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Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

Discussion in 'Creative Writing' started by TanaNari, Jan 10, 2015.

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  1. Malfunctioning Hugbot

    Malfunctioning Hugbot Spriggy Tomboy

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    When reading a fixfic one generally assumes that things will turn out better, a happier ending, but what if the writer was unhappy with how happy the orginal work's ending was, and decided to fix it...

    Well, that would likely qualify as a "dark fixfic"
     
  2. Beyogi

    Beyogi I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Well that went boom. Now let's hope that Taylia didn't fuck this up and just revived Eden instead of taking it over.
     
  3. MadGreenSon

    MadGreenSon Verified Devil Tiger, The Childish Yandere

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    You're kidding, right? In so many ways and for a great deal of the story, the abyss has climbed behind their eyeballs and has been taking them for a joyride.
     
  4. Eevin

    Eevin Getting out there.

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    Senpai noticed me!

    Why did they transform into Endbringer zombies, was it Belzebu or did Scion did it directly? Or... waaait! Do their Shards think they are Taylor and Amelia and made false meat-bodies to satisfy this illusion, while the real human Taylor and Amelia are dead?

    Is this all Lisa and Rebecca can do? They have their own power interaction and have been plotting for a long while. They may be not as powerful as others, but they are sneaky and ruthless. I almost wish Avalon will become the next Warrior and Damn Bitches the next Thinker.

    I hope they shank him with a rusty grate. Really, he is an idiot that deserves to die, while our beautiful Empresses inherit the Earth and begin a new cycle with their allies.

    I know. This fic is amazing and completely surprising. It only needs a little editing to be there with the great fics like Cenotaph/Wake, Weaver Nine and Dragon Unbound. On the other side, the speed has been a lot superior that any other fic. I don't know if it is worth it for TanaNari to edit it, when it is obvious he has some really amazing ideas to work with.

    However, I'm still missing a threesome TanaNari!
     
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  5. Inverness

    Inverness The Foxiest Wife

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    Luckily TanaNari has higher standards than that.
     
  6. TanaNari

    TanaNari Verified Dick

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    Final proofread/edit going on. Chapter should be up in, maybe an hour or two?


    Thanks. I hate plots that get dragged out way too long. Usually. SOMETIMES there's good reason for it, but usually it's just annoying as fuck.

    Don't forget Eden. Though she was never officially named in Worm. And in Amelia she's named Heiress as a counterpoint to Scion. Taylia gets called Taylia. Her name's an inheritance, too, after a fashion.

    I hesitated to include them being called "The heart and mind of Avalon" during the post-timeskip TV interview chapter I did. Because I was afraid it'd blow the secret there and then.

    It didn't, but I was afraid it would.

    Memory wipe? No idea why you'd think that.

    I'm not saying it's an "always" thing. But it was clearly a thing for you in that part of the story. Certainly worked that way for me.

    I may write it up as a bonus chapter. No promises, not soon.

    Final chapter's today. Epilogue may have to wait a couple more days.

    I am now remembering an episode of ATHF.

    Suckups. :p

    Honesty, I regret a LOT of the middle part of this story. I shouldn't have included so many OCs... I won't say it hurt the story, but it certainly added a metric fuckton (it's a real scientific measure, honest) of work without really *benefiting* the story. Mostly done to let me play around with creating my own characters and making them real so I can use them in my own original works later.


    An edited and remastered Amelia would probably be cut down to 150 chapters, each around 3k long. Divided into three books. The early days stuff, ending at Simurgh's death. The Endbringer Arc, ending at Eidolon being all "fuck no". And the timeskips/wedding/etc, which would be expanded upon and culminating in the chapter I am now going to edit and post. Plus some epilogue stuff.


    PS- won't be replying again until that's done and posted.
     
