Up until the house was put on fire, it could have worked. I was expecting Taylor to use the stun baton (another red herring that was pointless) when she notices some type of crime and gets into a fight. She can win or lose, but the point is that could be the climax and how her wish in the end was to just improve everything since everything is terrible. Exalt then and bam decent place to lead off of.

I was amazed at the leap of logic on how she gets sold by the Mechants to Oni Lee. Everything after that was great as well, but that was the most clearcut example of lol logic I've seen. This also includes the ungodly tl:dr Exalt chapter pov that did nothing useful for the story.

Everyone has. Even Spacebattles has fully given up on the story. How rare is that one.

 

If nothing else, that wretched story is great at motivating me to write.

There is something about crap stories that get the creative juices flowing.

 

Nummm... I was expecting actual plot and decided to cut my losses :<

 

I strongly dislike Memories of Iron. Taylor has it way too easy with her tech, plans, and relationships. It's a wank fic.

OTOH, the author of Memories has released another fic, A Propensity For Wrath, that is off to a roaring start. Taylor triggers with a power that allows her to see emotions and also to empower items with her own emotions. Taylor's had a hard time, and even though things are getting easier for her, it still feels natural. In part this is because she's skirting danger and we know that the rug could get pulled from under her at any time.

Taylor has a good relationship with her father, which just feels un-Wormlike to me, but it does fit the developing situation.

Sometimes things go a little too well for Taylor, but for the most part this story has a more even keel than Memories had. Hopefully becuzitswrong can maintain the course.

 

Meh. Not really liking it to be honest. Here's a list of reasons why:

1.) Yet another locker scene, complete with vomit as the authors personal little twist.

2.) Introspective moments of being pathetic (No one's coming to save her!). I understand the world presented is fairly grim, but come on, surely by now Taylor being completely unable to defend herself for the first few chapters must have lost it's appeal.

3.) In the first chapter 'kiddo' was utilised four times. In the dialogue in that chapter Danny directed his attention to specify on her, four times. 'Kiddo' need's to fucking die, it's horrendous.

4.) The chapter ordering may as well come from a 'Worm fanfiction for dummies' book. The first chapter she gets her powers, angsts a lot, is unable to attend to herself in the most basic of ways, she still has a relative/friend looking out for her, then she experiments.

The second chapter she acknowledges that the relationship she has with her father needs fixing, the school isn't paying for shit (and like every other plot device introduced in this chapter it won't actually affect the story, it's just another few thousand words of pointless filler), they're out of money, Taylor's father is a heroic union boss. Also, more power testing (this never happens in any part of worm btw). A divergence from the normal shit that's posted see's Taylor going to school a chapter early, gets bullied some more, and Taylor steps up to a group of bullies and intimidates them, as well as a random parahumans online interlude complete with clockblocker.

etc.

5.) I just wish that the divergence point for stories wasn't what power Taylor got, from what ever random fictional universe that's been cleverly inserted to show a complete lack of creativity, but rather literally anything else.

2/5.

 

You've hit the nail on the head for me. I don't follow Worm fics any more (notes' fics excluded) because they're all basically the same story, told in slightly different ways.

 

That Supergirl!Taylor fic has gone from mediocre to bad!fic territory. And the author is hilariously sensitive to criticism.

Every conflict is resolved easily, canon is mangled, from the Behemoth fight to Saint being retarded, Moord Nag's role in her territory being completely misunderstood, etc.

I can't stand it anymore. I was reading it in the hopes of a conflict actually appearing, but nope, Taylor just effortlessely stomps.

 

Well, in the interest of providing something new for the thread to chew over, I'll commit that most heinous of sins and recommend my own story.

Provocation [Worm AU], by Orm Embar

This is a one-shot which doesn't feature Taylor (alternatively powered or otherwise) as the protagonist. I wanted to explore some aspects of an underutilized and unappreciated character, so I went with Eidolon instead. The story's set during the Slaughterhouse 9k arc preceding Gold Morning, where he's under immense stress from having been ostracized by the Protectorate and waiting for the apocalypse. In canon, he steps aside and lets the Nine become Taylor's problem. Here, she pushes him a bit too far.

