Are there any good SI worm fanfics out there besides Security? Something like Dreaming of Sunshine. Alternatively, are there any good fanfics set outside of brockton bay, or during a different (pre-golden morning) time period? I'm burnt out on reading alt-powers and the same old stations of canon from a familiar character's perspective.

 

Hahahahahaha! Good one, mate
Good one.

 

Actually - there is one halfway decent SI. The author of Monster wrote a Bakuda!SI. It's not complete, but given that he's still updating Monster, might see updates at some point in the future.

 

I fully admit to loving I, Greg, but it's crack so a massive YMMV there.

 

Yeeeeah, if I remember correctly the SI makes napalm in their bathtub for whatever reason, so my mileage varies greatly.

 

There have been several ones that I've found entertaining, but I can't think of anyone that rises above guilty pleasure.
they're somewhat worth reading. First two have in common that they don't play up the SI angle so they might as well be OCs 'shrugs'.
Tyrant of the Bay Despite being a CYOA it's not complete garbage

Something Completely Different
I especially liked the second one for being about a Bonesaw-esque tinker, though more limited, what I didn't like was how much the story played up the 'cops and robbers' dynamic.

Administrative assistant
The SI is a voice in Taylor's head, I think he could use powers independently of her, which is a shame, it would be more interesting if he were just a powerless voice in her head, found it kinda amusing, one thing that made me smile were the Taser crabs.
Not a story to be taken seriously, but that's probably the case for most SI stories really, regardless of the author's genre intentions.

 

Wow. A Worm story that's actually almost recommendable. I tried to read everything posted in the last few pages, and I had lost all hope that I'd be able to read anything Worm without closing it 1-2 chapters in.

Granted, Centipede still has its problems. It avoids two of the most common pitfalls, like kinetique says, there's no kiddo or bullying/trigger scenes.

Unfortunately it skims the 3rd most common pitfall of Worm fiction, the author changing characters to fit his/her lesbianism fetish. It's minor, thankfully, and late in the story.

Other problems:

Author "nerfs" certain characters. Maybe unintentionally, but Coil comes to mind. Made obvious amateur mistakes that would be stupid even for the Merchants, and especially OOC for Coil, in my opinion.

Spoiler

Coil, like everyone else, is very cautious about the cannibalistic super monster, but apparently stupid enough to have Taylor followed by a minion that knows the location of his base. Taylor, after catching said minion, then just goes in and finds out where Coil lives and kills him.

The story foreshadows this with an explanation that Coil as Calvert can't use his power as often or as effectively, but that doesn't account for how retarded he'd have to be to make that mistake. He even goes home after his base is raided, entering his home in both timelines.

Finally, it makes me feel guilty to point this out, since literally everything on spacebattles does it so much worse... But everything is still going too well for Taylor recently in the story. It feels crazy to say that about a story where Taylor

Spoiler

starts the story as a cannibal who has eaten her Dad's limbs,

but it's there. She's too terrifying a figure for everyone to get along with her so well, and for all of her plans to work out. Even her one defeat was instantly turned around.

Spoiler

(And that was against the ENTIRE E88 by herself...)

Now that I've gotten that out of the way - Besides a few notable exceptions, the characters are written fairly well, and are pretty close to their canon personalities.. Nicely done, in my opinion.

Double props for writing literally the only story where Taylor is able to

Spoiler

become friends with Shadow Stalker without me closing the story. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't extremely out of character. Actually never seen that happen.

Of course, this is fanfiction, so all close same-sex friendships/rivalries/enemies have to end with them banging each other eventually. (See: Harry/Malfoy, et al.)

Anyway, I'd actually give this a 3/5 in real stars. Good rec, you might as well put it up for review, since I know that there's some heinous Worm stuff that's in the library at the moment.

Edit:
Well, it's actually already in the Library.
https://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=34704

 

Just found this on SV.

Man's Best Friend.