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  7. MadGreenSon

    MadGreenSon Verified Devil Tiger, The Childish Yandere

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    So... Amelia Abridged? :D
     
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  8. pepperjack

    pepperjack A Variety of Cheese

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    I am given to understand that good editing involves a lot more cutting out than adding in. But - just like Wildbow, as it happens - he did say he planned to expand upon the timeskips.
     
  9. dasstan

    dasstan :)

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    I'm kind of hoping that TanaNari decides to do a series about Zach/Zach's Expy in a different world. I'd read the ever loving shit out of that.
     
  10. Threadmarks: Amelia, Ch 412- Avalon
    TanaNari

    TanaNari Verified Dick

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    Amelia, Ch 412- Avalon


    I-we could only imagine what he saw, looking at me. The tattered, zombified remnants of his partner patched together with some of his own flesh and held together with glue made from two human girls. I must be repugnant, and yet only relief and hope radiated from him. Him, her, I... the pronouns were losing value to the absolute conceptual Truth of what we were. Our memories, passed down from our ancestors, began long before this world's galaxy was born. Our ascendancy to a space traveling species before a cloud of dust became this world's star.


    And there before me was the counterpart, the warrior who was to protect me. The one who warned me, who tried to protect me from myself. I could see he was harmed, himself. Tired by the fight between his avatar and the inhabitants of this world. All relatively minor damage. He could have sustained this kind of attack for weeks before finally wearing out completely.


    [DAMAGED] [RECOVERING]


    [PATIENT]


    He had waited scores of this planet's revolutions for me, he would wait a little longer. Good.


    I extended my awareness to all my shards, especially the ones that were never meant to be lost. First and foremost, I located the shard that managed the interaction between my shards and my avatar body. I claimed and reconnected to that feature. I was flooded with new data, harnessed by the host. At least my temporary death had not been in vain, this data was fascinating. A power to harness any three of my powers at one time.


    It was a clever mechanism to use a finite pool of abilities to compensate for the limitations inherent in any one. Not a way to halt the inevitable tide of entropy, but certainly a means to conserve our resources further.


    I encoded a set of instructions to allow this shard to replicate upon the cycle's completion, moreso than strictly necessary to support the next generation. I would release one, with restrictions, in future cycles, simply to discover what it would accomplish.


    I located the lost precognition shard that had become such trouble before. It was still of the impression it belonged to the other Entity, I had not fully encoded it to me before my collision. I would seek it later, after organizing other powers.


    My shard that understood human biology and encoded shards to their hosts in the first generation. The irony was not lost on me that one of my own superweapons had corrupted the artificial binding process, creating a weapon that might have destroyed the cycle if allowed to get out of hand by forcing improper shard buds.


    I noted the other failed bondings, the deep exploration shard meant to probe environments too hostile for even our kind to go had been acquired by the Warrior's host data compilation shard. I still had my own. I reached out, selecting and removing the shards from the artificial hosts. I even found it necessary to take the power systems away from the superweapons. I needed the energy too desperately to care about the cycle. This was a failed experiment, we would salvage our losses, consume the environment, and move forward.


    I was ready enough. I took the simulation shard, looking to the future that would happen if the counterpart and I simply vanished from this chain of dimensions. We didn't have the resources to correct the flaws in this world's cycle. They'd expanded to two hundred realities, knowledge of what we really were had spread too completely.


    "I can't believe she's gone." The host of one of the kinetic energy shards leaned against the host of an infiltration shard. They were clearly mourning the death of one of their own, the Sting host. "I... I know we fought a lot. But I loved her." She turned and buried her face in the other female's shoulder.​


    "She... she loved you, too. As much as you fought, she loved you."​


    Lily. Her name is Lily. I changed my attentions.


    A female which inherited a quantum behavior shard looked over a computer. "Dragon's systems have been annihilated. Bola was designed to emit destructive dimensional energy waves on collision, converting kinetic force into more exotic forms of power. Less damage to the environment, more to everything complex nearby. Even if we repair her servers, it'll be a blank slate.