There's conflict with a group of the Nine, a fair amount of introspection regarding his past and powers (consensus in the fandom is that he's terrible at using them and I felt that assumption could be revisited), interaction with Taylor, and some breadcrumbs that might eventually lead to this incarnation of him discovering the origin of the Endbringers earlier. Thanks again to notes, who I think follows this thread sporadically, for helping me clean up some aspects of this.

 

Loved that one-shot, Orm Embar. Though I thought it was only chapter 1 and was hoping for more.

 

Thanks, it's always nice to hear feedback, particularly of this kind. I did leave it open to the possibility of continuation and have some idea of how this butterfly would play out, but ultimately I touched on most of the parts of Eidolon's character that I wanted to explore, and time spent working on this is time not devoted to my own original works. Besides, non-Taylor stories don't usually get much traction on SB.

 

One story I like and haven't seen in this thread is Seed. It's an alternate power Taylor but takes place in a well thought out alternate universe where at some point in the past the Simurgh hit Boston and got it quarantined. It's completely different from canon and the author is exploring both Taylor's actions as well as the world around her. I quite like it so far, my one warning is that it's slow paced and spends a lot of time on her power which I enjoyed but its probably not for everyone.

 

It is one of the better Taylor gains a new power stories, quite enjoyable so far. Hopefully it retains its quality. I like all the differences in this AU so far and the capes mentioned and used.

I also really like Faraday by JMHthe3rd.

Basically, it is a story on how Emma and Taylor are trying to reconcile, and I really like it, if only for my fondness for bully redemption stories. And I quite like this take on Emma.

 

Excellent stuff. You really should consider writing a continuation.

Eidolon has always been one of my favourites from Worm, but I think he'll be one of the hardest to write - the nature of his powers is that he's always up to any task, and so it's difficult to find meaningful challenges for him.

At least he isn't Contessa - I'm not sure how anyone would write anything for her.

 

Excellent recommendation. The feelz are strong in this one. The writing is also very good.

 

This means a lot to me when it's coming from the person who wrote Blight Queller. I have a fondness for both protagonists who are willing to sacrifice to achieve their goals and Morrigan, so that story was like catnip to me.

Yeah, he's in the uncomfortable position of being too weak for Scion, but too strong for almost everybody else. A lot of the conflict would probably have to be social and internal; encounters capable of genuinely threatening him, like the one with Tyrant, are rare and require careful setup. Even in that situation, he still could've written off the hostages and safely incinerated the enemy. Still, with relations between Cauldron and the rest of the world being what they are, there's room for improvisation. It's a conceit of the genre that challenging fights only occur between two relevant actors; where one power fails to provide a challenge, a coalition might have more success. Taylor may yet get her Eidolon boss fight.

Also, yay, another Eidolon fan. I think that makes a grand total of two of us.

Yeah, Contessa's tough to do anything for outside of humorous one-shots wherein she stomps all of the opposition flat. The closest I've come to seeing an extended story about someone with her powers work is Agent of Cauldron (which is admittedly quite good).

 

Worm's foundation in a hundred or so half-finished short stories shows: there are lots of characters with protagonist potential. Eidolon definitely included: there are other ways to generate stakes. Any task, but not every task — and not the most important ones, either.

Think the fandom focuses on Taylor because 1.8 million words exerts a lot of gravity; think the fandom focuses on restarts because they're simpler to conceive of.

One way to move away from it being the same story, told in different ways, might be to focus on character pieces like this, and let some of them get longer by popular demand.

Can't fault the decision to focus on original work; good luck with it, will look forward to reading it someday.

 

Has anyone done a decent story centering on Faultline (like Wildbow was originally going to do?) Getting really tired of needless Exalt crossovers and countless alt!power Taylors that go nowhere.

 

Subduction is the best I have seen with Faultline's crew. Mind you it isn't spectacular.

 

I've been enjoying this as well. I think it's a pretty innovative take on Taylor's power here (which is Blasto's of canon).

It is still quite early, though. There haven't really been any challenges to Taylor and it looks like she is just steamrolling through everything. Recent chapters have me optimistic.

 

I think Worm's focus on Taylor is similar to Harry Potter Fanfiction - how many people read or write non Harry Stories and how many rewrites of the HP novels are there?

Origin Stories are kind of an established Trope of the superhero genre so unsurprising people like writing them.