1 was maybe true, but since Emma was the source and was using the info to torment Taylor, who knows.

2 was completely made up. We have no idea who was in charge of the Union at the time.

5&6 I have no idea when that happened, but it's canon.

All the rest were canon, pretty much in that order.

The joke was that it was all Taylor's fault.

 

Honestly, if we can blame the rest of the plot on a giant spaceworm fiddling with her new app while driving this isn't that far-fetched

 

The amusing thing is that Annette and Thinker died for the same reason:

Playing with her fancy new toy while going entirely too fast.

 

I lay all of Worm on Ziz. Cause when you're a giant death machine that specializes on manipulating people, and is using you as a weapon, you're fucked.

 

So I just finished Weaver Nine.

Oh my god I had a big banana grin on my face reading some of that. The old Society v. Leviathan fight, Panacea's interlude (Good Girl and momdad!), the new Leviathan fight... amazing stuff.

I'm very surprised it's not in the library already.

The other fics I've read so far have been (mostly) excellent as well, but none had as big of an effect on me as Weaver Nine- though I expect with more chapters they will come close. I particularly loved Nematomorpha. Imago of Rust and Crimson is excellent so far, but there's just not that much plot there yet.

 

When I last gave it a shot Weaver Nine was primarily from Jacks PoV with a slight interlude(?) from the eponymous cape herself. Given the title, I expected a different focus going in and was disappointed.

How similar would you say Jack is to his canon self? Has his alternate upbringing made any difference in how he act/thinks? And the same questions for Weaver.

 

Those are super hard questions to answer without going into spoilery territory, especially where Jack is concerned.

I'll put it this way, though: Jack is amazing. I love this characterization of him. I think it's fantastic.

Weaver is a chessmaster, kind of behind the scenes for the most part. She's turned the S9 from a murderous bunch of psychopaths into a slightly more controlled bunch of psychopaths with a purpose. Much like in canon she leverages the reputation she's garnered over years to make herself feared and uses that to her advantage.

The story is awesome, in the top three best Worm fanfics out there in my opinion. I highly suggest you keep reading.

 

I went through the exact same reaction. The intro chapter had me super excited for Weaver/Harbinger teaming up, and then the next several chapters were super disappointing for me being all from Jack's POV. I just didn't care at all about him.

But stick with it- there's a large chunk of non-Jack chapters, and I've actually come to really enjoy his POV (though honestly I'm still WAY more interested in what Weaver's organization, the Society, is up to and hoping for more non-Jack POVs).

I'd say Jack's characterization is very interesting and feels pretty in-line with canon. He's definitely not a character that I like (you can see from the start that he's a manipulative scumbag), but he's a character that is very interesting. Personally, I don't need to like the character who's point of view I'm reading, so that works for me. Despite hating him initially, he gets a little more sympathetic later on- you'll find yourself rooting for him at parts (edit for clarification: I still think he's a terrible person and I still don't like him though).

 

Jack is everything Taylor isn't. His relationship with Danny is more open and he concerns himself with presenting himself well to others rather than justifying his actions to himself. He's still ruthless and takes pleasure in manipulation, but he's aware of his own shortcomings and seems to be trying to channel them productively. If Taylor does the wrong things for the right reasons, this Jack does the right things for the wrong reasons.

 

I can't get into Nematomorpha. I just don't like it.
Danny is even worse than Taylor with his tendency to rationalize bad decisions. Why doesn't he run screaming to the PRT once he gets blackmailed? I can't really follow his reasoning on that.
Why is he bugging the phones of 15 year old girls? Is that how an adult reacts to bullying teenagers?
His plan in regards to Coil is about as sophisticated as the one his daughter had (in canon). But again, he is an adult with - presumably - a lot of life experience and responsibility. I just cannot empathize with him at all.
I wouldn't complain so much if he was a slightly older brother who is completely overwhelmed by the situation and reacts like that. But a middle-aged father?

 

Yeah; although W9 felt like a bit of a bait and switch, I ended up enjoying Jack so much that I was disappointed when a chapter wasn't from his PoV.

He's just a really good foil to canon Taylor; he fully understands his decisions and motivations despite being a bit of a psychopath, but he's able to channel them for good.