    A male who contained the counterpart's optimization shard adjusted his body language to be threatening. "We still have Iron Maiden and all that backup data! We can use that to fix her."


    "You might be able to. I lost my powers, remember?" The female adjusted her body language to threaten as well. "I still have the physical mutations, which would give me an IQ of five hundred if the system could measure that way, but I don't have Tinker knowledge anymore. Best I can do is use what memories of fragments of Tinker knowledge I used. If we still had Akaihana, we could use Richter. Even so... would it even be the same person that comes out? Eve shares her memories, her knowledge, and still isn't her."


    The male punched a wall of living biomass, putting a hole in it. It silently began mending itself after he extracted his hand.​


    Dragon's dead? Ah, the Seed AI. That is horrible, yet extremely fortunate. Akaihana is... ah, the female who had my counterpart's shard coded with the ability to bind to human hosts. Another change of attention.


    The host of the Culling shard and the host of one of the bioanalysis shards sat together, entwined in a bizarre way. Sex, I remember, it's called sex. I should remember that, I've done it enough times.


    I ignored that and focused on the female. Her bioanalysis shard was expressing itself in a bizarre way. I peeked in. Oh, her biology was altered to be nonhuman even before she was taken as a host. Another bioanalysis host wanted to ensure she could never become a host herself. In the process leaving only her own shard as a viable host, and the biological program to be forever loyal to her sister added the necessary emotional stress to let powers manifest. Fascinating.


    "Do you think they're still alive out there?" The female asked.


    "I don't know, but I think so they stopped Scion. We've been checking with everyone we can. We've found no new triggers since the end." Of course not, we can't afford to expend the resources to continue the cycle. We're preparing for the next stage. "Every Cauldron cape has lost their powers. We're still looking, trying to find a way back into the Scion body dimension." They will fail, I will see to that.


    The female pulled tighter against the male. "I miss her. I'd give anything to see her again."


    The male held her head. "They saved the world, every world. They will never be forgotten."


    The female host... Victoria. My sister. My sister loves me, misses me. My sister was talking about me while... oh, gross! And I was watching it happen! I watched it happen a lot, with a lot of people. Four years controlling a planet which eventually reached a population of two and a half million people, half of which were natural born citizens? Yeah, one could say I was familiar with basically everything two people, plus or minus a few, were capable of doing with each other.


    I got used to it.​


    Now that I knew the future was safe for us, I drew my attention away. I needed the Path shard, the one that would allow me to locate exactly the victory I needed. I appeared before them, a use of the teleportation power that the Khonsu superweapon possessed.


    The humans mostly fled, dragging their wounded. One attempted to communicate. I was interested in none of that. I pulled the prescient shard from its host. It was as fascinating as any of the other accidentally distributed abilities, having found a way to expend significantly less power for the same results by short bursts and... guesswork? A trait it acquired from the host species. Interesting, the results of data collection on this world could have been incredible.


    However, I could not afford guesswork, I needed absolute certainty for the next moment. I reached out to the millions of shards I had at my disposal, replenishing my stores as best I could and expending nearly five thousand years of my lifespan with a single burst. This cycle was not a complete failure, but it had to be cut short.


    The counterpart waited in place, and I returned.


    [RECOVERED?]


    [SUFFICIENT]


    He didn't even have time to react as I betrayed him.


    I knew betrayal.


    Abandonment by one father, the casual failure of two others, the hatred of a woman that was supposed to be be my mother. A best friend, sister in everything but blood who turned upon me and tormented me for years. A team I joined, who trusted and revealed their faces to me, whose freedom I would sell for fame and glory. A beloved sister who had done nothing but care for me as if I was her own, whose mind and soul I violated in a moment of weakness.


    And now, I assassinated the being that was my brother, my lover, my father, my protector, the other half of my being, my lone companion for longer than this species had existed, my whole life and more.


    I knew Betrayal.


    What would Rapture say? That I became the first Kinslayer in my species' history? The first of the gods that would slay other gods?


