Just a Phase [Worm]

[Rymu]

Just saw that this started getting xposted here. I've been following it over on Ao3 for awhile now, and I'm glad to see it here because tbh I dislike Ao3's site for a number of reasons, but it has me wondering out of curiosity, why make the jump here now?

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It's to collect omakes.

 

[Santo]

So people could post Omakes, while Firstselector is occupied with life and make the time pass faster. No idea why it was posted here, other than so people may be able to make NSFW content.

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Probably because he doesn't wanna deal with Space Battles. Where Worm may as well be a religion.

 

[Chandrak]

No idea why it was posted here, other than so people may be able to make NSFW content.

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Given that this is not posted in the NSFW section of QQ, I highly doubt your theory is the correct one

Rather:

Probably because he doesn't wanna deal with Space Battles.

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More likely this. Plenty of people simply don't post on SB or SV because they dislike their moderation team for one reason or another. And even when that's not the case and the mod teams are doing their jobs properly, the communities themselves there can be very toxic.

Given that Implacable was one of the listed inspirations for this fic, it wouldn't suprise me if the latter is the case. Implacable had miles and miles of problems with the mods getting involved, not because of the author but because of legions of backseat-writers spewing toxicity and derails left and right.

Could be both, even. I've found SV to be generally okay to post stories on (provided you totally avoid anything even approaching NSFW), and the commenters there are usually at least civil with each other, but SB is a whole 'nother story.

 

[Qaw]

Teams are more than just people who can hit stuff with you. Like you said, Tattletale is primarily support, she figures out enemy weaknesses and tells other people where to hit.

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And she is also a liability in any action because a single punch or bullet and now you have to abandon your mission to drag out the body of your teammate out of harm's way. You either have to stick her in a bunker with a camera feed or put resources to protecting her. Or just do what happened in canon and ignore the issue.

But more than that Taylor needs friends. Right now she talks to two people semi-honestly, the Youth Guard advocate, and her mandated therapist (who's due to switch out any day now). And she doesn't even tell them everything (they'd throw a fit if they knew about "ghost").
Taylor is desperately lonely, and trapped with people she considers enemies. In canon terms, this is like if she was trapped at Winslow with a bunch of Emma's underlings, all day everyday.

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I like your reasoning. I just hope the 'I need people to talk with' and 'I can't fight on my own' propositions don't get conflated, that is all.

why would they have that in place? And by they I mean Cauldron.

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First of all, if you are replying to a long post, it helps to make clear as possible to which section you are replying.
Second, did I miss mentioning the deux ex machinas used to justify every deviation from human behavior? No, I think I mentioned them. It is not that the setup is impossible as presented, but at some point you have to ask yourself who the protagonists are. Are you writing a story about the people living in a world, or are your only actors with agency the shadowy chess-masters?

But no, I was not bringing up people who would advocate and help the independents from the perspective of worm's deep lore, but from the storytelling perceptive of 'these types of characters might enable interesting stories'. If you bring in a moderating influence you force the other factions to either be less horrible, more subtle, or more sly. And that in turn makes them more interesting and might actually make me care about them. Coz at the moment, I don't really care which one scores which victories. But I do note, that is all basically AU musings.

More likely this. Plenty of people simply don't post on SB or SV because they dislike their moderation team for one reason or another. And even when that's not the case and the mod teams are doing their jobs properly, the communities themselves there can be very toxic.

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SB has the weirdest tendency for people to clamp down on discussion by bringing up the idea of mod intervention. As if the mods have any moral authority and are like our parents and we should feel bad if they visit. What's annoying is that they don't say "I don't like 'x'" It's always "If you don't stop 'x', the mods will come".
And there is also the weird obsession with thread-locking instead of just dealing with individual actors. Because the thread is alive are wiggling and you need to shame the people for marring the beautiful creature instead of just giving out a couple suspensions/thread-bans and moving on. Which leads to bad-faith behavior from people who don't like the direction the thread is going, and so jump into the pile with low-content posts to get the thread locked.

 

[MaskedCritic]

Given that this is not posted in the NSFW section of QQ, I highly doubt your theory is the correct one
More likely this. Plenty of people simply don't post on SB or SV because they dislike their moderation team for one reason or another. And even when that's not the case and the mod teams are doing their jobs properly, the communities themselves there can be very toxic.

Given that Implacable was one of the listed inspirations for this fic, it wouldn't suprise me if the latter is the case. Implacable had miles and miles of problems with the mods getting involved, not because of the author but because of legions of backseat-writers spewing toxicity and derails left and right.

Could be both, even. I've found SV to be generally okay to post stories on (provided you totally avoid anything even approaching NSFW), and the commenters there are usually at least civil with each other, but SB is a whole 'nother story.

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I've not seen toxicity on the other forums as bad I have on this one, though. On those two, excessive toxicity gets curbed. Here? Nah, it just goes on until the person being dogpiled says to themself "no porn is worth this, if I want abuse I'll pay a dominatrix" and nopes the fuck out long enough for the subject to change.

All forums are shit, the only difference is you get to choose what flavor of shit you prefer to have smeared on you when you least expect it.

 

[Miller At the Wash]

By the point that would happen Taylor would be over 18 at the earliest.

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As things stand there is no way for any restoration of Danny's relationship with Taylor at any age. The only hope that Danny has is to start fixing himself and then trying to free Taylor from her (relationship poisoning) Wards contract before she ages out and escapes.

