Talk:Herman

"Would You Still Love Me if I was a Worm?"

Felis77 (talk) 10:31, 11 July 2025 (UTC): A comedic and non-threatening "worm-that-walks" character embodies Caves of Qud's rewrites' consciousness of the horn effect. It's natural that a story whose setting roils in fear and desperation and whose development team received an influx of minorities and humanists would express strong feelings about this;
fear of the other "hits different" when you are the other.
And so, for the release-day paid DLC, of all things, they offer us a freak. After all, why would you hate Herman? Is it because they're visibly infested, or they stagger and stumble as they walk, or they have an understanding of the sanctity of death that's different than yours, or they struggle to hold casual conversation, or they smell bad? Will you stop and think about these traits for a moment? Can you think of anyone else they might apply to?

It's probable that the idea of Herman came about at the same time the endgame content was written. I can't talk about the idea of Herman without mentioning The Festival, in which the estranged protagonist's family cheats death by possessing vermin to puppet their own cadavers with. You might notice while reading that story how the Yuletide observers are never overtly aggressive or abusive towards anyone. You might also notice that the author was a miserable little xenophobe. Despite how easy it might be to mock this dead man, I instead posit that his racism and classism were exacerbated by his obsessive-compulsive disorder which he definitely had. Today, it's widely agreed upon that the only treatment for OCD is for the sufferer to stop taking their fears seriously.

An earthworm is just a tiny, soggy noodle.