Title: A Ruinous Gift
Author: Noodlehammer
Rating: M
Genre: Crime
DLP Category: Worm
Pairing: Taylor/Amy, Taylor/Emma, Taylor/Taylor
Status: Work in Progress (about 215,000 words)

Summary: Taylor Hebert had a great destiny, upon which much rested. She was also a latent psyker, too weak to ever awaken her potential. In the most critical moment of her life, these two things, combined with a plea for help made with dying faith, drew unsavory attention. A gift was given, a gift that was also a curse.

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14280314/1/A-Ruinous-Gift

This is pegged as a Warhammer/Worm crossover, but the Warhammer elements are mostly used in the setup and borrowing powers. I'm not familiar with Warhammer myself, at all, but that didn't preclude me from following along with this story at all as it takes place entirely in the Worm universe with entirely Worm characters. The short of it is that Taylor's powers are heavily influenced by some Warhammer deities and then she's let loose into the world with an altered and "malfunctioning" Queen Administrator shard.

It's similar to The Dark Path by ack1308, but in my own opinion significantly better. The writing quality is much better and Taylor doesn't start out with a cheat skill that allows her to dodge all consequences of her actions, making for a more relatable protagonist in the anti-hero role. The new additions to her powerset are explored in interesting ways, though overall it does snowball way too quickly into making Taylor nigh-untouchable both physically and emotionally, which I thought was a bit of a shame because the most interesting part of Worm for me was the struggle of someone ordinary overcoming world-ending catastrophes while losing bits of themselves in the process.

The most important part of it for me that sets it apart from other Worm AUs is that it diverges from canon immediately and doesn't bother returning. In this story, we get to see Taylor's slide from a wannabe hero to doing villainy her way and eventually spiraling into OP power fantasy, which I personally do enjoy. Interactions with other characters are a little bit flat though and the smut really comes out of left field if you're not familiar with Noodlehammer's other works, but pretty decent overall.

In general, if you're looking for a decently written power-fantasy that isn't just another canon retread and don't mind some smut, then I would recommend this story for you - 3.6/5

 

Wrong review board, this one is purely Harry Potter related.

 

sorry

 

Haven't read it because of who the author is, but I have read other people's reviews that this story definitely exemplifies all of Noodlehammer's bad traits. Most recently, this thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/WormFanfic/comments/1cw3yum/a_ruinous_gift_is_bad_actually/

 

The best thing I can say about it is that writing a story with a female protagonist has somewhat restrained Noodlehammer's misogyny. He at the very least isn't openly preaching his opinions on gender roles in this one and limits himself to expressing contempt for sex workers and all that stuff with Brian's mum. I also don't remember anything about Islam/religion in general/non-white countries being brought up, but I'm sure that's just a matter of time until Taylor starts taking them over.

If you actually like Noodlehammer's pre-radicalisation writing then he does have a One Piece Groundhog-Day fic that, as far as I can recall, doesn't actually have his vile opinions inserted in it. (It was commissioned, so I assume they asked him to leave that out). There's not even any bad smut in that one.

 

damn, wish I knew that before I recced his fic. It's really insidious how easy it is to stealth your shitty views into a story and have a non-suspecting reader just breeze through it with "this is just a little bit cringe" instead of taking it for what it is.

 

It's a Noodlehammer fic. He will not be able to stop himself from going full retard. Soon enough it'll be like an Andrew Tate video script.

 

No worries, it can be really difficult to spot unfortunately.

Noodle has been doing this shit for a while now, and he was a bit less subtle before so his reputation has spread.