Taylor leaves the Wards at eighteen, she will never return to Danny unless she is aware that he has been working hard to free her, and he is going to have to climb some pretty big mountains of broken trust to get there. Starting with getting over his own issues.

 

[FirstSelector]

So people could post Omakes, while Firstselector is occupied with life and make the time pass faster. No idea why it was posted here, other than so people may be able to make NSFW content.

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Compared to SB/SV, QQ has a better community, better moderation, and better rules. After the mess of the Implacable thread, I was a bit worried, but you all have been great so far.

I have been reading the responses, but I'm traveling and so a detailed explanation will have to wait. The primary thing to keep in mind, however, is that our Earth laws and sensibilities may not necessarily apply on this version of Bet. In case it wasn't clear, Taylor is taking advantage of the panicked mishmash of laws that popped up in the wake of parahumans, so things like child custody, parental responsibility, the role of traditional agencies like CPS, and even liability laws may end up having nonsensical results.

 

[Tortoise]

The answer was obvious: Emma had been mentally ill, unresolved trauma from her trigger event. Sophia had vastly exaggerated the problem, nevermind that Emma's power revealed opponents' weak points by letting her sense their nerves.

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I think that should probably be "exacerbated", if I understand the intent correctly. The point about Emma's power is also a bit unclear. I guess something like it also makes her want to prod at weaknesses like mentioned three paragraphs above? Not at all clear when reading it though, especially as there is no direct reference to making her want to do something here, just the ability.

 

[ZeroK and Angel]

Wow, what timing, my net goes out for a day, and on impulse I check my 'slow update' folder of AO3 stories and low and behold, not only is this story updated, but it's now cross posted to one of my preferred sites, awesome all around ^_^
This comment is just going to be a broad response since it's for basically all the chapters up to this point.
Overall, I'm very much enjoying this story, so often Worm stories get so caught up in their mythos that we loose a lot of the character; but in this we are seeing a very street level Taylor who's main opposition is at a personal level that was barely addressed in the original. While I love most Taylor out-thinks the other guy stories, I am especially enjoying that she is understandably angry at how the universe is shitting on her instead of just rolling over, or the other oft seen extreme just going completely evil wrapped in a clear coating of 'they deserved it' to explain her going full sadist and calling it heroic.

 

[SlickRCBD]

Wow, what timing, my net goes out for a day, and on impulse I check my 'slow update' folder of AO3 stories and low and behold, not only is this story updated, but it's now cross posted to one of my preferred sites, awesome all around ^_^

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AO3 has had e-mail alerts for quite a few years now.
That "subscribe" button when you are logged in gives you e-mail alerts.
Subscribing to an author gives you alerts when they post a new story, but you have to subscribe to the story to get subsequent alerts, unlike Pit of Voles.

 

[apeljohn]

Having this crossposted to QQ for omakes is a very interesting choice.

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It's bloody convenient, is what it is. I am now down to one remaining author for whom I have to navigate AO3's interface.

Having just reread, I'm hoping things are only about to get worse for the ENE branch (specifically Piggot, Sophia, and Emma). I'm dying to know how Lisa being there during the Tour is going to shake out.

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There might be a fairly long fuse on that bomb, since Coil wouldn't want to force Piggot out until he's at least got the other gangs on the back foot.

I do wonder how things are going politically in BB - the last interlude was focused on Emma wallowing in angst (which was fun to read, it just didn't give much background). Is the canon plot looking for its protagonist? Have things just kept spiralling? Or has Emma been co-opted into solving the mystery of Coil? It'd be amusing to have occasional out-of-context flashes of her mid-Scooby Doo adventure as she gradually evolves into a real hero.

I can't think of anything the PRT could do to keep her there, but damn if they don't seem to realize that.

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Pretty sure Armstrong does, actually. The Wards tour was the smallest possible action he could take to "encourage" Phase and it blew up horribly. That's pretty compelling evidence he can present to the other Directors that, however big a potential asset she is, her potential as a reputational liability is far far greater. Then he can start making comments about how he'll need a bigger PR team for this and maybe all those directors pushing him to push her can chip in.

As soon as their budgets are on the line, guaranteed they all fold. With the possible exception of Tagg, but that's because the man apparently doesn't have a reverse gear.

I do understand Nebula's frustration though. "I don't want to be a hero" /goes heroing/

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Hopefully this will drive home the point: it's not that she doesn't want to be a hero, it's that - per Mr Incredible's "you're not affiliated with me!" - she doesn't want to be implicitly buffing the reputations of the psychopaths that tried to kill her.

If we're really lucky, this will also hammer into their heads why their standard response of "why is she angry at us; we're not ENE" doesn't cut the mustard. (It's starting to get on my nerves.) No, you're not her attempted murderers, nor are you the people protecting them, but you are the people whose heroic images are being used to fuel that protection. Because you're not exactly publicly denouncing them either, are you?

Especially if due to the unfuckening Danny-boy sees that forcing Taylor into the Wards was a verybad™ idea and in regaining custody extracts her from the Wards as well.

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Exceedingly unlikely to happen: Danny is invested in this, and is very much the kind of person to double down even when he's not clinging onto sanity by his fingertips. We're talking months or years of therapy for him to reach that level of awareness organically without it giving him a full breakdown. I doubt he would be willing to go for that even if he could afford it.

