Charm Learning Shard (Worm/Exalted) (COMPLETED)

why must you do this to my heart

 

Bad shit happens, I get it, but bad shit happening has to have some sort of logic to it. Not just a lot of handwavium BS.

 

It’s not even handwavium from my understanding, the s9 are this plot enabled in cannon, despite all logic and reason, its not the author taking liberties. Most fanfics actually de power them or remove their plot armor power.

 

The S9 do get a supply of coupons. I'm not denying that. What I'm claiming is that they're overdrafted. They already spent one wiping out the entire E88 offscreen despite them being united with much greater combat power than the Merchants. They spent another on casually getting Taylor's ID and tracking down Danny in the ruined city somehow despite them having a distinct lack of Tattletale in the nine and them never pulling off a stunt like that in canon. Then a third on Mannequin somehow using Distracting Finger Gesture Attack to make an attack unexpected, which is also an overdraft on the Unexpected Attack account. They're out of coupons.

I know the readership of this story is long overdrafted on the right to calling bullshit when bad things happen, but come on. That's way too many plot armor coupons.

 

Can't say I'm enjoying this because I'm not but this arc is the most S9 arc out of all the worm fanfiction I've read. I feel the extremeness of the extremities in the last couple of episodes are less auteur and more the natural progression from all the shenanigans this Taylor has spread about.

Also Ylva is a lovely name and I resent that I have been cheated of a sweet wolf-childe

 

Yeah, meh. This is definitely feeling less like natural grimderp and more like rocks fall fuck all of you... I know that might sound a little silly, but that's how it feels

 

To be fair, some of them can be explained: The E88 is straight up no match for the S9. Siberian alone would be enough. Getting Taylor's ID is also possible, because Jack Slash does have that weird Thinker-cum-Master power, so he could conceivably just ping Taylor's shard and ask it about her (assuming no research was done beforehand). How Mannequin pulls an unexpected attack I don't know, so that's clearly a plot coupon or me misunderstanding how that works. The S9 grabbing Danny is presumably one as well, since they were acting really fast and Siberian was out hunting Taylor, so I have no idea how they found him, making this another coupon. The other unexpected attacks I'd also put on Jack's power telling Taylor's shard to let them through and it going "ok."

So while it's not that complete of an asspull, I will admit that the S9 was cashing in a few plot coupons there.

 

Oh don’t get me wrong my like of the story is plumetting atm. Theres plenty of grimderp worm fics, this fic was running something unique for a while but that phase seems to be over. Hopefully the magic returns and this doesn’t turn into some sort of pseudo gamer fic that just involves mindless killing and power collecting.

Author of course is welcome to write as they wish and I welcome them to it.

 

Danny was the main obstacle to Evil Taylor becoming a hero, so my theory that she'll join the heroes while the original joins the Slaughterhouse is on track.

She can even claim the original is the evil clone, and no one will even doubt her lol

 

Play stupid games win stupid prizes.

And so hopefully Taylor learned one lesson.

a contrived excuse to make her go ham but whatever.

Does she???

Yes. Jacks power will ensure it.

Taylor is too soft here compared to her canon counterpart. Weakened by grief and failure.

She'll need the amulet from faultline to throw off whatever derangement jack sticks her with.

Look at Taylor. And this story.

This baby was never going to live and you know it.

 

The thing is his power normally seems to manifest by making every parahuman around him make extremely questionable decisions such that the more powerful ones never get to the point of throwing hypersonic ceramics at him in a Mano y Mano confrontation.

In canon the guy who can fly nearly at lightspeed got caught by a bonesaw plague that slowly smoked up from the standing water on the other side of town preventing him from just blasting jack easily.
Incomprehensibly bad decision/incompetence but very much not jack standing in the street and dodging a barrage of lasers.

 

Well babies from exalted women are counted as the same as the exalted until birth. IE only outright death if the exalted mother can actually harm the kid, they have exalted regen until birth.

Betting Jack is the taboo inflicting diatribe charm.

 

What really?

Got a source for this?

Also not sure if even exalted healing can heal being made into mincemeat.

 

Jack's plot armour is influencing capes around him into convincing themselves not to take him out for some reason or another, bolstered by convincing his band of extremely deadly murderhobos to defend him enough to justify those decisions, not the ability to go toe-to-toe with an exalted in an actual fight. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of his power.

