You may have already read it, but THE TECHNO QUEEN is pretty (very) lighthearted. Starts out well, falls off later on.

 

Ack is amazing. He reminds of someone that can only write fanfiction of fanfiction, so the characters are horribly off.

 

Ack? What did he write? Looked him up quickly in the Index, couldn't find him.

 

Here is a link to his ff.net profile, He is the brain behind "amazing" fics fics such as Hope comes to Brockton Bay, One More Trigger and Security,. Blergh. shit the lot of them.

 

Ack's fics all suffer from the same problem: Characters are forced to fit the plot instead of the other way around.

If he could get past that, he'd actually be a pretty decent writer. I doubt that'll ever happen though.

 

Ah, so he's kinda the Darth Marrs of Worm; huge output, limited quality?

I read a bit of HCTBB, gave up around the time when Hope resolved the Amy/Victoria issue with the same ease she fixes everything else. I never held it against him, I thought that it was a blatant,unapologetic Mary Sue plot.

 

His post-HCtBB stories are much closer to being decent stories in that they have actual plots beyond "Mary Sue Solves All Problems", but they still have zero tension because there's zero chance of him ever writing something more than mildly inconvenient happening to a protagonist.

 

"Taylor Hebert and the Stubbed Toe"

 

See, you guys say that, but then you read his shit on QQ where's it's basically Panacea Quest 2.0, except with more child porn and it's fucking hilarious comparing it to his other shitfics on SB/ff.net.

 

I read part of the "dark revenge" quest out of morbid curiosity and it kinda holds for that too. The characters are all caricatures devoid of personality, and Taylor is a thing that exists purely to have bad things happen to it. The source of conflict is other people trying to make good things happen to her, and she is able to defeat all such efforts with ease. There's still zero tension because you can still safely assume that if Taylor encounters someone who doesn't want to brutally beat and rape her, she'll persuade him/her to do it anyway.

 

I really wanted to get into One More Trigger. Emma triggers herself, and decides not to be psychotic to her best friend? I can get behind that. Even if it meant having to deal with stupid hair powers.

I got up to the point where they were making their own super team which somehow managed to include all young female characters save Shadow Stalker and Bonesaw (though maybe that was added in later), with their dads all fist bumping while admiring their daughter's media handling skills.

Still, first chapter was readable. Rest, not so much.

 

Holy crap, Fucking Tinkers just updated!

Spacebattles 3.2

Sufficient Velocity 3.2

 

A story I've read lately that I've found interesting was

Nursing a Grudge

It's set post Leviathan with Taylor on the outs with the Undersiders. I thought the interaction between Panacea and Taylor was well done and pretty believable. It has an interesting premise as well with Taylor attempt to 'Go Rogue' and use her powers for something other than 'Cops and Robbers'. Not sure about Madison part but I'm giving it a chance for now.

 

I didn't like the Madison parts; they seemed too contrived. In general, Madison redemption fics sit on a scale from Moderately Disliked to Utterly Loathed for me. They're sappy, angsty, pieces of shit.

I wouldn't mind skimming Nursing a Grudge past the point where I stopped so that I can see the "going rogue" bits you mentioned, although Taylor's often quite disappointing as a rogue. There are a lot more applications for insect control than making silk costumes, which is what she's usually relegated to.

 

That's actually who I was thinking of, when I mentioned Shadow Stalker going completely crazy in some stories.
Worst case was in Security, the SI story, where the middle aged, overweight, unpowered SI easily takes her out when she - of course - tries to murder him.

On going 'rogue':
I think you'd first need a good explanation, why it's apparently so rare in canon. What I imagined was, that competing with regular businesses as a parahuman was outlawed due to protectionist thinking. "Protecting" jobs and so on.
Otherwise I see little reason why you'd become a criminal if all you wanted was money. Just being a regular brute would mean you could at least replace a handful of unskilled laborers. That's already an upper-middle-class income right there without any risk.
There are some hints to something like it in canon, with the prohibition of Thinkers in financial markets.

 

Parian was an actual rogue in canon. She animated dolls for children plays or something.

The Number Man should have looked like a really successful rogue. The rogue all rogues aspire to be. He never (publically) gets involved, just a really good accountant.

 

Yeah Parian put on puppet shows for kids and animated mascots for store openings and stuff like that.

In Nursing a Grudge Taylor tries to go legit by offering her services as a pest control agent / rodent exterminator in the post leviathan city I thought it was interesting because there are very few stories exploring more mundane uses for powers.

I think the cop out explanation is that the shards drive people towards conflict so very few capes tend to think of using their powers for anything outside of it. Although there are references to tinker made goods and things like that.

 

It is?

/10char

 

I've got an even simpler explanation for you: The shards explicitly fuck with the host's head so that they'll get into as much conflict as possible. This does not generally leave room for the people who want to sit on the sidelines and stay out of the Cops and Robbers scene.

 

Or the Leet shard explanation: Not enough conflict makes bad thing happen to you.

Though I heard that in the PRT department quest was an explanation about how staying away from conflict causes psychological issues for the host, so Agayek has the gist of it I think.