Ironically, the only way I can see him changing his position is with the tender loving support... of an Empire honeypot who wants to get Taylor under Kaiser's thumb. That'd be an even darker outcome than what we're seeing here.

I just hope that whichever direction you go with, you don't fall into the 'You need get a team to do things' tripe.

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Normally a team is a good idea because of the Rock Paper Scissors element of parahuman powers. Up against Grue? Best to have a Thinker. Velocity or Oni Lee? Shaker. Lung? Master or Trump (or Mover, to flee the scene). Etc etc.

However, that's mainly an issue if you can't pick your battlefields. Taylor doesn't really intend to hold territory, so a team is only useful if anyone tries to launch an attack on her secret base. And, since said "base" is actually the Wards HQ... ironically, the Protectorate are ensuring she can afford to work alone.

Given that this is not posted in the NSFW section of QQ, I highly doubt your theory is the correct one

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It moved forum whilst I was reading the comments.

 

[Rymu]

It's bloody convenient, is what it is. I am now down to one remaining author for whom I have to navigate AO3's interface.

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This is the second time I've seen someone complain about Ao3's interface. What's so bad about it?

 

[Vanbers]

Inspired by Billymorph's Implacable, meja9201's Youth Guard, 6thfloormaddness's Damsel of De-stress, Nikas's Monkeywrench Factory, and Lyrisey's Ibid.

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This might be a little out of nowhere, but could you link to these? Implacable is something I found easily, but my google-fu is too weak for the other 4 there, and if they're inspirations for this (which I enjoy greatly), then they definitely seem like the kinds of things I'd like to read.

This is the second time I've seen someone complain about Ao3's interface. What's so bad about it?

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AO3 is great for "here is the story to read", and lackluster in... just about everything else. Like if someone links a story there, it's very easy for me to actually consume the content I want, without any distractions.

When it comes to everything else about the act of actually reading/commenting/etc., it's worse than most forum sites I know of, and personally I'd even put FF.net above it, in terms of actual usability for everything bar comments.

It's the little things, kinda. Like needing 2 clicks to get from a chapter to any chapter bar the previous/next.

Also, no night mode, IIRC, which is, uh... yeah. Unless you join? I think? Which for whatever reason uses a waiting list and emails, because what the fuck. And don't even get me started on the fact that every story has every tag even remotely possible, making it nigh-impossible to find anything without resorting to black magicks and getting good at tag fuckery in the search. Because apparently in a story where both characters show up for a single throwaway line, that merits adding their pairing as a tag.

AO3 is great, but only once you have invested the time necessary to learn the deep magicks and arcane lore required to actually use the site. Once you've got actually using the site down, it's great! It's just that most people interested in fanfiction don't want their chosen reading site to have a learning curve.

AO3's interface is pretty good once you learn to use it. But people that want fanfiction just want to read fanfiction, not learn how to use the thing to read fanfiction.

 

[Rymu]

When it comes to everything else about the act of actually reading/commenting/etc., it's worse than most forum sites I know of, and personally I'd even put FF.net above it, in terms of actual usability for everything bar comments.

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Wot.

FFnet is an absolute dinosaur that is about as useful as a gun with the barrel bent back towards your head due to only be able to search for 4 characters, the genre, and the rating on top of shit site culture like banning adult content and having crazy people actively hunting it down for some fandoms to report it. Ao3's tag system isn't hard to use and most authors don't dump the tag list beyond and most of the fics that do do so are those giant complications of snippets that are rarely worth reading anyways. Those rare overeager taggers are VERY much worth the ability to actually fucking find content you want. No clue why it is that people insist on bitching about that point. Also "Learning curve" is an exaggeration as the most basic shit is just clicking boxes in the sidebar or clicking on tags you like.

 

[apeljohn]

This is the second time I've seen someone complain about Ao3's interface. What's so bad about it?

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Eh... honestly I don't have a problem with it for actually reading stories; in particular I really like the "view in one page" option, which is great if you're about to lose connectivity. However, I find the search function overly complex and generally ineffective - it has yet to find me a good fic that I wasn't explicitly looking for.

FFN may be very Web 1.0, but the "exclude Romance" option (which was implemented shortly after I sent them an email requesting it!) has a relatively high success rate for identifying fics I'll enjoy. I have yet to find a comparable option in AO3, which means I'm generally drowning in Stark/Banner slash and Dramione fluff.

And there doesn't seem to be any drive to improve that... because the slash&fluff demographic is largely the one driving AO3's popularity. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum.

(This rant is based in four or five attempts to "get" AO3, as someone who likes action plots and worldbuilding, dislikes shipping unless unless it's clearly justified in-character, and loathes "coffee shop AUs" with a fiery vengeance. If there's an entry point I'm missing, please let me know.)

 

[Rymu]

Eh... honestly I don't have a problem with it for actually reading stories; in particular I really like the "view in one page" option, which is great if you're about to lose connectivity. However, I find the search function overly complex and generally ineffective - it has yet to find me a good fic that I wasn't explicitly looking for.

FFN may be very Web 1.0, but the "exclude Romance" option (which was implemented shortly after I sent them an email requesting it!) has a relatively high success rate for identifying fics I'll enjoy. I have yet to find a comparable option in AO3, which means I'm generally drowning in Stark/Banner slash and Dramione fluff.

