Thank you and whilst I see where you're coming from, I suppose for me it's more there's not typically a functional difference between 'Sophia goes to trip Taylor in the hallway because she's an asshole' and 'Sophia goes to trip Taylor in the hallway because her shard is making her act like an asshole.' That whilst I might factor the shard into the character's personality and thus their actions, it's not something you're typically going to see in the writing.
Not unless it's more e.g. Someone self aware like Lisa who can't help but want to dig deeper and has a shard that enables all the bad habits she knows full well she has that result. Lamenting 'too much information, gross' when she meets someone she finds attractive and then very quickly doesn't as her shard happily presents all the information it can like a cat gifting a dead bird.
When other people are aware of the whole potential shard/personality thing I see it more like how an SI character would treat Bitch, they have a better insight into Bitch's personality and a better understanding of why they might act the way they do and so perhaps tailor their own behaviours accordingly. But she is ultimately a more obvious and extreme example. No one is going to meet Grue at start of canon and see much more than a regular guy, even if they are aware of the shard/personality thing for example, which ties back into the whole 'how much are people themselves or their shards' question.
And for that I think I'd probably prefer to think of it being a case by case basis; the interaction between the person's original personality, the circumstances of their trigger, where they are (or recover to) afterwards and obviously the shard itself and how much the shard has a 'will of it's own' so to speak. I.e. even if they had completely identical powers, Danny and Taylor would bare the results of hosting Queen Administrator very differently. That at the end of the day all the shards care about is 'data, yum yum' and so e.g. a passionate personality pared with pyrokinesis shard is probably going to fare very differently than a more passive personality would.
But Worm is ultimately at its core a grimdark setting (and good arguments can be made that it strays right into grimderp at times.) Softening the setting slightly in how canon details are interpreted or changed feels like less of a betrayal than making things more grounded sometimes, at least that's my feeling.
Oh, yes, absolutely make it case-by-case - but make sure you the writer know which case is which before you open them to us :D
And as a thought on redemption in general, my personal reaction to folks saying 'this character isn't worthy of redemption' is consistently "Of course they're not, the worthy don't need redemption!"
Comment on Madison Clements has an Unusual Power (And she's going to be a Hero!)
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