Implied via interactions between Taylor, Sophia, and Emma's family.

 

One of the things Wildbow did really well is have Taylor gradually grow into her powers. A lot of the alt power! Taylor fanfics make her too strong to start with in my opinion, reading stories where Taylor curbstombs every parahuman she fights isn't very satisfying to me. The Self Insert stories (there's heaps of them lately) are even worse for this.

The types of stories I'd like to start seeing are the "domino effect" type stories exploring the flow on effect if one major event was changed prior to the start of Worm. How would it change peoples actions and the setting.

I.e.
Coil didn't trigger
or Marquis was never captured by New Wave
or William Manton never got Ziz'd
or Annette Hebert survives the car accident...

Any of those things would have huge ripple effects which could be interesting to poke at.

 

The implication was that she died when Zion hit the Eastern Seaboard.

 

That's what I thought too.

I think most SpaceBattles style fics were never meant to be more than a short gimmick and were never really meant to be taken too seriously. So yeah, they can't be bothered building up Taylor development over a lengthy fic - it's just there to quickly explore how some of the differences would be. Very similar to how SpaceBattles treats the FoZ fandom, and most crossovers in general.

As people have mentioned before, there's still a lot of unexplored concepts I'd love to see done more. Birdcage!Taylor hasn't really been done (to my knowledge) and I'd have thought that was an obvious one. There hasn't been a decent, lengthy fic where Taylor stayed with the Undersiders. Apart from Copacetic and Zenith, I can't think of any other lengthy post-Worm fics.

Completely agree with Nemrut on people needing to put aside Scion and the end of the world as a plot focus. Either ignore it completely, have Scion dealt with or go with Dinah's alternative where the World ends in 15 years instead of 2. Scion is such a major event that it limits what you can do, especially if you want to keep Taylor operating on the world-saving stage she got to. There's a lot more freedom if you bring the scope back to gangs and capes fighting each other on the streets.

I think this could be because Wildbow has said he wants to add a couple of arcs in there. People may be waiting to see what he puts out first before they start writing stories set in that period.

Definitely an unexplored area I'd love to see more of. Seeing how her teammates interact with her, seeing how she deals with being a hero with rules and regulations, etc. It's actually something that has a lot of potential - especially if you can make it such that the readers do get closer to Cuff, Tecton, Golem, etc.



On an aside, anyone still reading Copacetic? Had a few new chapters come in over the last few months. Still one of my favourite Worm fics. It's main issues still continue - the way everyone seems to have completely exaggerated, terrified responses to everything Taylor does and that her powers are kind of ridiculous and unnecessary, but still loving it.

Also got up to date in Atonement (had fallen behind a bit) and was surprised to see that while it hasn't really improved back up to its pre-Birdcage standard, it hasn't really gotten worse either. While Madison has gotten completely boring to read, a lot of the side characters have been going through some really interesting things.

 

I have an essay due tomorrow night, but I've just read this fic all in one go:

Speak with the Dead: GlaistigUaine!Taylor. Taylor "died" in the locker and is now a ghost who can't interact with the world. The only people who can see or hear her are the dead parahumans she grabs with her power.

I think I tried to read this fic months ago but wasn't able to. I can't remember why, and I think it was an old version of this story. This version is very good. Some things I dislike, but the one thing it's managed to do it make normally-detestable characters sympathetic. The author is good at characterization and this fic is long, twenty-two chapters, giving lots of time to get attached to the ghosts Taylor befriends.

The sense of purpose Taylor power gives her drives the story forward, and the author made the smart decision to hold back on how many ghosts Taylor finds.

Some things have been changed from canon, most obvious being the Faerie Queen power summoning actual ghost people instead of mindless shades. Other changes like Black Kaze still being around and Oni Lee's power being slightly different give this story its flare. Divergence points like what happened to the canon Faerie Queen and the capes she killed (re: Gray Boy) hasn't been answered yet, so that's one thing I'd like to see.

Just, oh god, that last chapter.

Spoiler

I didn't think it was possible to make Emma and Sophia sympathetic after the locker, but Emma's interlude gave me chills. So well-written.

Also kinda disappointed that Taylor settled on Valkyrie for a cape name. I'd have like something not taken from canon.