And there doesn't seem to be any drive to improve that... because the slash&fluff demographic is largely the one driving AO3's popularity. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum.

(This rant is based in four or five attempts to "get" AO3, as someone who likes action plots and worldbuilding, dislikes shipping unless unless it's clearly justified in-character, and loathes "coffee shop AUs" with a fiery vengeance. If there's an entry point I'm missing, please let me know.)

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The "gen" category should get you fics you're looking for if you're adamant about no shipping whatsoever. This fic is even tagged as such on Ao3. Otherwise general exclusion of categories like m/m or specific ships is your way to get out of any fics you dislike given by your specific complaints. Though I'd recommend the latter for the most part and full categories can catch a lot of stuff. Click on the square of symbols next to a fic for the little guide on most of the stuff as it's fairly useful information.

 

[BF110C4]

Omake: Compromise
(Part I)


Since the Dawn of Parahumans some of the court room's dignity had lessened as it had become more common that the gaudy dressed individuals predisposed towards violent resolution of conflict were no more limited to the defendant side but also part of the law enforcement community and occasionally the security assigned to the venue.

In that sense the fact that the only parahuman in the room was dressed on a conservative dress and not bothering with a mask was almost a relief for the honorable Senior Judge Reginald C. Lindsay.

"Well ladies and gentlemen, thankfully I cannot say this is the worst case I have seen in my career, even excluding all cases involving felonies it doesn't reach my top ten, then again the day is young and everyone here is too stubborn for their own good so we'll see if you have yet to reach a place in my personal hall of infamy."

"Now as you can see, I'm not yet wearing my fancy court robes, I'm not yet issuing verdicts and in fact this is the last step before this whole mess is remitted to the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and if it reaches that level of escalation I can assure you there are going to be no winners, just degree of suffering so let's keep this civil, open-minded and don't make me get my gavel."

"First things first. Assistant director Renick, I have reviewed the administrative punishments issued to Shadow Stalker and Ampere. While I am somewhat surprised and dismayed that the ENE missed the serious psychological issues of both ladies, I can see that you are taking measures to address your deficiencies and bringing needed support to them." Reginald saw how the brocktonite relaxed for a second even as the girl tensed in barely contained fury.

"However in the deluge of punitive and economic sanctions I found that the notice to the Brockton Bay District Attorney sending him the collected evidence as well as the recommendations for legal action were missing from the information package you send me. So knowing how overworked you are in the Bay I called my old friend the honorable Mike Garfield who kindly contacted me with the DA in charge of parahuman crimes Richard Logan. He was completely surprised that not a single document passed through his desk regarding this matter and somewhat nonplussed that the PRT would classify this kind of behavior as lesser infractions instead of the far more severe misdemeanors and felonies their actions would normally merit, not to mention the unreported breach of parole of a violent offender alongside the daughter of her sole character witness."

Seeing the bureaucrat pale as he calculated the amount of legal trouble he continued. "It took me up to ten minutes before this meeting for me to reassure mister Logan that the PRT and Protectorate know and abide to the legal limits of the Violent Parahuman Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 2001, that your office is not completely ignoring the moral duties of monitoring juvenile parahuman affiliated to the Wards Program and of the legal responsibilities of enforcing the parole of a violent juvenile offender and that filling a formal complain to the DoJ was unnecessary. We concluded that this oversight probably was an administrative SNAFU and that next Wednesday you will have the missing documents, the full evidentiary and testimonial files, as well as the result of your internal investigation for him to decide if and what charges are merited by the actions of the girls and/or their handlers."

"To lessen his concerns -and mine I should add- that before charges could be filled the Protectorate under false pretenses tried to take outside the BB DA jurisdiction the victim of a crime allegedly perpetrated by parahumans under their chain of command, I already send the deposition Miss Taylor Hebert did in front of me of her assault and imprisonment as well as her previous experiences, and likewise she assures me that she got no problem performing additional depositions as necessary for the record or in case is required testifying in any further procedures in front of a grand jury or a trial. I hope that the PRT offices of both Brockton Bay and Boston will extend every courtesy to allow her so."

"Now to the second point in the docket, the legal emancipation of the minor Taylor Anne Hebert, fifteen years old." Just like his own daughter more than twenty years ago she stood still, overcompensating for what was probably nervous fidgeting she didn't want to show. In contrast her own father was looking defeated.

"After reviewing the CPS/PRT file of the minor in question, the deposition of people of interest, the expert opinion of the designated therapist as well as the interview done with Daniel Hebert as well as Taylor Hebert, I found myself commenting on the following."

"First It should be noted that Taylor Anne Hebert age fifteen has no criminal record at the federal, state or municipal level. While she does have a disciplinary file with the city of Brockton Bay Board of Education those disciplinary records have enough irregularities, especially in regards with the evidence discovered regarding the actions of Emma Barnes and Sophia Hess, that I cannot in good conscience put a weight on them for my decision process. Of the records released by St. George's Academy they show once again no disciplinary records and a marked improvement in GPA compared to those of the last two years and approaching the grades shown during middle school."

"I find that while technically Miss Hebert is currently under employ by the Boston Wards program fulfilling the letter of the law of the requirement of having the economic means to sustain herself, she has in multiple occasions expressed the desire to leave the program as soon as is legally viable. Furthermore while her parahuman ability as described by herself and the preliminary assessment of the PRT has plenty of civilian applications both inside and outside the law enforcement community she has refused the testing of said abilities citing personal reasons, which is completely her right but it prevents her from getting licensed by the Protectorate as an affiliated hero, likewise the NEPEA-5 standards of work require a Parahuman Ability Safety Permit that the PRT is unable to issue without the proper testing."

