I Ship It

Sums it up.

 

The difference is all those people really annoyed Skitter and, as a result, the fans.

Lung...was an antagonist for a while but it was never really personal and he disappeared. Plus, he had a cool power.

Expecting any sort of moral consistency in shipping is folly.

 

I really didn't get the idea that they are being shipped in that story. Maybe the one scene that could be interpreted that way was when someone interrupted them and it was noted that they were standing too close but really, I just can't see them as a romantic pair.

Yeah, Taylor can work with enemies, but Lung is just ill-suited for that purpose. Romantically, I mean.

That said, I do like that Lung became someone she can converse with. It wouldn't work otherwise. It's either that, mindcontrol or Lung walks. There is no other way, really, for them to work together.

My favourite part of that story were the Incredibles cameos.

 

There was also the few times people have misinterpreted them as already being in a romantic relationship, such as when the bouncer and stripper at the strip club assumed she was an "old girlfriend" and when the newspapers remarked that the way Lung was carrying her unconscious body was like "husband and wife".

And there's the fact that Lung has personally saved her life several times. Seems more in character for him to be happy enough to let her die if she was too weak to survive by herself.

Those little things do give you that feel of a shipping, even though the interactions in themselves don't need to be construed that way.

 

I'm going to cheat and link three snips by the author and one quote from the authors note after said snip.

One snip with Taylor/Lungs

Second snip with Taylor/Lungs

Third snip with Taylor/Lungssss

If Dragonfly doesn't end with Lungs/Skitter, I will eat my hat or whatever that expression is.

 

Most of her Lung/Taylor snippets are crack, or like in the first case, aren't a pairing at all. I don't think the author has ever written a perfectly serious fic with Lung as Taylor's love interest, and I doubt she ever will.

 

So I was just wondering something: what's the best take on Jack Slash you guys have seen? He's one of the most interesting characters in the story, IMO, and it's rare to see him covered well.

The best two for me have to be Wake and Weaver 9. Weaver 9 Jack is a very different character then canon Jack, but I think it still stays true to his character. Wake is canon Jack, but done so well that I wish he'd survived, and maybe even recruited Taylor into the 9.

Anyone else seen any interesting takes on Jack?

 

Cenotaph.

/10char

 

I also thought the Jack Slash in Wake (i.e. sequel to Cenotaph) was excellent. Though I found it hard to understand exactly how the final fight ended.

There have been a few interesting takes on Jack Slash in one-shot snippets. One is one of the earlier Worm fanfics (the first Worm fic posted on AO3): Inverse by Glassweir. With the warning that it has (non-explicit) m/m slash elements, which you may or may not find believable.

 

That's my fault, and one of the things I periodically think about reworking. The issue is how to convey that the POV lacks her usual insect omniscience at the time. That decision was made partly in an attempt to increase suspense, partly for the the plot (no second-hand warning of the activity of the normals), and partly as a writing exercise.

Turns out it's tricky to write the POV being confused without confusing the readers also.

 

Huh, I thought it was pretty clear what happened. I'd have to re-read it though.

 

Yeah, that part stuck in my mind because I really liked it overall - your writing was very effective at getting across that confused first-person non-omnescient POV. A stream of consciousness of partial information, with Taylor's primary concern being to win the fight rather than to care about exactly why every last thing was happening.

The only frustrating part was that, as the story was currently written, I couldn't tell whether what happened was supposed to be deducible by the reader (in which case I'd go back and search for clues with a fine-toothed comb) or whether it was supposed to be left an ambiguous mystery, at least to the characters involved (in which case I could relax, secure in my interpration that it's a mystery).

So if you edit it, you might consider keeping that part the same but adding a few reflective sentences just after the fight, where the victor either (A) realizes what happened (e.g. "I saw the X by tthe shoreline. Of course. The X. The X must have Y'd at exactly the right moment to create an opening for my attack.") or (B) explicitly thinks to themselves that they can't figure out what happened (e.g. "How did I win? What gave me those crucial seconds to strike the fatal blow? ...it didn't matter. I was too exhausted to care. I won. I won, and that's all that mattered."). That way you have the best of both worlds - you can keep the genuine fog of war during the fight, plus a clear statement of realization/mystification afterward.

It's a device I've used often in my own writing. Wildbow uses devices like this on occassion too, usually to reveal the resolutions of the protagonist's 'unspoken plans' (sometimes in a one sentence, blink-or-you'll-miss-it way). This way he can get away with writing the scene full of tension and (seeming) confusion, while still having an explanation at the end so the reader can know what happened:

In the case of Foil vs Gray Boy I think wildbow's writing was pretty abrupt; a lot of readers missed what happened. I wonder if something similar happened in your case. Maybe the info is technically there, but it was slipped into the narrative in a way that doesn't jump out at the reader even upon re-reading.

 

What's there at present is

implication being three rounds from a M1911 at medium range weren't enough to penetrate Bonesaw's enhancements, but did manage to stun Jack long enough get the knife through the spine (that first half inch... and arguably through the brainstem). After that, the decapitation took a while.

Could clarify that the 'metal scabs' are bullets which failed to penetrate; could clarify that Pete's upraised pistol is the source.

