How would you describe Early Taylor personality
Early Taylor is kind of an enigma to me, mainly because, in her normal identity, she seems to have almost given up. I think it was even mentioned that she was pretty sure she would hurt herself before hurting others. She’s been bullied for a year and seems determined to just wait it out. She leaves her dad out of it and has a deep lack of trust in authority figures.
When a teacher offers to help, she flat-out refuses. She doesn’t ask him to help in a different way or request that he stop putting her in groups with the girls who bully her—she just shuts him down. Given that her mom was a teacher, she should know that there’s always someone higher up to complain to. The teachers and principal didn’t help, but she could have gone to the superintendent or even the state education agency. A principal can’t stand up to the PRT, but the SEA probably could, especially if Taylor made it clear that all she wanted was to transfer to another school. And if that wasn’t possible, she could have just quit and gotten a GED. I know she kept going to school for her mom, but half the time, she wasn’t even learning anything because the bullying was so extreme.
She didn’t want to fight back because she thought it would turn the students against her—but the school was already neutral or against her. I highly doubt the student body wasn’t aware of what was happening. And even if they did turn on her, she could have kept fighting back until the school was forced to intervene. Even if she got expelled, it had to be better than what she was dealing with. The fact that she was willing to accept the idea of self-harm before fighting back makes me think Taylor has the strangest mix of internal strength and weakness I’ve ever seen. I’m not saying she should have pulled a Danny Phantom and bullied them with her powers, but come on.
She wants to be a hero, but when Armsmaster basically invites her to join the Wards, she turns him down—even though that probably would have solved the bullying issue immediately. Sure, she didn’t know Sophia was Shadow Stalker at that point, but she could have assumed that if she told the heroes she was being bullied as a member of the Wards, they would step in to help her.
Then there’s the PRT agent who was with Shadow Stalker during the meeting at school. Why didn’t the PRT just pay off Taylor’s family and transfer her to another school? I can understand why the school didn’t do it, but the PRT knew they had a troubled hero actively bullying a civilian. If they didn’t want to punish Sophia, they could have at least let Taylor go somewhere else. Especially considering Taylor openly made a threat about stabbing Emma—if that had actually happened and the news got out, the PRT would have had a massive PR disaster on their hands.
TL;DR: Early Taylor is one of the strangest combinations of stubborn as a rock and completely given up that I’ve ever seen in a story. From the story's start She doesn't even try to get out of the situation until she gets a concussion causing her to hit Emma which causes the sit-down to happen. Taylor was in 10 grade I think so she was actively planning to sit down and take 2 more years of bullying