He drank from his glass of water before continuing. "Without the use of her parahuman abilities she has shown no previous employment as a part or full-time job nor a prospective employer willing to testify his desire to hire her at a living wage; no skills that can be used to start an independent business with a realistic expectation of success, and a yet incomplete education that prevents her from earning a scholarship or grant capable of fulfilling her economic needs."

"However, what worries me the most is her emotional ability to cope with the responsibilities and stresses of independent adulthood. Her coworkers, supervisors and teachers have all expressed concern regarding her aggressive lack of socialization, occasional shows of public emotional distress and what everyone involved, even peripherally, including herself describe as a desire to sabotage all and every effort done by the PRT/Protectorate to make her feel more comfortable. Her currently assigned therapist has, within the limits of doctor-patient confidentiality, told me that he is not confident in Miss Hebert's unsupervised ability to act in her own best long term benefit at this point of time."

"My own interview with her showed me a young lady burned by the actions of former friends, school authorities, the law enforcement tasked to protect people like her and even her own family. Afterwards instead of lashing out with her own abilities or simply running away from her current situation despite finding it intolerable she decided to endure and properly study her rights and responsibilities as well as those of those who are around her."

"I sincerely commend you for that Miss Hebert, especially for the thoughtful review and application of multiple laws and regulation that are at best confusing and at worse outright senseless for those without the firm understanding of legal theory, personally a similar motivation of understanding my own rights and duties back in the time when police and public officials only selectively applied those to black people like me is what got me interested in law and eventually got me my place in court."

"But even then I can see that the actions you're taking are not only done to protect yourself, instead they are a way to stick it to the Man, and while I know more about sticking to the Man that a federal judge should, as my father used to say, make sure that when spite rans out you're not sitting on ashes nor drowning on tears."

"I find myself having serious reservations towards issuing a letter to the State of Massachusetts endorsing the emancipation. However, I do see the potential for things to improve, so show me in six months a solid answer to my concerns, and I will revisit the issue."

"Now, regarding your legal guardianship I believe that you're right about the fact that there is a serious conflict of interest with the PRT and Protectorate that needs to be addressed so…"

 

[apeljohn]

The "gen" category should get you fics you're looking for if you're adamant about no shipping whatsoever.

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It's not "no shipping whatsoever"; it's "why am I being confronted by fifteen pages of the author drooling over Draco's leather trousers?".

Click on the square of symbols next to a fic for the little guide on most of the stuff as it's fairly useful information.

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Can you recommend any particular tags or search combinations that you feel have a high strike rate for a fan of SV/SB-style fiction?

 

[Rymu]

It's not "no shipping whatsoever"; it's "why am I being confronted by fifteen pages of the author drooling over Draco's leather trousers?".



Can you recommend any particular tags or search combinations that you feel have a high strike rate for a fan of SV/SB-style fiction?

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Then you gotta exclude malfoy ships most likely. I've really not into fandoms where such character lusting is common so I can't say for that fandom how to get out of that particular bind.

Really there's not exactly tag combos to really hit that sort of filtering outside of just filtering for gen or excluding the explicit category and/or sex tags of various sorts.

Anyways I think we've discussed this enough in this thread. If you've got other questions, PM me.

 

[SlickRCBD]

This might be a little out of nowhere, but could you link to these? Implacable is something I found easily, but my google-fu is too weak for the other 4 there, and if they're inspirations for this (which I enjoy greatly), then they definitely seem like the kinds of things I'd like to read.

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• Implacable (Worm) | Page 374 | SpaceBattles
• Various Ideas Chapter 8 - Youth Guard, a worm fanfic | FanFiction
• Damsel of De-Stress Cat Fish Witch (A Snippet Thread) | Page 10 | SpaceBattles Forums
• Monkeywrench factory#3290
• Not sure on the last one, but my Google search suggests this: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/ibid.804691/

AO3 is great for "here is the story to read", and lackluster in... just about everything else. Like if someone links a story there, it's very easy for me to actually consume the content I want, without any distractions.

When it comes to everything else about the act of actually reading/commenting/etc., it's worse than most forum sites I know of, and personally I'd even put FF.net above it, in terms of actual usability for everything bar comments.

It's the little things, kinda. Like needing 2 clicks to get from a chapter to any chapter bar the previous/next.

Also, no night mode, IIRC, which is, uh... yeah. Unless you join? I think? Which for whatever reason uses a waiting list and emails, because what the fuck. And don't even get me started on the fact that every story has every tag even remotely possible, making it nigh-impossible to find anything without resorting to black magicks and getting good at tag fuckery in the search. Because apparently in a story where both characters show up for a single throwaway line, that merits adding their pairing as a tag.

AO3 is great, but only once you have invested the time necessary to learn the deep magicks and arcane lore required to actually use the site. Once you've got actually using the site down, it's great! It's just that most people interested in fanfiction don't want their chosen reading site to have a learning curve.

AO3's interface is pretty good once you learn to use it. But people that want fanfiction just want to read fanfiction, not learn how to use the thing to read fanfiction.

