tells her colleagues how often the Protectorate does PR events, Palpatine wonders how they find time to get actual work done, and she tells him that as a rule, they don't.
• Sole Survivor: A single Merchant was spared Joker, Zoom, and Maleficient's revenge... for a few hours because Zoom wanted her to provide the police with his name. Then he just broke into the interrogation room and snapped her neck.
• Spotting the Thread: Once they were tipped off, the PRT quickly realizes that Coil got various independents to stage distractions since those attacks occurred within minutes of each other and drew heroes away from Dinah's kidnapping.
• The Starscream: The Trope Namer is name-dropped, and deconstructed- because he backstabs everyone to get higher in rank, even when it would make things worse for him, no one trusts him or wants to work with him. Taylor openly uses him as an example of why she wouldn't be this kind of villain.
• Start of Darkness: After inexplicably teleporting to Palpatine's pub, Taylor recounts her story to the villains. Joker immediately proclaims it a perfect Villain Origin.
• Tastes Like Purple: According to Joker, Brockton Bay smells like paranoia and terror.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Armsmaster says the infamous line about Arachne.
    Armsmaster: She controls bugs, Director. I think we can take her.
  • Villains warn Taylor against doing it since Murphy is always watching. They have a Swear Jar for when people make that mistake.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Taylor's reaction to finding out Sophia is Shadowstalker.

  Sophia Hess is a hero.

  But uncertainty turned to steel as she lifted her gaze up from the tile floor.

  Sophia Hess wanted to play being a hero?

  Fine, then it looked like she was going to be a Villain.

• Too Dumb to Live: The Merchants attack the Joker, Maleficent, and Zoom, who are clearly capes. Even the Joker can't crack a joke, he's that surprised by how stupid they are.
  Joker: You cannot be this stupid.
• Training from Hell: Taylor gets physical fitness and combat training from Slade. Not that she minds.
• Unstoppable Rage: Zod nearly punches Thanos' head off for killing Groot when he made it very clear he didn't want any harm coming to the little tree.
• Villains Out Shopping: Apparently there's an annual Villain Christmas party, with Taylor taking part in the current one.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Arachne slowly cultivates this in certain circles.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • Deep beneath the fury, a small part of Coil can't help but mentally salute the person who pulled a Framing the Guilty Party on him.
  • Averted for Arachne, who considers him a wannabe and a nuisance.
• Xanatos Gambit: Makuta advises Taylor to do this sort of thing, as it is what separates the lesser villains from the greater ones- to hide objectives within objectives so that no matter what you do, you win.

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