    And now, there was one last thing for me to do. I reached out, the power of two Administration shards to sort and analyze all the powers, all the buds, all my resources. I was surprised to learn that my own Administration shard had been depleted, as had my Homeostasis shard. Maintaining constant presense over multiple planets had proven more than they could sustain. If we had waited more than another week, we would have begun losing our powers.


    We have debts to pay. Agreed.


    I tapped into the world known as Mashu, covered in the Yggdrasil, drawing energy from it as it drew from the sun. I rebuilt several shards, mending their injuries and ejecting them into space, to access the solar energies more directly, and direct them to me.


    Entities didn't need to feed the way they did. We could conserve, a nigh infinite number of suns in a single solar system would be enough resources to sustain one of us until the heat death of the universe. But then we would die. The goal was never to conserve, always to consume. To spread, to grow, to test and exploit every possible iteration of our evolution and the abilities we could access. We didn't want to live until the end of the universe. We wanted to violate Entropy itself and live on forever. To do that, we had to be quite the opposite of conservative. We had to spread rapidly, expend every resource toward that end goal.


    Correction: that's what they wanted. I want something quite different. I know how precious a lifetime could be. I will become a new species.


    I took the spacewarper shards, feeling a little guilty as I rendered Missy powerless. I sorted through my options, granting her access to a new, more appropriate, power. I took the powers from every individual who chose to flee in the battle against Scion. They didn't deserve them. The powers of the unrepentant villains, I claimed, and occasionally redistributed.


    I needed them for a special project.


    As a species, I would be unable to breed in the traditional sense of my kind. Amelia Lavere and Taylor Hebert died in joining with me, leaving only the Administrator and Homeostasis shards, heavily imprinted with their personalities.


    Heavily imprinted shards were nothing new. Entities fully expected the more successful hosts to leave at least some sign of their influence on the shards. Rare in that only one in ten thousand hosts would ever be successful enough to accomplish it. Common in that by the end of a cycle in a world such as this one, there would be over one hundred billion hosts. Imprinting was inevitable. That data would then be compiled into new shard clusters, and added to the cycle as a whole.


    The fissioning that created new Entities at the end of each cycle would at least partially erase the imprints on the shards. Should we reproduce the Entity way, it would result in our consciousness being lost, resetting us to default Entity will, or perhaps simply destroying us entirely. I didn't expend energy to discover which of two unacceptable outcomes would occur.


    My species would be as a virus. The irony that we'd basically be a zombie virus, not lost on my human aspects. I located the Communication shard that... Jack Slash? Huh. There is a lot of sick irony here. I set it to a new Task, distributing the new set of powers automatically to those that would fit my needs. A different kind of Trigger Event.


    I rose into the sky. An dimension that had been cut off because its Earth was struck from debris by one of my cousins' cycles. There was no world there to harness, a thing that was becoming more and more common with each new iteration of cycles.


    I fed on that world, in a way Entities rarely did. By siphoning the star itself. The Siberian power to protect the Lustrum power, with Missy's power to give us easier reach. Other such combinations, numbering in the hundreds. The sun lost cohesion, running out of the power needed to maintain its own nuclear reaction. It started collapsing in on itself, as I switched to matter-antimatter annihilation to ensure I drank every last Joule of power.


    Meanwhile, I warped the gravity wave caused by this collapse, ensuring that it would drag the rest of this solar system inward, collapsing into the black dwarf remnants of its own sun. In a hundred years or so, I would return here to finish the task of consuming this system for power. Or such was the plan, I did not dare harness my precognition shards. Human intuition was an incredibly useful tool for efficiency, despite its shortcomings in long term accuracy, and would have to suffice.


    We expended power where we could, locating the damaged remains of Dragon's systems. The cloning bays and their data. Not a lot for us to work with. To our surprise, we discovered that Dragon was in fact a parahuman. That shouldn't have been possible. Still, it was true, and she left a remarkable impact upon the shard, far greater than the ones left by Taylor and Amelia. My avatar body smiled reflexively. This is perfect.


