That's an explanation that makes sense and one I've used before. But it also means you can't have Taylor stay out of conflict. If it fucks with your head that much, she shouldn't even get the idea (of farming insects for instance) in the first place. She should only be thinking of how to use her powers in combat.

I'd say it is.
If I had to predict the number of villains as a percentage of (visible) parahumans, I'd guess 10% at maximum. But that is not what we see in the story.
So either my model of society is really really off, or something weird is going on.
Getting influenced by your powers to go villain is one way. Being forbidden from using your powers to earn a lot of money is another. (Being allowed to use them for entertainment could be the one exception. Number Man does not come across as someone who is doing his thing completely legally. He is providing his services to villains after all.)

 

Psst. She kinda did.

Eh, yes and no. Parahumans aren't driven to being villains by their powers. They're driven to conflict, and for many it doesn't even have to be physical conflict.

The reason the parahuman population is so heavily skewed toward villains is because the people who get superpowers are, by design, those at the absolute lowest point in their lives. They are the downtrodden and disenfranchised. The rape victims and abuse survivors. The child soldiers and the societal cast-offs. The kind of people who are already inclined to lash out at the world at large and secure their own place within it. There's very little shard influence involved. It's mostly just human nature taking its course.

 

I thought about what I would do when I was teenage age and if had an experience bad enough to trigger.

I'm thinking I wouldn't need any supernatural influence to do something a bit drastic, for good or bad.

 

That Taylor didn't go Carrie still doesn't make sense to me.

 

Self discipline is a defining factor of her character and has been since the start of the story. If the bad things in her life had gone on longer or something had gone irreparably wrong with the Undersiders I could easily see her snapping and killing someone.

 

That's kind of the point.

People are having these experiences all the time in the real world right now. It's sad, but true.
But only a small percentage of them become criminals.

A gun is a kind of superpower from a certain perspective, but while some people do tragically use them, it's still quite rare in the big picture.

 

Not sure if this has been mentioned before or not, but the sequel to Cenotaph is being written on SpaceBattles.

Working Title

Edit: now here in WbA as well

 

Copacetic is looking like a mini-In Flight for me. Anyone else feeling the same thing or is it me being an idiot?

 

No, but it is way more entertaining than In Flight was.

 

Explain? I think it's kind of meh at this point; half decent writing but the plot's just not doing it for me. I don't think it's collapsed under it's own weight like IF did though.

 

It lost me the moment Taylor decided that the completely bewildered government that's trying to understand whats going on and would like her help was just trying to use her and then jumped down some poor guys throat for hitting on her. Also for actually having the gall to be angry at her father for doing the same thing she did to him and for being fucking terrified of her, which he has good reason to.

Somehow MB managed to distill everything I hate about Taylor into that one story. It also reinforced my belief that the best thing to ever happen to Taylor is her powers being taken away.

 

Question: does Taylor keep her powerless state in Copacetic or does she re-trigger with some Solar Moon Exalted shard?

 

She gets her original power so far as I can tell.

 

After she gets healed by a regenerator, her original power comes back, but it has some extras attached. It's unclear precisely what those extras are of if we've seen all of them, but from what's shown, she's able to perceive what a parahuman's power is by looking at them, even if she doesn't know they're a parahuman, and she seems to be subconsciously able to cause trigger events in people she feels strongly about.

 

Which is a power that Taylor had in canon as Khepri. In Worm we see the QA shard grow throughout the series, increasing in range, directing insects for Taylor when she's unconscious - Taylor even talks at it a few times. Copacetic continues this direction of QA's development and integration with Taylor.

That's why Taylor can tell what powers a parahuman has.

The QA shard has a more active role, and the powers that it had as part of the Entity are coming into play.

 

Eh. The reason I made that distinction is because she's handing out trigger events like candy, and the author's implied it has to do with her power. That sure as hell wasn't something she could do as Khepri, or Zion would have been a lot less of a problem.

 

My guess is that Zion exploded his shards all over everyone when he died. Now, his former administrator is activating the.

Edit: Tempted to change "when he died" to "at his climax."

 

... Fucking Tinkers updated a while ago.
http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fucking-tinkers-worm-sao-thread-2-shits-still-fucked.307068/

In true Worm fashion, things get worse before they get even worse. Presumably.

 

Working Title (the sequel to Cenotaph) has updated.

 

A couple of recent Worm fanfics from Space Battles:

A Survivor is Born (Tomb Raider 2013/Worm)

Taylor comes back from Yamatai, being the protagonist of the game's story instead of Lara, with a huge kill count and as a parahuman (the precise nature of the power wasn't outright shown nor told yet, but there is some degree of Brute and Thinker). It's from Heather Sinclair, so it's pretty good. From the backstory alone you know that it will not follow the Stations of Canon as the majority of fics on SB. And things just got real on latest update, can't wait for the next.

To Know All: Worm/Dresden Files - Archive!Taylor

Title says pretty much everything. Taylor's power is having the sum of human recorded knowledge. Pretty short and fast paced, not particularly good, with an OP Taylor efortless winning at everything. But at least she is a pure Thinker in this one, which is rare.