Copacetic updated. Better quality than the previous two/three chapters.

 

I think I figured out why most Worm fics suck outside of the standard "people can't write." There's just no conflict. I'm told to read Medical, or to read Subduction, and there's absolutely nothing really clashing there. Go Gently gets somewhat of a bye for the big spoiler, but I'm getting to the point where if it doesn't cause conflict by someone realizing something's off I'm going to drop it.

I'm not saying you need action action action, hell, the best parts of Worm weren't actiony. But you need characters butting heads, working on mutually exclusive goals, and just have some bloody failures to make the successes stand out.

 

I get the same feeling from stories that start out on spacebattles. Taylor is given a cool power (or what the author thinks would be cool), conflicts are set up... then they're resolved in the lamest way possible. Nothing negative happens from the resolution, everything just goes peachy.

Take Medical, a story where Taylor gets Bonesaw's powers at a young age. Interesting premise, decent early execution, Taylor even acts like a kid. No conflict happens until Taylor gets denied the opportunity to take the first step of turning Armsmaster into a kickass cyborg. And Taylor's reaction to it is great.

Spoiler

Except the next post(/chapter/whatever spacebattles calls the little bits of story it produces) has Dragon with a body. No buildup to it, just goes from Taylor thinking of a way to use her skills appropriately, then Dragon is a person. There was potential conflict there, from Dragon working to get a body and from Taylor doing an incredibly stupid thing in the heat of the moment. But that's not what happens in these stories; conflicts get resolved into neat little bows where everything turns out fine. And if it doesn't, just wait a bit and the bad part will actually be turned into an advantage, or just won't be bad at all.

Better things to think about: Notes is still updating his sequel to Cenotaph, Working Title.
Tranquil Abyss was interesting, and original, I think, as I have no idea what the crossover is. On Her Matriarch's Secret Service is less interesting.

 

The crossover is Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, the sequel to Fate/Stay Night. Core premise is that Taylor's powers are a rip of Avenger, aka Angra Mainyu, a Zoroastrianism figure more colloquially called "All the Evils of the World".

On the off chance you're passingly familiar with FSN instead, Taylor is basically the thing that made the Holy Grail there into such a twisted abomination.

 

I know that Worm had a bit of Protagonist Centered Morality going on, but some writers take that and turn it up to 11.
The early authority figures that Taylor clashes with, like Armsmaster, Director Piggot or Principal Blackwell, tend to be written like some of the worst examples of manipulative Dumbledore.

They're not only portrayed as egoistic, obstinate and unreasonable to a borderline evil degree, but also as incompetent. That makes it much worse in my book. Taylor just gets a lawyer and easily comes out on top. If she doesn't manage it entirely on her own.

Same thing tends to happen with Sophia. In canon, she was quite good at getting away with it. In fanfiction she is either easily found out and put in juvie, or she goes completely crazy and tries to murder someone for little reason.


Like many people already said in this thread, the seemingly obligatory power testing and rating of Taylor is really tedious and boring. Bonus points if the Triumvirate show up to do that and are impressed by her awesome powers.
In canon, they never made that big of a deal out of "Thinker 7" or "Brute 5". It was just sort of done as a bureaucratic thing by the PRT to asses threats. (It's not the size of the number, but what you do with it. )
But I guess it's so close to a video game, that a lot of SpaceBattles can't resist playing with that.


Stories that I'm still particularly enjoying are the sequel to Cenotaph, Weaver Nine and Silencio, as a feel-good story. Tattletale Investigates is also quite interesting, especially since it actually features completely new story lines.

 

Read Wail of the Banshee, it'll help you get the taste out of your mouth. Armsmaster and Piggot still aren't philanthropists but they're not obvious monsters. Their behavior makes perfect sense in context. It might be my favorite Piggot ever tbh. None of this "Piggot eviscerates you for even thinking of mentioning Nilbog in her presence" stuff.

But I disagree on Sophia though. Sophia got away with it for a bunch of bad reasons like Taylor's family not being able to raise holy hell, Winslow having no cameras and such. If anyone should get caught in canon it's her. She got away with it because no one cares about Taylor. If Taylor triggers and starts making accusations (in 98% of AUs) that people will take seriously now she's fucked. (Especially if she triggers in the locker and causes an incident)

And the PRT is similarly fucked. Taylor can get a lawyer and fuck them. Once that happens they can't really win whatever happens.

Honestly, if you hate protagonist-centered morality, you should be glad that almost every Worm fic is an AU. If it wasn't watching the writers frame Taylor's later more dubious actions or her struggle against the PRT or people like Tagg would be hilarious.

EDIT: Also; Manager updated.

 

You might be correct in that.

I just feel it serves no purpose, if you start a story with that. That revenge and catharsis feel unearned at that point.

 

Honestly, I think it's also just laziness on a lot of the different author's part. Accusing Shadow Stalker is an easy way to quickly get her out of the picture.

 

I've been kicking an idea around in my head that goes the exact opposite way. Taylor takes Armsmaster up on his offer her first night out, gets into a fight with Sophia, and still no one cares. I'm thinking they get in the fight at a publicity event or something, and when Armsmaster (or Piggot, or whomever) starts breathing down their necks, Taylor tries to tell them about their history, but gets shot down.