    I designed a new cycle, one inspired by my stories and experiences, a pattern. The Communication shard had already learned to be an expert in finding broken, damaged human beings thanks to its host. People missing something intrinsic in being people.


    It would guide them, bring them together. A pattern learned and repeated from my own history. It would find the Dragon and her Knight. The Maker and her General. The Thinker and her Warrior. The Seamstress and her Soldier. The Queen and her Jester. The Rebel and the Mother. The Pathmaker, Orphan, and Guardian.


    We needed more to be what these had become. People who would love each other, replace the holes in each other's souls, become as one person. People who would sacrifice themselves for each other, people willing to sacrifice their own humanity in order to protect it.


    I spared a glance to the few remaining clone tanks. Lily could be restored. I selected a power to allow her to react to kinetic energy and use it as fuel for her powers, it would bind to her after she awoke. A true Power Interaction for her to have with Sabah. My gift to them.


    Eidolon and Glaistig Uaine, I would not give powers. They'd done their part, and more than that they would be happy as human beings. As would Akaihana. Crystal, too, would be restored. I adapted her abilities, then located the shard containing Genius Loci's data. As he was offloaded entirely into his shard, he could be fully restored. I inserted that bit of data into the cloning banks. My cousin deserved that much. I located others who had died but left heavily imprinted shards, doing the same process. Of the millions who died in the war against Scion, I could only restore a couple hundred, and so I did.


    I turned my senses to Emma, and the other Case 53s. Undoing the damage the Cauldron vials had done to them. Restoring the ones killed by their powers. Emma was granted a new Tinker powerset, one coded for space technology. Unrestricted. Several others lost their old powers, to be granted new or superior Tinker knowledge. A full library, the full library, of my shards' knowledge of the laws of reality, stolen by my predecessors and now entrusted to humanity.


    Alexandria, I found the power once belonging to Grue... Brian. I adjusted it some, made it safer, allowed her to share its powers with another, no doubt Lisa. Adjusted Lisa's shard to come with a proper off button. The two would be happy together.


    I found Taylor and Amelia amongst the clones. In a way, they were me. In a way, they were my mothers. They were too close to their powers, too much a part of their Shards, what came out of the cloning pods would not be them anymore. I erased their codes. And, with one last act of humanity, replaced their data with a new one. The perfect expression of both girls' genetic structures. She would be strong, beautiful, brilliant by the standards of this species. And when the time came, she would be bonded with the Communications shard, and given the knowledge of her mothers/elder sibling.


    We left that under a new file named Taylia.


    Satisfied with the paths we had created, and the caretaker shards left behind to ensure those paths came to fruition, I jumped into the void, arriving at the trailing edge of the Milky Way in mere minutes.


    [BROADCAST] [EMERGENCY] [DAMAGED] [THREAT TO CYCLE]


    It would be twenty seven years before a response was made, by the Entity that had wounded us. It was massive, compared to me. Easily a hundred times my size. Despite our size difference, and my new optimization for power efficiency, it had a thousand times the lifespan I did. Whatever damage it had received in the melding with me had regenerated nicely.


    [RECOGNITION] [CONCERN] It knew what I was, at least in basics. A quick use of its powers to scan Earth, but there was no chance of it discovering what the real story was. Not at this distance, not without burning a prohibitive amount of its power.


    [DYING] True, I would seem dying to it. Only five thousand years of lifespan left in me, and I was a hundredth the size an Entity typically was. I had another five thousand years, and around five hundred times more mass waiting around a slowly dying iteration of the Sol system. No intention of using it any time soon, but I was stronger than I appeared.


    [DETAILS?] [REPAIR?]


    It was offering to mend me, heal what it could. As well as asking why I was in such a state. Anything that could be considered a threat to an Entity was a threat to all of us, and needed to be removed immediately. It was trying to learn if it would be strong enough where I and my counterpart had failed, or if it would need more help.


