Title: The Othersiders
Author: Words Words Words
Rating: T
Genre: Alt-Power Alt-Universe
Status: Abandoned (130k words)
Fandom: Worm
Pairings: Lisa/Alec Rachel/Brian Lily/Sabah
Summary: In a world where all the Undersiders’ powers are swapped, Lisa and her team are saved from Lung by a mysterious cape who seems to have all the answers.
Link: SB


This is a Lisa centric story, that follows a power swapped Undersider's. The powers are not just swapped, but instead shown how that persons shard would have manifested a similar power. For example Taylor now has a thinker power that is somewhat similar to Lisa's canon power, but when expressed through Queen Administrator she gets infinite multitasking instead of Sherlock Holmes level deductions. All of the powers are imaginative and creative in how they both feel like their canon counterparts, while still having unique twists. One downside is they all seem to be a bit to powerful. Lisa especially suffers from this with not only having a striker power, but a very powerful tinker specialization.

The writing itself is functional, if not particularly inspired. I did not notice any spelling or grammar mistakes in my read through. The Lisa pov is done competently, though at times she feels bland. Taylor dominates a lot of the scenes that she's in, with Lisa feeling more like a sidekick to be given exposition to rather than as the main character. It sometimes feels as if the fic was slated to be told from Taylor perspective, but the author switched to Lisa instead of taking up the daunting task of writing a story from the perspective of such a high powered thinker.

One of the AU elements of this fic are that the shards seem to have a far more symbiotic relationship with their hosts than in canon. The power boost they receive for engaging in conflict are far more blatant and beneficial. This is a really interesting idea, that I enjoyed quite a lot. Unfortunately though it sometimes feels as if Taylor and the Undersides are the only ones aware of this. I feel that the world should have a hell of a lot more differences from canon given this.

The fic does follow a somewhat canon path with the Lung fight, the bank heist, and Bakuda`s rampage. Though given the vastly different power's the undersides have and by consequence personality's it all still feels fresh. I particularly enjoyed the solution they used to deal with Bakuda, and the far more organized Endbringer response.

Othersiders is unfortunately abandoned, and given that the author abandoned it for medical reasons it is very unlikely that we will ever see another update. What is there though is engaging and very much worth your time.

4/5





Note the summary for the fic was shamelessly stolen from Vira, I am not entirely sure if she made it up herself or if it was the author's original summary that he later deleted. I found her summary in the Almost Recommendable Worm thread while searching if the fic had been but up for review, it is much better than anything I could have come up with.