Certainly wasn't helped by the epilogue being as vague as it was; that took some significant rewriting.

 

Aha, now I see! Thanks for the explanation. I can see why some readers would understand what you meant without a problem (taking Pete holding the pistol as the big clue), but other readers like me would have a different reading. The confusing part to me was actually this earlier part:

Spoiler

One moment Jack is holding Skitter underwater and she doesn't have a chance. The next moment Jack is floating face down in the water, helpless and possibly already dead, and doesn't make another move for however long it takes for Skitter to kill him. What happened here?

At first I thought, as it seemed you intended, that Pete shot him again. But the evidence was so ambiguous that I changed my mind:

- If Pete shot him, why didn't Skitter hear a gunshot? Well, she was in bad shape and underwater, so maybe she missed it? Or maybe that was the 'blood thundering in her ears'? But still...normally in this case it seemed like the author would have had Skitter hear it even if she didn't realize what she was hearing (e.g. "I heard three dull thumps ring out."). The fact that you didn't simply state it, seemed to me to imply that there might be a different explanation.

- Also, why would Pete's shots hurt Jack so much? In this scene, Jack was so limp and lifeless that he didn't read as stunned to me, he read as if he was already dead before Skitter started cutting his neck. Even after Skitter (presumably) takes several seconds to recover from her near-drowning, there's no twitching, or low groaning, or feeble attempts to resist as Skitter goes to cut him, or sudden spasm as Skitter cuts into his spine. If that was true, then Jack's state couldn't have been caused by Pete shooting him - we already know, canonically and from this fic, that Pete's shots wouldn't be able to kill Jack instantly like that. This also made me think it might have been something else.

- And if Pete's shots simply stunned Jack...well, I wouldn't have expected the stunning to be so complete for so long (a time period that read to me as being about a minute). In fact, from the way Jack acted after the first time he was shot, my reading had been that shots didn't stun him at all - that he had just been play acting the whole time. Plus in canon he took a shot to the chest (admittedly, not to the head) and was incapacitated for what seemed like less than a second. So I didn't even consider the possibility that his sudden paralysis was a gunshot-induced stunning, at least at first.

- Aha, now I see what the metal scabs meant. I had guessed they were a clue, but I couldn't tell if they were supposed to be bullet slugs or some part of Bonesaw's implants or what. Based on my reasoning above, I had thought "They might be bullet slugs, but I don't think that would have been sufficient to make Jack so helpless for so long, so there must be some other explanation".

Then I started thinking of other explanations. e.g. maybe the earlier gunshot wounds opened a hole in Jack's body cavity, and then when he waded waist-deep into the water, the saltwater went inside and messed up his organs or Bonesaw's equipment, thus paralyzing him. Or maybe when Jack went into the water where his bomb had fallen, that meant that he got a dose of the power-suppressant formula too, and that somehow interfered with his body or Bonesaw's implants, or made him more susceptible to gunfire. But I couldn't think of a clear one.

So if I had to think of a way to make it clearer to readers who read it the way I did, I'd suggest:

Spoiler

- having Skitter hear a loud sound (or three loud sounds) while she's underwater just before Jack lets go. Thus making it clearer that Jack let go because of an outside force, and making it easier to deduce that the force was a gunshot.

- having Jack show some signs of life, perhaps growing in intensity over time as Skitter recovers and tries to cut into him. Thus making it clear that Jack was stunned rather than dead.

- possibly making it clear that the first shots to Jack did stun him (rather than it all being an act). Though I can't think of a way to do this without ruining the 'just pretending' scene.

 

This exists . It's a story that starts off with Danny/Taylor sex and I couldn't get any further. Worm fandom has jumped the shark.

 

Uh, yeah. That would be Ack. He's been around for a while. Consistently prolific, consistently mediocre, occasionally weird as fuck. I'd peg Recoil (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10286919/1/Recoil) as his only readable fic, but it's pretty bland.

Actually, for all that spacebattles complains about all the underage sex that keeps popping up in the worm threads, I never actually saw much of it. While a lot of fandoms descend into shipping and kink fics pretty immediately, worm is pretty dry on that front. I suspect that has to do with the first person narrative from a female character. Not that I'm complaining, but the true plague of the worm fandom isn't sexual deviancy or even the recent CYOA trend, it's fics that get dropped before they even make it out of the first arc.

In the interest of actually adding to the thread, I'll rec Numb (http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/numb-a-worm-au-fanfiction.328810/.) Yet another Taylor triggers with another power fic, but the power is intriguing and the writing is solid. That said, it's only five chapters that all went up at once, and it hasn't been touched in the month since. I haven't lost all hope, but realistically it's probably another dropped fic. See above. C'mon author, prove me wrong!

 

It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with Spacebattles and, iirc, SV ruthlessly reacting to anything that has sex in it and those sites basically being the Worm fandom.

 

I agree that the writing is pretty good and the power is interesting, but I made the mistake of venturing into the SB comments only to find the author throwing a fit over criticism. I know that shouldn't influence my opinion on a story, but ughh, major pet peeve.

 

I gave up on reading comments after an incident where I pointed out to some guy that he had written half his story in the present tense and half in the past tense, and he flipped out and told me that was "just his writing style".