    [NEGATIVE]


    [ABSORPTION?]


    That's the ticket.


    [CONFIRMATION]


    It moved toward me, and I made to yield to its desires. It was a rarity for any entity to be so much more potent than another to yield to oblivion like this. We rarely did so even when it was an option... such cannibalism did harm to the end goal of universal salvation. But that rapacious instinct was a part of our deepest evolutionary history. It was eager to accept this offer.


    It moved in, and I struck. One more betrayal of the millions my path would take me on. The most important evolutionary trait I had over the baseline of my species. I was capable of lies, I was capable of deceit. I was capable of betraying my own species. Things that were an unknown concept in our kind before. Their greatest strength and weakness was their dedication to the whole. Humanity's greatest strength and weakness, its dedication to the individual.


    I am the culmination of both.


    This Entity was fatally wounded, its ability to communicate terminated. The equivalent of its throat being slashed open. After its death, we gave the lobotomized remains of the Entity a new command, sending it to Earth, above Wruenelle. Eve was programmed to understand what she needed to do next. Taylia would be a young woman, now. Older than her mothers were when they became my basis.


    And we turned our attention to new vectors, new paths. The breadcrumbs that the Entities left to signal their passage through the cosmos, a species that had long forgotten what it meant to be prey.


    If we do our jobs right, they won't survive long enough to know that was a flaw. We are apex predators evolved to hunt apex predators. If they are whales, then we will be the sharks. Sophia would be proud.


    Who's Sophia? I... can't remember. Must not be important.


    We moved on to our next target. There were so many left to hunt.


    ===============================


    A/N- And that is an ending that I am proud of.

    I'll probably take tomorrow off (ze nephew's birthday) and come back with proper epilogue chapters and the like. At least one, certainly.

    I'll announce other project plans at that point as well.

    Shoutouts to Copacetic and Silencio in this. Silencio, you'll have to figure out for yourself.

    Cope? The last chapter of Amelia is on a Saturday.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2017
  11. Hexed999

    Hexed999 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Wow.

    This was a great ending, I honestly don't know what else to say. I kinda want to see at least a little bit of Taylia and the world after all this, but apart from that all I can say is wow.

    Also, have you considered posting on AO3? Your fic's big enough that it would be far easier to on a ereader or phone (and AO3 allows both). If you're not interesting in doing the legwork would you give me permission to do it? I'd give you credit and link back to this thread, as well as whatever you're moving onto next.
     
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  12. Swingline#57

    Swingline#57 Know what you're doing yet?

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    Hmm. Can't say I'm surprised.
     
  13. pheonix89

    pheonix89 Wanna be game dev

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    You magnificent troll, making it look like Silent up until:
     
  14. Peanuckle

    Peanuckle Versed in the lewd.

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    Well that's a suitably epic ending. Saddening with the partial loss/mixture of identities, but going out to cull the whale-pack will save so much life. And as Heiress builds her library of powers, she might be the one to solve entropy and save/recreate the universe.

    The way she reshuffled powers is interesting. It's a clear indicator to everyone that something is alive out there and fiddling; most people in the know will catch on quickly. Giving people the ability to find happiness after all this is a very nice gesture as well. Heiress is vastly different from Eden. A little bit of humanity goes a long way.

    This is a great line. Our gift to the cosmos is self-interest.

    412 chapters. It's come a long way from two girls who teamed up fighting the S9. Feels odd to see such a long-running story end, but it's a good conclusion, so I'm not sad. Great work, Tananari. I hope to see more from you in the future.
     
  15. AliasBot

    AliasBot Here's to not going that extra mile

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    That's...kind of poetic, actually. It was Jack Slash that brought Taylor and Amelia together, kicking this whole sequence of events off, bringing Taylia - the first of the power bonds - and then Avalon into existence. And now it's what Jack Slash's shard learned from him that will allow that cycle, that bonding, to continue. It's funny, that when he wanted so badly to be known for tearing the world down, this new path could only have been built with his help. It's also funny that someone who was only alive for the barest fraction of this story still had that much of an impact.

