Title: Collagen
Author: T0PH4T
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure
Status: Complete
Fandom: Worm
Pairings: Taylor/Amy, Taylor/OC
Summary: The Shaper shard and Queen Administrator shard switch places. Things butterfly quickly.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12883422/1/Collagen

Widely regarded as one of the best Worm fanfics out there, I found strange that neither its title, nor its author's name seem to show up at DLP's search engine.

Yet another (well done) alt-power wormfic, this time Taylor gets Marquis' bone-shaping skillz. It is written in first person, so you can expect lots of introspection about how getting powers changes Taylor's life and her struggles to find an independent place in the parahuman scene (she chooses to register as a rogue.)

At 180k words, it is a rather complete novel: character development, action, plenty of power fights, a sprinkle of romance, a dash of banter... all very competently written. It even has a critical author self-review as the last chapter. At heart it is mostly a character development piece, its main focus being Taylor's take on parahuman life. Some omakes can be found on the author's FF profile.

Solid 4/5, one star off because some irregular pacing and lack of a crowning moment of awesome.

Nowadays I regularly refresh T0PH4T's snippets thread at SB for some lovely slice-of-life vignettes, set up mostly in the Wormverse. Highly recommended, if that kind of one-shots floats your boat and you are not put off by the occasional gay relationship, aka slash:

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/t0ph4ts-worm-shards-thread.608557/

 

I've read this before a while back so I'll need to reread and catch up before I can review, but from what I remember Taylor's characterisation was off with her acting more socially awkward then canon and falling into rages when

Spoiler

her shop was attacked

While I did like it when reading it, I think it's far fetched to say it's one of the best worm fics out there.

 

Eh, fair enough. It appears in many of the "best of" lists out there, probably that's how I found it, hence the comment. As always, YMMV. From a search engine, complete stories sorted by rating:

https://wormstorysearch.com/?direct...g=true&sort=stories.rating&status_eq=complete

Anyway, together with the long fic I wanted to call for attention to the one-shots, too. Among other things, T0PH4T writes a wonderful Mouse Protector, all poses, heroic tropes and terrible puns. It is a mixed bag, though, not sure they deserve a thread on its own.