"I don't care about what is going on between you two. You just made all of us look bad. No. Stop. I. Don't. Care. Both of you are going to bury the hatchet, at least learn to tolerate each other, and not embarrass the rest of us with your actions."

Something like that.

The rest of the story would focus on Taylor and Sophia doing just that, both in school and as capes. Tolerance leads to grudging respect, which leads to them actually enjoying working together; basically the plot of every buddy-cop movie ever. Maybe they team up with Amy and Victoria, and the four of them take out their anger on red shirts fight crime.

 

Like I commented in SB. I don't get why people care so much about Sophia and friends. She was just a small and boring part of a larger story, and I think no one would care about her if people didn't keep talking about her ton because of people endlessly analyzing the locker scene. She had her time in the Worm story and not only was it fulfilling, I can't see of a better way to use that character.

People also seem to forget the state in Taylor at the start of the story as well... being forced to work with Sophia? I think she would rather kill herself. In fact, that reminds me of a good oneshot where it dealt with what happened if Taylor killed herself after being forced to work with Sophia.

Endlessly more interesting than buddy Sophia/Taylor, if not with a few flaws.

ALSO I AM SICK AND TIRED AND THIS POST IS SLIGHTLY SOUNDING INSANE. The core post is good mind.

 

Two posts above you there's a post complaining about everyone in the PRT being idiotic assholes and the response is to make them bigger idiots and assholes?

The problem is that you can't avoid Sophia. AU+ possibly joining Wards or Need a reason to not join Wards== need to deal with Sophia.

 

There is a large difference between dealing with Sophia or a Sophia/Taylor buddy buddy cop movie.

Follow that, you can't have Taylor join the Wards with her knowing who Sophia is while she is unpunished without having the suicide option. Here are some simple ways to deal with it.

You can punish Sophia and she gets removed from story early. Free bonding points between Taylor and the wards. Just about every story uses this though.

You ignore Taylors characterization and just have her be fine with it.

Have them not learn who each other. Super contrived but it doesn't ruin any characterizations. Just ruins the suspension of disbelieve that neither of them figure out who each other are.

Then my special way I thought how this goes. Due to one of the truancy officers or whoever keeping a better eye on Sophia, she gets a warning to be nice within a few weeks of her starting to bully Taylor. Sophia is still wanting to be friends with Emma, along with the prey nonsense, but she doesn't want to be in trouble. She talks to Emma and helps her out with the bulling against Taylor, but she is not one of the core people that actively deals with Taylor.

This ends up making so Taylor is still bullied and can have the same trigger, but when she gets to the wards, she doesn't know Sophia is causing her so much grief via Emma. Then because of that, you get the fun drama of what would happen if Taylor learns that Emma is so aggressive due to Sophia. Still contrived that Taylor would still be bulled and have the same trigger and whatnot, but this is a method to enable the interactions between the two without asking some needed questions.

*Edit* See, this is more talking about Sophia. I mean to complain about how authors if they did not get lazy could work with her and keep everything in character, but what will be remembered is more Sophia talk. Screw this, no more Sophia. I'M LOVING THE NEW CENOTAPH SEQUEL.

 

If I ever write the Ward!Taylor story that's kicking about in my head, Taylor and Sophia would be forced to work together but would eventually get into a fight where both are trying to murder the fuck out of the other. It makes sense to me, because Sophia is Sophia and Taylor looked at being a cape as her escape from her shitty school life. If Sophia is there to ruin that she's got nowhere to release the tension; it'll just keep building and building until she either goes apeshit or commits suicide.

I choose apeshit because it's more appealing for me to read, but also because I see Sophia as having an effect on Taylor despite their hatred. She's vicious, cunning, cruel and ruthless, all of which Taylor learns over the course of canon. In this story it would be condensed a bit, with a bit of forced conversation leading to Sophia explaining her world view and Taylor taking in a bit of her 'if nobody sees it, it doesn't matter' approach to crime fighting.

 

Uh...I thought you were talking about Sophia's inclusion in the story in general, given that you were complaining about people giving a shit about her at all.

 

Sorry, slightly out of my mind.

My annoyance with her is simple. The setting offers so much more than Taylor joining the wards and fighting with Sophia. I just want Sophia to be used as a simple character, not a core feature of a story. Tis like the Lungs fight. One of the most overused things is the trio at this point.

 

She IS a simple character. The problem is that all fics start at the same time so you need SOME resolution to the dangling plotlines so everyone gets rid of her (and Coil) fast. If every fic finished their first big arc Sophia would probably be gone. Fanfic writers are far more willing to get rid of Sophia than Wildbow ever was. She doesn't last unless someone needs a reason to hate the PRT.

 

People, especially on SB, like to get revenge on Sophia because they were bullied nerds who never really grew out of it. In mean come on, we're talking fan fiction authors here, not going to be the most week adjusted bunch

 

<Mocking fan fiction writers on a fan fiction forum>

Bold move Cotton, let's see if it pays off for him.

 

Who best knows one than oneself?

 

Talking about things repeating themselves in Worm fanfiction, I'm getting rather tired of that in almost each and every fanfic it always have to get worse, I got enough of that in canon. I want some lighthearted Worm fanfiction damn it, anyone got any recs, I have already read Silencio.

And please don't rec me anything written by Ack, I really have no desire of reading about every female inevitably becoming lesbians or the incesty vibes some of his work gives of, It just isn't for me you see.

Thanks in advance.
Captain Trips