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I didn't think AO3 has had the waiting list in a decade. They did in the beginning, but once they opened accounts up to non-authors I thought they made an automated system like everybody else.
You have to have an account to change the colors. However once you do there are hundreds if not a thousand user-made templates and you can also make your own if you know CSS (which I don't, but have enough skill that my end-of-the-20th century community college computer programming courses combined with learning a bit of HTML 2.0 coding (Netscape Navigator 2.02 era, yes over 25 years ago) let me kludge together a mod to existing templates by editing HTML color codes). To do something like Dark Mode, go to "My preferences"->Skins panel and look at the public skins and choose one.

AO3 actually has a decent review system from a reader perspective.

The one thing they really lack is the ability to EXCLUDE slash, especially m/m pairings. The only site I can think of that does this well is Twisting the Hellmouth. Most sites make it easy to show ONLY m/m slash, but make it hard to hide it and show only the m/f or f/f pairings.
AO3 appears at first glance to support such a thing, but in fact those choices are logical AND operations, not logical OR operations. So if you check both M/F and F/F, it will only return stories with both tags.

(This rant is based in four or five attempts to "get" AO3, as someone who likes action plots and worldbuilding, dislikes shipping unless unless it's clearly justified in-character, and loathes "coffee shop AUs" with a fiery vengeance. If there's an entry point I'm missing, please let me know.)

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What are "Coffee shop AUs"? I've been reading fanfic for 25+ years and never came across that term before.
Is it like the "ordinary high school AU"?
Although we kinda have a subversion of that in Worm in that Winslow and Arcadia are nominally ordinary high school, it's just that 2+ students at Winslow have extraordinary powers, and of course Arcadia has Victoria Dallon and her wallflower sis, probably her cousin Eric, and supposedly (to the public) the Wards in disguise. Yes, I phrased it that way, since Vicky loves being the center of attention.

 

[Vanbers]

What are "Coffee shop AUs"? I've been reading fanfic for 25+ years and never came across that term before.
Is it like the "ordinary high school AU"?
Although we kinda have a subversion of that in Worm in that Winslow and Arcadia are nominally ordinary high school, it's just that 2+ students at Winslow have extraordinary powers, and of course Arcadia has Victoria Dallon and her wallflower sis, probably her cousin Eric, and supposedly (to the public) the Wards in disguise. Yes, I phrased it that way, since Vicky loves being the center of attention.

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Basically, take all the characters and special aspects of a world, keep only the superficial names/personalities/relationships, and then have them, for whatever reason, work in a coffee shop/college/be students/share a dorm/etc.

I too loathe them with a passion, if only because they just come off as so... lazy? They take everything from a work that made it interesting, or unique, and just slap characters into utterly mundane situations, but not as their powered selves, but as their powerless selves that have lived in this alternate universe without powers but inexplicably have the same life/personality/etc.

A quick google gave [THIS] which seems to sum it up well enough, but I've never used that wiki, so /shrug.

Also, thanks for the links!

 

[mattsaber]

So, she could very easily just leave them halfway in an object. But, with a bit of practice and keeping a hand on either the person or object, she could leave them merged in such a way to leave their biological processes mostly unimpeded

That being said, if you want to write a NSFW omake under the premise that her power works that way, I would not be opposed to moving the thread. Hell, I'll probably write something myself eventually that will necessitate moving to the other forum anyways!

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That would be utterly terrifying if you stop and think about it. Hopefully if she dose the first the victom would live because that would be a mess up way to die. Through probably to much work because there literally nothing stoping her from just reaching into your chest and pulling out your heart, heck with practice and knowledge of the human body. she could kill you and make it look like you died from natural causes without leaving a trace.

As for the second thing...... if it works and both mind share a body safely thats how you make OP broken cape... Kinda like Mouse protector........ but youu know sane

As for the name ghost....Its a okay natural name. Id prefered something like Specter if she decides to cut her loses and just leaves.

Omake: Compromise
(Part I)


Since the Dawn of Parahumans some of the court room's dignity had lessened as it had become more common that the gaudy dressed individuals predisposed towards violent resolution of conflict were no more limited to the defendant side but also part of the law enforcement community and occasionally the security assigned to the venue.

In that sense the fact that the only parahuman in the room was dressed on a conservative dress and not bothering with a mask was almost a relief for the honorable Senior Judge Reginald C. Lindsay.

"Well ladies and gentlemen, thankfully I cannot say this is the worst case I have seen in my career, even excluding all cases involving felonies it doesn't reach my top ten, then again the day is young and everyone here is too stubborn for their own good so we'll see if you have yet to reach a place in my personal hall of infamy."

"Now as you can see, I'm not yet wearing my fancy court robes, I'm not yet issuing verdicts and in fact this is the last step before this whole mess is remitted to the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and if it reaches that level of escalation I can assure you there are going to be no winners, just degree of suffering so let's keep this civil, open-minded and don't make me get my gavel."

"First things first. Assistant director Renick, I have reviewed the administrative punishments issued to Shadow Stalker and Ampere. While I am somewhat surprised and dismayed that the ENE missed the serious psychological issues of both ladies, I can see that you are taking measures to address your deficiencies and bringing needed support to them." Reginald saw how the brocktonite relaxed for a second even as the girl tensed in barely contained fury.