 

Slaughterhouse 9 Power Taylor was just bad. Subjectively, at least. I haven't looked at the other two stories. Are they much better?

This one is written well enough, if a bit too focused on dialogue. I liked it more before the recent chapters. The first problem is that the story doesn't seem to be going anywhere very quickly. With how little happens each update, with one per month, maybe if I check back in 2-3 years there will be a plot. The second problem is the author tries to force sad emotional moments too often. Maybe it's just me, but I genuinely don't care about

Spoiler

the characters the author has recently killed off. Emma? Sophia? Don't make me laugh. They're unsympathetic characters to begin with, ~5k words between their first appearance and dramatic death is not going to make me care about them at all.

Same thing with Panacea. Unlikable canon character shows up for an entire chapter to angst about Victoria not being romantically interested in her and her Mom being mean. Why was this chapter even here? You have to make the reader care about the character first, though with how fucking obsessed Spacebattles is with Panacea, maybe it wasn't necessary.

Noriko/Setsuna's dramatic moment seemed to consist primarily of "NORI!!! NOOOOOOOOOO" NoOOoOOoOOoO!!!"

TL;DR I hate all of the interlude characters. Making asshole characters very sad doesn't make me feel sorry for them.

The story was better when it was focused on Taylor and All-father, although Taylor could use some character development at some point. If Worm stuck with "Chapter One Taylor" the whole way through I doubt I would have read very far.

There are very few, and I also would like to see more... But I personally don't enjoy Dragonfly very much. I think it might be the best of the ones you mentioned, maybe even the best Worm story still updating(That I'm aware of, at least). The problems are that the crossover elements are bizarre and unnecessary(IMO), and Taylor seems to breeze through everything without enough effort. It's not a terrible story, but I'd hesitate to call it genuinely good.

My opinion is obviously not objective fact, I'm happy for anyone that likes these stories. I can't bring myself to enjoy them, but at least I can actually read them, which is more than I can say for everything else I've seen on SB recently.

 

Vira : A shard can manifest itself in many ways. Taylor here receives GU's shard, but her power is different. Since Taylor received GU's shard, canon GU does not exist. Grey Boy presumably got Contessa'd just like in canon - I doubt Contessa lacked for options.

Iztiak :

Really? I loved both Shatterbird!Taylor and Burnscar!Taylor. Especially the latter. Mannequin!Taylor was cool too - nice dark humor.

Memories of a Simurgh Victim is in the DLP library with a 5-star rating. DLP thread here.

Weaver Nine is the best fucking story in the fandom. Jack Slash is an awesome protagonist, Weaver owns half the world and that Leviathan battle was the stuff of legend. What's not to love?

Journey of the Dragonfly is a guilty pleasure. It has far too little conflict and far too many little grammatical errors to be anything but. Still, it has late game Weaver, which is the fic's biggest draw. I'm sick of badly written fics where Taylor still has her naive, early Worm morality.

I disagree with you wholeheartedly on Speak with the Dead. The Black Kaze subplot is admittedly average and detracts unnecessarily from the main Empire plot (though they are merging now). The Amy interlude is directly relevant to the main story as its the only way Taylor can heal Danny. And the Emma interlude was just beautiful. It isn't about making monsters sympathetic, its about showing that just because someone isn't nice to our precious protagonist doesn't mean they don't have their own, separate lives, with their own comforts and conflicts.

Jarik : The problem with writing about Taylor's time in the wards is that the Chicago Wards are extremely dull characters, at least to me. That is also the reason I couldn't get into that Golem travel travel fic at all -- Golem is just boring. Seriously, what was the point of his existence in canon? Taylor herself would have been a much better choice to face Jack Slash's apocalypse challenge - that would have actually sold the idea of Taylor as Jack's enemy. When Theo called Taylor Jack's nemesis in canon, I was like "Really? Does Jack even remember she exists?"

 

I'll check them out. Slaughterhouse 9 Power Taylor put me off the author, but I'll give them a shot.

Panacea is at least relevant, and her back story could definitely be written to be sad. But I don't believe the author successfully managed that.

Well yes, that's a given. There are no "monsters", just people. They all have lives. Skitter/Taylor could definitely be called a monster by many people in canon, and that's part of the reason I like her character.