Taylor has the power to understand animals, and for them to understand her. So she does the sensible thing and sets up a psychiatrist office for pets in an abandoned warehouse, charging $20 an hour to help fix your pet's neuroses.

It a daft piece of fluff, and really light-hearted. Eight chapters, one every few days, so it won't take long to read through either.

Also, it turns out her power might not be understanding animals, but actually understanding any language, which includes animals.

I don't think it's library worthy yet, because there really isn't much sub stance to it, but it's amusing enough for giving a go.

 

Reminds me a little of Constellations. Just Taylor doing her own thing... at least for the moment, gathering the interest of others. Just not as oblivious. Cute at least.

 

It is amusing, I like it so far and for an early rating I'd give it 3.5-4/5, I feel lazy for not posting do they post on spacebattles as well? Since it's pretty obvious

Spoiler

That the hipster guy is Armsmaster Edit: Revealed the very next chapter after I posted woops. The Turtle makes me want to rate it higher so 4/5
Blofields owner is a bit more complicated I think he's the E88 guy since Rune is Stephanie, so maybe he's Crusader or surprise twist Alabaster. Though considering I've only read halfway through, She's probably already revealed.
Yay, it's a confirmed quirky Alabaster! Still find very professional/potentially dutch?? Viktor and Scary!Othala a bit weird. Still find super weird turtle awesome though I don't get the gender confusion over the name Genbu?

 

I, Greg is a bit of a fun crack that isn't very long about an SI that finds himself in Greg's body.

There's another one I'm trying to remember but can't. Wasn't amazing, but was a decent time waster. At the start, had an ex-engineer guy who ends up at Winslow a lot younger than he used to be and sells maths/physics assignments for money. Anyone remember what this was called?

It doesn't have the slew of high quality SI's that Naruto has though, so if you're hoping for Dreaming of Sunshine quality, don't think you'll find anything.

There's a bunch of OC centric fics that might be worth checking out too:

Keeper - in the library, so can get a bit more info there. Really enjoyed this - up until the point everything suddenly went shit in a chapter.

Art of War - follows Lung's daughter

Agent of Cauldron - again, in the library though more than half of this fic is interludes from canon characters, so almost hesitate to call it OC-centric.

How I Learned to Stop Hating and Love the Bomb That is Nero - it's in the DLP recycle bin. More info there. It's a fun crack to start with, then gets irritating.

 

Ok I went through all million odd words of A Cloudy Path I'm not sure whether I'd recommend it unless you're really hankering for some Worm badly. Technically it's good and he has the character voices spot on and I didn't notice any glaring grammar errors.

Despite it's length I didn't really skip anything apart from some Danny-Taylor shitty talk sections sometimes. Some things that may kill it for you are Taylor is like neutorically holding to her ideals of being a hero. In this case that means she never compromises her morals like in Worm so it can be pretty tiring to read such a black and white viewpoint for a million words. It really feels forced seeing as the situations she's in should have hardened her more.

It's still very good plotting wise though IMO. The last few arcs are pretty interesting and pretty much unseen in Worm fics. Taylor has an OP tinker ability but the rampup is tortuously long.

 

Are you talking about the fic where the Irish guy moves to Bay after his brother's killed by Leviathan? I remember it being kind of similar to Keeper in regards to Taylor.

Also I found Keeper pretty solid overall.

 

Going Native (SB | SV) by Dartz. It's an interesting concept in that it's billed as the anti-Security in that the SI is actually pretty intimidated by being in the Worm universe in general and at the thought of actually trying to change things—and thereby, becoming a known figure / target. It's on hiatus / life-support right now I think, just as things were seemingly about to kick into gear.

Aberration by themanwhowas and Mixed Feelings by Kittius are also decent OC-centric stories.