"However in the deluge of punitive and economic sanctions I found that the notice to the Brockton Bay District Attorney sending him the collected evidence as well as the recommendations for legal action were missing from the information package you send me. So knowing how overworked you are in the Bay I called my old friend the honorable Mike Garfield who kindly contacted me with the DA in charge of parahuman crimes Richard Logan. He was completely surprised that not a single document passed through his desk regarding this matter and somewhat nonplussed that the PRT would classify this kind of behavior as lesser infractions instead of the far more severe misdemeanors and felonies their actions would normally merit, not to mention the unreported breach of parole of a violent offender alongside the daughter of her sole character witness."

Seeing the bureaucrat pale as he calculated the amount of legal trouble he continued. "It took me up to ten minutes before this meeting for me to reassure mister Logan that the PRT and Protectorate know and abide to the legal limits of the Violent Parahuman Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 2001, that your office is not completely ignoring the moral duties of monitoring juvenile parahuman affiliated to the Wards Program and of the legal responsibilities of enforcing the parole of a violent juvenile offender and that filling a formal complain to the DoJ was unnecessary. We concluded that this oversight probably was an administrative SNAFU and that next Wednesday you will have the missing documents, the full evidentiary and testimonial files, as well as the result of your internal investigation for him to decide if and what charges are merited by the actions of the girls and/or their handlers."

"To lessen his concerns -and mine I should add- that before charges could be filled the Protectorate under false pretenses tried to take outside the BB DA jurisdiction the victim of a crime allegedly perpetrated by parahumans under their chain of command, I already send the deposition Miss Taylor Hebert did in front of me of her assault and imprisonment as well as her previous experiences, and likewise she assures me that she got no problem performing additional depositions as necessary for the record or in case is required testifying in any further procedures in front of a grand jury or a trial. I hope that the PRT offices of both Brockton Bay and Boston will extend every courtesy to allow her so."

"Now to the second point in the docket, the legal emancipation of the minor Taylor Anne Hebert, fifteen years old." Just like his own daughter more than twenty years ago she stood still, overcompensating for what was probably nervous fidgeting she didn't want to show. In contrast her own father was looking defeated.

"After reviewing the CPS/PRT file of the minor in question, the deposition of people of interest, the expert opinion of the designated therapist as well as the interview done with Daniel Hebert as well as Taylor Hebert, I found myself commenting on the following."

"First It should be noted that Taylor Anne Hebert age fifteen has no criminal record at the federal, state or municipal level. While she does have a disciplinary file with the city of Brockton Bay Board of Education those disciplinary records have enough irregularities, especially in regards with the evidence discovered regarding the actions of Emma Barnes and Sophia Hess, that I cannot in good conscience put a weight on them for my decision process. Of the records released by St. George's Academy they show once again no disciplinary records and a marked improvement in GPA compared to those of the last two years and approaching the grades shown during middle school."

"I find that while technically Miss Hebert is currently under employ by the Boston Wards program fulfilling the letter of the law of the requirement of having the economic means to sustain herself, she has in multiple occasions expressed the desire to leave the program as soon as is legally viable. Furthermore while her parahuman ability as described by herself and the preliminary assessment of the PRT has plenty of civilian applications both inside and outside the law enforcement community she has refused the testing of said abilities citing personal reasons, which is completely her right but it prevents her from getting licensed by the Protectorate as an affiliated hero, likewise the NEPEA-5 standards of work require a Parahuman Ability Safety Permit that the PRT is unable to issue without the proper testing."

He drank from his glass of water before continuing. "Without the use of her parahuman abilities she has shown no previous employment as a part or full-time job nor a prospective employer willing to testify his desire to hire her at a living wage; no skills that can be used to start an independent business with a realistic expectation of success, and a yet incomplete education that prevents her from earning a scholarship or grant capable of fulfilling her economic needs."

"However, what worries me the most is her emotional ability to cope with the responsibilities and stresses of independent adulthood. Her coworkers, supervisors and teachers have all expressed concern regarding her aggressive lack of socialization, occasional shows of public emotional distress and what everyone involved, even peripherally, including herself describe as a desire to sabotage all and every effort done by the PRT/Protectorate to make her feel more comfortable. Her currently assigned therapist has, within the limits of doctor-patient confidentiality, told me that he is not confident in Miss Hebert's unsupervised ability to act in her own best long term benefit at this point of time."

"My own interview with her showed me a young lady burned by the actions of former friends, school authorities, the law enforcement tasked to protect people like her and even her own family. Afterwards instead of lashing out with her own abilities or simply running away from her current situation despite finding it intolerable she decided to endure and properly study her rights and responsibilities as well as those of those who are around her."

"I sincerely commend you for that Miss Hebert, especially for the thoughtful review and application of multiple laws and regulation that are at best confusing and at worse outright senseless for those without the firm understanding of legal theory, personally a similar motivation of understanding my own rights and duties back in the time when police and public officials only selectively applied those to black people like me is what got me interested in law and eventually got me my place in court."

"But even then I can see that the actions you're taking are not only done to protect yourself, instead they are a way to stick it to the Man, and while I know more about sticking to the Man that a federal judge should, as my father used to say, make sure that when spite rans out you're not sitting on ashes nor drowning on tears."

"I find myself having serious reservations towards issuing a letter to the State of Massachusetts endorsing the emancipation. However, I do see the potential for things to improve, so show me in six months a solid answer to my concerns, and I will revisit the issue."