But you have to actually put some effort into a character if you want people to give a shit. Taylor's actions, if previously viewed only through the viewpoints of the people she wronged, isn't a redeemable character in ~5k words. I would not feel sad if she showed up and died. In the case of Sophia and Emma, especially Emma, it's even worse because of how irrelevant they are. They hold no significance in canon except that they were mean to the main character. Emma just fading out and not being mentioned was the best method of handling her character, contrary to the revenge fics that keep showing up.

If they had any significance in this story that would be different, but they just showed up for an attempt at a dramatic death.

I absolutely agree 100% with this. The Chicago wards are some of the most boring characters in canon. It was a true struggle to get through that section without skipping it entirely. I started that Golem fic as well, I didn't get very far. It's interesting only because of how spectacularly uninteresting Golem and the Chicago wards are.

The worst section of canon bar none, and that's not because it was short, it was because it exists at all.

 

I forgot about the shard manifestation thing, but I don't understand your GU statement. Certainly, GU didn't get the Faerie Queen shard, but did she trigger at all? Did she get Taylor's Administration shard instead?

Also, Gray Boy never got Contessa'd, unless I'm remembering incorrectly. He was originally killed by GU, and his clone was killed by Foil. Considering Cauldron was going out of their way to keep Shatterbird and Siberian alive, it doesn't seem likely they'd take out Gray Boy.

---------- Post automerged at 08:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:28 PM ----------

Spoiler

Dramatic death? There's reasons to suggest neither of them have died. Sophia just took out Burnscar and was left standing down Jack Slash. She may be recruited into the S9. I'm not sure I'd like that, but it could happen.

And Emma's interlude has an invisible last line about stars. She might have triggered and gotten away.

Either way, Taylor's not leaving Brockton Bay, and it seems likely she'll pick up one of them as a ghost, so dying in Boston is too far away for her to grab one.

 

The human before GU would probably exist, but she would have pretty much nothing in common with canon GU, even if she did trigger with a different shard. The shard you get affects your personality -- as a rule of thumb, the more powerful your ability, the more the shard influence. GU's canon personality was almost completely influenced by her shard.

Contessa killing Grey Boy is canon. Grey Boy's kill number exceeded his potential worth against Scion, so Contessa got rid of him in the most economical way possible. She steered Grey Boy into GU's path and set up a confrontation, disposing him while still keeping his power at play.

 

Can I have a quote for this? I can't remember this.

 

Its Word of God. I can't find the exact quote, but its on the TV tropes page.

 

I'm still reading it, but it's been a while since I actually enjoyed it. It frustrates me because there's actually a fairly interesting story there that's been crushed by the increasingly ridiculous attempts at making Taylor look Totally Awesome. The eye of sauron bit was a great example of how to fuck up a CMOA by trying way too hard.

 

Going to have to agree here; it had a good start, but just got boring. I'm not attached to any characters, not even Taylor anymore.

 

The Chicago Wards are mostly dull characters because they're blank slates... which is an opportunity for a writer. All the opportunities of an OC, almost none of the audience complaint!

(When Theo called Taylor Jack's nemesis, I thought it was a way of showing Theo's lack of confidence, not a factual assessment).

Also,

made for unexpected amounts of laughter.

Materia Blade talks about being a terrible proofreader, on the grounds that his SoD is too stretchy. This is likely what's at work there.

 

Maharal is pretty good as well - Theo goes back to the 90s and becomes a Chicago Ward.

One of the moments of divergence I'm thinking about which could be really interesting is when Taylor wrote the confession about her supervillainy to her dad before burning it. What if her dad had seen it?

 

http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/trolling-the-multiverse-worm-cyoa-multiverse-si.326475/

This one's probably the best out of the CYOA fics that came out. Still features a completely broken protagonist, but is played completely for humor.

I'd probably give it a 3/5 all things considered, but it has no glaring spelling or grammar issues, is fun to read, and is sufficiently long.

 

Yeah, god that scene turned from epic to cheesy at that point. I'd much rather have seen Taylor hunt them down and take them down with the ruthlessness of Skitter and have that be the reason everyone is terrified of her.