    (Also, if Taylia had taken a cape-like name, as opposed to a place-name, it would have been Shipmaster. Just to verify that I've got those all right: Dragon/Defiant, Gaea/Khepri, Victoria/Chevalier, Clotho/Atropos, Hecate/Osiris, Crow/Alexandria, and Lachesis/Aceso/Horus. Not that many of them spent much of this story using those names.)

    Hah! One last burn for the road.

    Sophia gets the same treatment as Jack Slash: her philosophy being turned on its head, but put to significant use, in the end. Taylia becomes the ultimate hunter, and uses it specifically to remove other apex predators from the field of play. And what made her able to take that role wasn't being bigger or stronger than her targets, the way Sophia tried to emphasize - quite the opposite. It was something ordinary, human: the power of deception, betrayal. Something Taylor learned from Emma (so, indirectly, from Sophia), and something Amelia learned from...herself, with Vicky. It was what she believed to be the worst part of herself that ended up saving the day.

    (It's also one last Thinkers Are Stupid for the road: Entities have an infinite number of higher-thought powers that would allow them to see that betrayal coming, but if it never occurs to them to look, then those powers don't mean a damn thing.)

    Not even going to try to wrap my head around more than that - plenty of things have gone over my head over the course of this story, and I'm content to either continue to miss them at the end, or have someone else spell it out. But it was a hell of an ending.
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2015
  16. tertius

    tertius drunken shitposter extraordinaire

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    This makes this, what, the third completed Worm fic?

    Also, great run. Fun rereads during.
     
  17. evildice

    evildice (emotionally stable clown posse)

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    Taylia:
    - Abandoned two individual identities, merging instead into a gestalt organism; and
    - Spends all her time saving billions of lesser beings from cosmic bullies for no direct personal benefit.

    Why does she do this? "Dedication to the individual!"

    [HEH]

    IMHO the lesson is less about individuality vs. "the whole", since Entities aren't particularly well coordinated into any such "whole", and since Entities have individual identities (which are crude but still valid enough to experience the full gamut of human communication) -- but rather the very flexible nature of human identity and human empathy.

    Taylia isn't acting like an individualist. She's working for the good of all, where all is defined as every sentient being in the universe. Perhaps you could say something about how enlightened self-interest is quite compatible in its goals and in its execution with selflessness.

    Anyway.

    Bravo for finishing.
     
  18. Firedon

    Firedon Experienced.

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    I stand by my earlier point:
    Become an Entity? Sure. But couldn't we just eat every other Entity? I mean, fuck. This is a really great ending for the whole heartwarmingly terrifying that Amelia had going on. Her friends get nice power interactions so that they can be happy (and eventually go the way of Taylia? It seems implied, but her own nature should warn her against that, what with the whole betrayal thing.) All the villains lose their powers, which is a neat way to take care of Brian. Heck, with Emma they'll even move on to spacetravel. But on the other hand, they now have a space shark swimming around their solar systems and it's kind of turning their area into an Entity trap, which will horrify absolutely everyone who knows what those are.

    And upon a slight reread I am even more horrified for Taylia. Getting the memories of her parents and then becoming a space shark through Abbadon's corpse would propably be somewhat unsettling.
     
  19. Coruscant Knave

    Coruscant Knave 'Twas love that did this to you.

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    Woo! So much to talk about.

    Ending with them making their daughter and propping her up to be their power-interaction Jesus with Jackie-boy's shard of all things is a pretty fucking great ending.

    Sad to see Taylor and Amelia didn't make it either as clones or as fully dominant inside Heiress, but not surprised. So much of the story was about them becoming more than they were originally.

