Title: Save The Bay: Fixing the City with Organized Crime
Author: Stravickan Ovmahn
Rating: T
Genre: Action, Crime
Status: WIP
Fandom: Worm
Pairings: No pairings.
Summary: Taylor gets a Thinker/Striker power that lets her see, understand, and manipulate different kinds of structures she comes in contact with. This story won't be heavy on physical fights, instead based on Taylor fixing Brockton Bay in any way she can. Her trigger is very public, causing the PRT to know her identity from the start. Fight them and working with her father, Taylor will do what she can to achieve her goals. No matter what.

"I will save this city, even if I have to tear the whole thing down and build it up again as my own."

Link

Yet another Alt-Power, but by virtue of the premise it avoids most stations of canon. Taylor's power is interesting, new, and not horrifically OP. The cast is a mix of canon and original characters, but of the OCs there are none that made me roll my eyes. The prose isn't the most compelling, but it's solid work. I think I enjoyed it mostly because I was getting sick of the path most fics of this sort follow and it turned out to be a breath of fresh air. It is on Sufficient Velocity, but the story is threadmarked so you don't have to subject yourself to the comments. I rate it as 3/5.

 

Am up to date on this story and while it is still, in its essence, an alt power Taylor story with her doing whatever because of her neat powers, it isn't following the alt power Taylor formula to a T and is doing some fun things.

I'm not completely sold on the story though and it does seem to me that the story is going to run out of steam within the next few chapters, because I don't know where the end could be here, but I could be wrong of course. Still, if you want a more "business" focused Worm story rather than just fights, well, this kinda has that. Nothing amazing with regards to the characters nor were there any scenes or exchanges that were particularly memorable or remarkable, at least to me. At least there isn't anything that comes to mind outside the fact that I kinda enjoyed Taylor bullshitting about not having powers and everyone knowing she is bullshitting about that but that no one can legally prove it.

A rather generous 3/5 from me. As far as Taylor power wank stories go, it's a decent time waster but nothing special.

 

So I've been reading this and was wondering about putting it up myself. The rate of writing is good and what's there is enjoyable but I'm afraid I can't come away and think it's quality. In part, I think it has suffered from reduced quality because of the speed the updates are being fired out, reducing flow and worsening pacing even if it's clear there is the skeleton of a plot underneath the story.

Prose:
The technical ability isn't great. It's a case where you can tell if it was more spread out or more ably beta read there'd be less flagrant spelling mistakes and tense problems.

He gets his point across and it's not difficult to follow but word dropping and the sheer rate of error means I'd rate this 2/5.

World building and character:
Stravickan has a few other stories and I've read them all. The reason for this is two fold, with rate having already been discussed. The other is characters. He writes good dialogue, he writes good characters. You get a sense that other people have their own agendas and there are distinct voices between characters.

Initially in this fic I felt that there was a particularly good power in play. It had a 'wormy' feel in that it was restrictive and unwieldy but potent in the right circumstances. There's been major power creep however and what started off as a very interesting and restricted power has been munchkinned into multiple cape identities and disproportionate versatility and strength, in a way I'm beginning to find unsatisfying.

I also believe there is poor division between the author and character knowledge. Most egregiously, Taylor's first contact with the Empire where she calls medhall's front desk and gets put through to Kaiser. I never had the understanding that that was an open secret from canon.

Finally, there are a lot of complex tax and capitalist ideological points that the author wishes to discuss in this. Sometimes the story suffers from his attempt to 'subtly' discuss them through the character mouthpiece or viewpoint.

Actually lastly, although the central premise of the story is organised crime for a greater good, I feel there is little done to organically change Taylor's perspective on crime and punishment. She doesn't seem to grow into the role so much as have changed instantly and irrevocably. She's quick to maim, with no psychological conflict as a result of this behaviour or the conflict between her world view and the reality in front of her.

3/5

Plot:
Initially strong, particularly with the setback and subsequent rematch with Lung in a way that was believable and represented Taylor's strengths well. I feel there is a strong long term focus but some of the organic and not tightly focused character interactions create tangents and poorly affect the pacing. It moves fitfully and some things which should be introduced or foreshadowed with more oomph just aren't.

We appear to be in a lull at present while people consolidate, but it's apparent that post lung everything is working to Taylor's benefit and timeline and while exciting events occur they rarely are shown to inconvenience her beyond what we are told is problematic to her balance sheet, etc. Generously a 3/5.

So I guess that comes out to 8/15 or rounds to 3/5 overall. I'm still reading it, but I don't know where it's going.

 

Basically, I have to agree with everyone else above.

It's an interesting wormfic, where Taylor gets an alt-power. It doesn't seem to be following stations of canon, it doesn't seem to be bashing every character the author disliked (although Panacea does seem to be getting a bit more spotlight), and it's not badly written. Also, Taylor's power isn't just "that character I really like from something else", which is always a benefit.

But Taylor's start is pretty different than canon, and there's not much expansion on how this change happened. It just did, and now she's amoral. I mean, I can accept it in a story, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

The author has a good update rate, and a very good update amount, so it's easy to get back into the story each time. That said, there's not much truly standout about this story that isn't purely based on the plot. There's no scenes that have really stuck with me, no character interactions that I really recall. It's all just a big blob of "things that happened".

That said, the repeated links back to "you can't prove I'm a parahuman, because I trigger publicly and the law hampers you" are amusing, and the idea itself has stuck with me.

Worth a read, and not terrible. 3/5

 

I have to admit, there is one scene I believe will stick with me, which I had not seen in quite as well-executed manner before:

Spoiler

her 'defeat' of lung, initially a large and unwise mech fight, with no appreciable secret method of victory and responded to quickly by the protectorate, then the switch, I was never there all along. I've been robbing you the whole time while you've thought you were getting the upper hand. It seemed a great fit. It was a novel application, to me, of what wildbow showed us when lung fought leviathan. His lack of peripheral awareness or that some goals can't be accomplished by fighting more. I liked that scene and I'll bear it in mind whenever I encounter scenes dealing with lung fights or should I ever write my own.

 

Right on, so I read this last night. Its pretty friggin great but its definitely Taylor stomp. That in itself is pretty inherently bad but the execution of it saves it. It reads like a stomp fic, but the kind you cheer for and go along with. The plot is inherently unique for sure, very few Rogue style Taylor fics and such.

So like 1 point for a unique plot, 1 point for good execution, 1 point for a good update rate, 1 point for good writing but a point off for being stomp.

3/5