Spoiler

And of course, there's her ability to give Shards out like candy, the fact that hers is apparently called "Tales" and that we've apparently got another entity coming.

I would rather Copacetic have remained focused about Taylor's personal struggle of trying to be a normal college girl for her Dad, but being unable to hold back Skitter/Weaver whenever something happened. The second end of the world kind of wrecks that.

On a side note, I wonder whether the remaining Travelers have been forgotten or not? Sundancer, Genesis and Ballistic should all be in Aleph. I'd love to see them appear, as characters who are also from Bet, and have also fought with Taylor.

@Iztiak:

I actually really enjoyed all the interludes in Speak with the Dead.

You never forget than Emma and Sophia are absolute cunts for what they did to Taylor, but at the same time, I couldn't help but enjoy reading about them happy with each other and feel apprehension for where that last scene finished with.

Black Kaze and her sister felt like a bit of a side story, but was still really enjoyable. I think this is where the story is headed - Taylor helping her various ghosts get their last requests and find peace through a bunch of side stories. And you know what? I'm actually cool with that. Usually hate that sort of thing, but if the characters remain as interesting as they have been and a main plot continues to flow, I think that'd work quite well.

I actually had the same problem with that time travel fic. Theo was a great character to read in the interlude where he faces down Jack Slash in his apartment. His polite and calm demeanor made for an interesting dynamic in the conversation with Jack.

But in every other scene of him as a hero? In the majority of the roles his plays in fanfiction? Completely boring.

As for the others though, as notes said, it's probably because they're mostly blank slates. We barely know anything about them, then we get a time skip, and stop seeing them altogether.

If that's still a problem? Put Taylor in a different Wards team. Perhaps even one with an ex-BB Wards team member on it to spice things up a bit. I'd love to read more interactions between Skitter and Clockblocker, or Skitter and Vista.

 

I agree with most of that. The Eye of Sauron thing especially; that was grating.

She isn't in Aleph. I think she's in Gimel or Dalet, but I'm not sure. Definitely not Aleph or Bet tho.

 

That's not really true. The Chicago wards just scream 'generic good guys' at first sight. There are lots of characters in worm that grab your attention immediately -- Siberian, Crawler, Bonesaw, most of Faultline's crew, Chevalier, Myrrdin, Phir Se, the Triumvirate etc. The Chicago wards just don't have any personality whatsoever.

Jarik :

The problem with Taylor in the wards, or Hero!Taylor in general, is that it takes away one of the most interesting aspect of Worm - Taylor's moral dilemmas. Taylor is a much more interesting character when she struggling but failing to do the right right because circumstances are against her. Making her a Hero takes a large part of that away, making her just another protagonist.

That said, while Ward!Taylor may be inherently dull, vigilante Taylor has much more potential. There is, of course, a right way of doing it -- the way Cenotaph and Bug on a Wire (is that abandoned?) do, and the wrong way of doing it, like Heredity does -- OP team. Chummy with PRT. Yet more of Taylor+Amy (seriously, what's this obsession with Taylor befriending Amy?) and very little conflict.

/Rant incoming

Now that we are on the topic of Chicago Wards, I must ask -- was there any point whatsoever of Taylor becoming a Hero in canon? I mean, we have the excellent Behemoth arc preceding it, and the S9000 arc as the next major arc where she mostly fights alongside her old team anyway. I think Wildbow always intended Taylor to be a Hero (the original plan was for Taylor to leave the Undersiders after Leviathan IIRC), and just couldn't find the right timing for it. The problem with that is almost everyone thinks of Taylor as a villain protagonist, and yet she spent just three months as a villain and two years as a hero. So we were stuck with the dull-as-fuck Chicago Wards for a whole pointless, meandering arc and two years of Taylor's life.

It also really stretched my SOD when Taylor murders a PRT director and a member of the Triumvirate and is given a place in the Wards instead of being thrown into the birdcage. None of the heroes even make much of a fuss about it. Really, the whole timeskip was a clusterfuck - a blot on an otherwise excellent web serial. I, for one, would have been much more interested in reading about Imp murdering Heartbreaker and taking in his kids than I was reading about Taylor's time in the Chicago wards. Why did Taylor have to leave again?

/Rant