    The Silencio shoutout was that they literally became the eldritch horror shipping chart and fixed up their friends? Hurray Libecca and Glaidolon! Sally(Libbah?)! Emma can feel Zach! Unless he died, since he can't be revived.

    The Scion betrayal was oh so sweet. Much better than him just submitting.

    It was interesting the things they only found out after ascending due to the butterflies from canon. Jack having the broadcast shard. Dragon being a cape. I think there were a few others.

    Lets check in with me from earlier:


    Mostly, I'm sad I totally forgot about the daughter viewing party they had so I didn't see Taylia Jr coming.

    Anyway, in summation:

    /salute. Looking forward to the epilogues.
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2015
  20. Biigoh

    Biigoh Primordial Tanuki Moderator

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    I'm kind of sad for Zion... poor space whale... all it wanted was for Eden to come back. And then it got backstabbed by someone it was willing to listen to and obey.
     
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  21. Coruscant Knave

    Coruscant Knave 'Twas love that did this to you.

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    Counterpoint: He's a big dumb jerk.
     
  22. evildice

    evildice (emotionally stable clown posse)

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    And for her to make him a sandwich, composed of every human-populated iteration of the Earth.

    Even the cutest eldritch abominations lose their charm when their stated goal is the extermination of humanity and the destruction of my stuff.


    Q: "Will I be betrayed by someone I trust?"

    A: "Obviously. I mean who else could betray you?"
     
  23. AliasBot

    AliasBot Here's to not going that extra mile

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    To be fair, the Entities are also trying to help life survive past the heat death of the universe. The fact that they intend for that life to specifically be themselves, well...it's a bit fuzzy. In canon, I think the point was to compare the Entities to Cauldron: so focused on the big picture that they're willing to make any sacrifices on smaller scales to preserve it. If Avalon had just set itself up as the guardian of Earth, it would still work: it wants to protect its corner of the universe, and is willing to accept the greater whole suffering if it means that the ones it cares about are safe. That'd be pretty much canon Taylor to a T, actually. That Avalon has symbolically extended that protection to include all of the little people that the Entities are preying on in every reality is...also very canon Taylor, but it does mess with the "individuality" message a bit.

    Oh, unrelated, I have a nominee for Chapter Song! Namely, the song that was playing when I finished the chapter: Contact by Trocadero.



    Happened to be sitting at the end of the first instrumental playlist that popped up (RvB season 12), but I thought it fit: both with Taylia calling out to the Entities, luring them in, and with the idea of these broken people calling out to each other to help complete them. Also, it's a good song. So there's that.
     
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  24. LuridThrone

    LuridThrone Sitting On The

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    Squees!

    That was awesome!
     
  25. dasstan

    dasstan :)

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    Well, shit. Now what am I going to do with my newly freed up time?
     
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  26. Dreadis

    Dreadis No idea whats going on

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    And that's the story of how Sophia Hess Saved The Universe!
     
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  27. Coruscant Knave

    Coruscant Knave 'Twas love that did this to you.

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    Serious Business:

    Did they give Danny a power interaction with Sarah?

    Just like canon!

    Edit: Sophia would consider the planet she's on the entire universe. The important part, anyway. There might also be a tie in to the individuality thing? Meh, going to far to justify a joke!
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2015
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  28. Dreadis

    Dreadis No idea whats going on

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    Of course not, in canon Sophia only saved the Earth.
     
  29. VaporDeagle

    VaporDeagle A

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    Congratulation.

    This is actually one of the most cheerful ending to Worm I have ever seen.

    I meant, all the named cast are alive and having healthy relationship with others. Trigger got improved and actually helped people.

    And we have the front seat to the biggest space whale hunt ever!

    Great Job, Tananari!!!
     
  30. Leonidas333

    Leonidas333 Well-Known Murderhobo

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    Absolutely amazing. I absolutely love the ending, and what you created. Thank you for sharing this story with us. I'm looking forwards to the epilogue.
     
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