"Now, regarding your legal guardianship I believe that you're right about the fact that there is a serious conflict of interest with the PRT and Protectorate that needs to be addressed so…"

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this is awesome......to bad there no way Cauldren would allow it. Imagine it if Taylor somehow won it would create legal precedence. still it was very satisfyingly to read.

 

[Santo]

As for the name ghost....Its a okay natural name. Id prefered something like Specter if she decides to cut her loses and just leaves.

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Bruh, there's no way in the nine hells that the name "Specter" isn't taken by the time Taylor's caping. They've had the whole superhero shtick for like, what? Thirty years?

Spectre would be so taken it ain't even funny. XD

Also something something don't double post.

 

[BF110C4]

this is awesome......to bad there no way Cauldren would allow it. Imagine it if Taylor somehow won it would create legal precedence. still it was very satisfyingly to read.

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Why would Cauldron mess with the result? For starters they don't actually care where the parahumans are as long as they're eventually available so just like they wouldn't stop a Birdcage convoy (nor help it reach its destination) they won't bother to waste their resources in two low level capes getting a few years inside juvie, and they would care about some low level office drones from the PRT legal office even less and those are the ones getting into the real trouble when they have to go to the DA to explain why they are downgrading a felony and god knows how many misdemeanors without consulting with him. The irony is that as someone living in a town full of nazis, ABB and Merchant gangsmen he would have agreed to a deal that would kept both girls in the field if they had bothered to talk to him before this mess instead of him finding out by a Federal Senior Judge through a contact in the Department of Justice.

Plus don't forget that Taylor was the one shooting herself on the foot during the emancipation request, even with a judge that is as biased in her favor as he can get without getting sued for lack of professionalism. At this point of the fic Taylor is simply lacking both the means and the maturity required to be considered as an adult even without the PRT/Protectorate logging in their own observations. That said, if the PRT believes that the judge might be willing to give Taylor the moon and the stars Amstrong is willing to accept the Young Guard fines and punishments and unmask Taylor as Ghost, which despite not breaking any laws, moonlighting as a borderline vigilante while stubbornly refusing to do it as part of the Wards who can get her training, logistic support and backup that implies is a risk that no even James Reed would allow, and that once again shows the lack of maturity to make her own choices in an unsupervised setting.

Plus as the good judge Reggie said, at this point he is trying to avoid a long, demoralizing trial (or frankly series of consecutive trials) so he is trying to solve as many of the issues of this tangle of jurisdictions and interests as possible before taking his gavel and robes from the closet in his private chambers and start sentencing people left and right. Because at the end of the day most of Taylor's complains are that she got no voice over her destiny and the judge making sure that her side of the story is on record and already delivered to the proper authorities makes her far more receptive to the relatively gentle criticism he leveled on her about both her attitude and the doors her actions are closing.

 

[SlickRCBD]

While I was catching up on the latest postings of "Taylor Hebert: Hero of Legacy", this song came over the radio.

At first I thought it fit some of the chapters of Taylor interacting with the Protectorate who are trying to press-gang her into the Wards by framing her for blowing up her locker rather than busting out during her trigger event.
However, I think it fits Taylor's attitude in this fic far better.
Just thought I'd share. Seems an appropriate theme song for this fic.

 

[Brian1973]

Nice to see this story somewhere where Onmakes can happen. I hope for a lot of them. Just as on AO3 take some likes

To join in on the AO3 search discussion. I know that technically their search options are better than FF.net but the benefits are pretty much destroyed by authors adding so many storys that have more letters written in their tags than the actual story word count. In my opinion AO3 would benefit a lot by forceing authors to limit their tags in certain categories. So rather than just adding 50 characters please name the 3-5 characters the story will actually focus on. Alternativley I suggested to AO3 a long time ago a search option that excludes all stories that has more than x amount of tags. That would help me a lot because I avoid the tag monsters like the plague. Stories tend to be better when authors actually think about what their story is about rather than to add every theme and character mentioned shortly to the list (not to mention all those stories on AO3 that have tags for stuff the author wanted to add in some future chapter that never materialised).

So OT rant done. Just a Phase is just great and I'm always happ when a new chapter drops, but I would likley never have found it without wormstorysearch.

 

[Qaw]

To put my two cents on the tags thing, I've always preferred the tags to be user-generated rather than by the author. 99% of the time it'll be more objective, more useful to the user, and even more standardized than having the authors have to learn the whole language and lexicon to properly label their stories. But so far I don't think any other service than Steam does that, and I am still upset they sanitized the meme-tags, so I can't search for the 'nanomachines son' tag anymore.

 

[Dragonslayer Ornstein]

Yes! Fight the power! Fuck the PRT! Be your own woman!

 

[MovingTarget]

Count down until omakes outnumber story posts

 

[Lucid Lunacy]

The one thing they really lack is the ability to EXCLUDE slash, especially m/m pairings. The only site I can think of that does this well is Twisting the Hellmouth. Most sites make it easy to show ONLY m/m slash, but make it hard to hide it and show only the m/f or f/f pairings.

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AO3 now has an "Exclude" list with the same setup as the "Include" list. If you exclude M/M just be sure to go down to the character listing and exclude the "Original Male Character/Original Male Character" pairing tag, as that can slip through AO3's jumbled-ass tagging system. Praise be, I can actually search for things and not end up wanting to claw my eyes out!