 

He is feeling overwhelmed by the situation, but he has his Tinker ability, which is what he's relying on to get him out of this mess. Remember that he's the head of the Dockworker's Union (or a position similar to it) and has a very good view of how corrupt/unhelpful the local politicians are in Brockton Bay. Just this last chapter he mentioned how he would put off a meeting with the mayor because it wouldn't achieve anything.

That is the view Danny has of the government at this point. He doesn't trust them, he doesn't believe they can help and he doesn't think they could stop Coil from harming his daughter. This applies to the PRT just as much, at the start of the story, because he's well aware of how many of his former colleagues have joined gangs just to pay the bills.

Spoiler

He recognises how easy it is to take advantage of the unemployed because he's seen it happen time and time again, which he leverages to his advantage later on in the fic.

All in all, Danny is in a position where he has little faith in the government or the PRT and is faced with a very serious threat to his daughter's life if he doesn't toe the line. If it was Danny's life on the line rather than Taylor's I could see him running to the Protectorate, but as it is I can find no fault with his thought processes as they apply to his character.

 

I don't see how it follows that because the government can't take care of the financial situation they must also obviously fail at preventing people from kidnapping tinkers. Huge, huge difference.

I can get why Danny did it but that's just bad thinking.

 

Characters aren't perfect. Don't expect them to be.

It's not a problem for a character to do something stupid. It's only a problem if they do something out of character.

 

Oh my, have we stumbled upon a character flaw?

 

go gently updated

http://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/go-gently-worm-wtnv.5756/page-46#post-1723623

Definitely my favorite worm fic

 

I pretty much hate it.

The reason I hate it is that the writing is very good, but this story just drips of the author trying way too hard to shoehorn whatever this crossover is (I'll admit I'm not familiar, some sort of fake radio show?) into the Worm universe.

Taylor is treated like a mushroom by her friends (Wards, who lie to her face constantly about it) and her father (Protectorate), who won't tell her what he does for a living and lets her live alone in Brockton Bay. Lung lives next door, which hasn't meant a damn thing for the story. For incredibly convoluted reasons Taylor gets attacked, triggers, and has managed to meet half the parahuman kids in the city.

The supposed mysterious figures only Taylor can see are poorly explained, as is Taylor's completely ridiculous response to dealing with them. Her power has apparently done nothing aside from compelling her to talk into an old microphone (and likely turning her into a mini-Eidolon who manifests uncontrolled murderous apparitions). It's not in keeping with a Worm power, and the author's truly cringe-worthy attempt to explain it during her trigger doesn't make it make any more sense.

Nothing has happened in this story. It seems to have absolutely no direction, and the author's statement that it starts slow doesn't forgive this. Here we have a main character in name only bumbling, alone, through poorly explained and incomprehensible things that mean pretty much nothing to the Worm setting.

If this was written any worse I wouldn't have even read this far, but damn. What is this story even about?

(And no, telling me that, "This is what the crossover material is like and you don't get it because you don't know it," doesn't excuse anything I just typed.)

 

Ehhh, that's the thing, though. The podcast this is crossed with, Welcome To Night Vale, is indeed a fictional radio show. Its gimmick in its entirety is that it's vague, menacing, and hilarious in the amount of sense it doesn't make. This is just one of those crossovers where you need to read/hear both fandoms to get it, because WTNV doesn't even make sense by itself.

That's not to say I love the fic, though. While it's being a lot more faithful to the WTNV side of things than I thought it'd be, it still has yet to capture that atmosphere that makes the podcast so enthralling. Probably because the story is a bit too lighthearted, heh.

 

Yeah, the writing is great and all, but even after I wrote that long review, things bug me. The author's explanation for the completely unrealistic treatment of Taylor by everyone is logical on the surface, but it's INCREDIBLY convenient to keep Taylor isolated from everyone. That's pretty much why it exists. Some people in the SB thread thought it was terrifying, but it's dumb, especially from a narrative perspective.

Spoiler

Why should I care about this story, about Taylor's friendship with Lung, and Emma and Sophia, when they're all mind-controlled to like and protect her?

There's no suspense or drama.

Also, the idea to choose Alec as Taylor's romantic obsession is a bad choice. Just implying it scares away all the Regent / Imp shippers, and really, Alec? I know he's attractive and apparently meant to be Carlos's counterpart, but he doesn't suit the role at all.

I hadn't noticed before Howdy said it, but there's really no plot here. The author writes child-Taylor well, but I can't see any of this microphone business leading anywhere.