Aberration is a D&D crossover featuring a Binder of Zceryll as the OC main character, who arrives in the Worm universe in search of the ultimate munchkin. The story's relatively decent, with some questionable decisions, but has overall a decent pace and relatively coherent narrative. I'm not entirely sold on the OC main character's personality, which vacillates between ditzy and blue-and-orange morality, and the relationship she forms later on in the story strikes me as far-fetched. Still, a decent read and it seems to be coming up on the ending soon.

Mixed Feelings is a straight noncrossover OC-centric story covering Astrid Berklow, a teenager in Brockton Bay that triggers in an abusive home environment (not sexual). The first arc is pretty solid and well-worth reading and functions as a psychological piece more than anything else, but rather well-done for it. Everything after that, IMO, takes a downturn as the plot and narrative range from middling to meandering, with horrendous pacing of a few hundred thousand words of nothing happening and the author appears to front load characterization and narrative, with simultaneously too much (characterization-wise) and too little (plot-wise) happening at once. Still, I'd recommend reading the first arc for what it's worth.

Nine Last Chances (SB| AO3) by Discreet is also pretty good as well, as recommended above.

And speaking of Discreet, they have a new story out that they update fairly regularly: Just the Two of Us (SB | AO3). It's a Taylor-centric mystery / suspense story that diverges with the initial meeting Taylor had with the Undersiders proceeding differently.

Discreet is one of the few authors in the fandom that knows the story they're out to tell, tells in a coherent and well-paced fashion, and ends it. The author plans it to be approximately novellete to short novella length and given how I've enjoyed pretty much everything else Discreet has written, I have high hopes for this story.

 

Have any of you guys checked out Seed? It's pretty dope, gives Taylor Blasto's powers. no wards, no powertesting, no locker. In general it's very AU, but I wouldn't hesitate to call it one of the best fics in the fandom.

 

Granted, "one of the best fics in the fandom" isn't saying very much, but I'd hesitate to say that, personally.

The sad thing is, this story only annoys me as much as it does because of its wasted potential. The writing quality is decent, with the only major problem being the dialogue.

The dialogue is a bit wooden. It's not really that bad, and could probably be fixed by better usage of commas and punctuation. The author also sometimes has struggled with descriptions of who is talking or how they are saying it.

The thing that really sinks this story, in my opinion, is that the author seems to have realized that dialogue is their weak point... And instead of working on fixing that, gave up entirely.

...Really? I'm not sure how an author could sink lower, except maybe by including emojis in spoken dialogue.


I'd still tentatively recommend this as a guilty pleasure (to people that can stomach another OP sort of Alt-power story), at least for the first half of the story. The dialogue doesn't hit rock bottom until section 3.4-6. I think the story starts to go downhill around the time Sierra shows up though, personally.

Edit: May I present the crown jewel:

 

I followed the first two arcs of Mixed Feelings before irl interfered and I gave it up. Is it worth picking up again? Did it develop well from that good start?

 

The thing about that butcher shit is that it ends in like a chapter. Annoying while it lasts? Sure.

 

Is anyone else reading Loaf? It's a fairly cracky story about Contessa trying to do things without her power after canon, and it's surprisingly enjoyable.

 

This is the opposite of an "almost recommendable", or maybe it's an "I wanted to reccomend something but honestly couldn't think of anything good that I read recently so instead I'll whine about it.":

Today I tried reading Ack's ... Okay, before I say anything I will admit it's maybe a bit too easy to pick on Ack, but I'm still doing it ... Anyway, I tried reading Ack's Price of Blood. I made it through two chapters. Or three. I forget! I mean, I want to forget.

I don't understand why this story exists. It opens with The King of Cliches: Female Protagonist Is [Nearly] Raped. Then it's followed by Protagonist Unconsciously Murders Hundreds. Then it's followed by hug time with Panacea, unrealistically rational Piggot, Remorseful Dad, and Hate Train Shadow Stalker.

I've written some terrible crap in my life, so I really hope Ack wakes up and realizes how cringeworthy this thing is and puts it behind him. The writing is "functional" (though not good) and he could genuinely improve if he realized this.