 

Yeah! It's not like Taylor has had her mind gutted is essentially just an extension of QA at this point or anything right?

 

You all know what happens to babies that are in the proximity of Taylor. C'mon, it's a well know fact that Taylor "Infantinator" Hebert has a killaura keyed specifically to small children!

But seriously, this latest chapter felt like a fucking April Fools episode. It felt like the average Wildbow retcon. It felt like a DM just saw the party roll too well on his "totally awesome and super speshul" bossfight and asspulled more hitpoints, surprise mechanics and Divine Intervention from a god who has couldn't've possibly known the fight was happening in the first place. Just took the entirety of my SoD and chucked it into the papershredder.

 

Wow. So much hate among the readers. I'm impressed.

Imo, that fits the S9 to a T. They are a horror story made real, especially thanks to Jack, which is something that is disappointingly forgotten in most fanfics. Taylor was taking it much too easily for it to last. And, honestly, given Jack's ability to spot breaking points of the parahuman he faces, it was either Ylva or Danny. Pity it must be both.

Anyway, I can't help but be fascinated by this descent into hell. Good job author, and keep going!

Only Bonesaw and Crawler left. Crawler is killable with the bad touch power, provided she doesn't want to keep him alive for later copying. As for Bonesaw... Well, I both hope and fear something like Dominion. Fainting right here might not have been the best idea, Taylor...

Oh, and, remember in canon, when Jack's trial for Cherish was to do everything again?
That right here is a perfect mirror of that. I approve.

 

Except all the complaints are about Mannequin

Jack Slash winning the straight up fight at the end was well within norms. The clown shoes was all before that.

 

Even canon Mannequin was monstrously competent. Remember that he was able to evade *every single fucking insect and traps from Taylor's powers*. Compared to that, a bit of misdirection doesn't seem outside the norm.

She can track power usage, not mind read people, especially when they have no body language.

In addition, she was letting her guard down after having been on top of the previous 3 trials. At least, I think she was.

 

Snuts right now, probably: cope, seethe, mald

Jack has no precog? WoG outright states he can arguably beat Miss "I win," meaning that either Broadcast can subvert supremely powerful precogs to where their shit doesn't work and/or can feed Jack enough info to the point where it outprecogs a precog.

Are the Nine wanked to oblivion? In some fics yeah, but they are also nerfed into the ground in others. Want to know more or less how they play out best? Read the original work.

Tay was always gonna get curbstomped because of many reasons by Jackie boy, primarily because she never went full determinator with only bug powers thus her creativity for combat has been severely stunted.

Her lack of pain resistance due to no Bakuda bomb also doesn't help.

No boxing with Brian=her knowledge of fighting without Shard support is nonexistent. Of course it'd get leaked to Jack, that's his cheat code.

Until now she's been playing on easy mode, gibbing so many powers with minimal conflict (outside the mandatory and involuntary Endbringer events), so of course she's not prepared for a fight on this scale.

Edit: Corrected my statement about Jack standstilling Contessa

 

Exalted regen entire limbs given a few weeks. That is a just a basic part of the exalted package, Exalted don't even scar unless it something they allow to happen. And the kids being counted as a part of the mother, that is just how creation works, their is a reason the exaltation is called the second breath. The first breath a baby takes is when their soul enters their body. Until then a baby is just an outgrowth of the mother. Second breath is when the exaltation enters the body.

 

Love that idea. Problem is, Evil Taylor is Mastered to hell and back. On the bright side, since Taylor doesn't care about much at all, and what she does care about has just been gutted (Lisa, the Empire, Ylva, Danny. Aisha, beware!), she shouldn't have too many problems fitting into normal society.

There is the problem that she's not allowed to learn new powers without explicit permission. Though, as has been pointed out, *whose* permission is not explicitely said...

 

Now listen, children and untwist your knickers. Considering the fate of Taylor's friends, family, companions and co-workers, I expect S9 to be reduced to S1 with Taylor being the last one standing by the end of the next arch.

 

Eeeh, i wouldn't bet on it. Snut has done an amazing job of surprising us, and other than Jack, the others are perfectly Masterable. She doesn't even really have a reason to hate them, other than Jack and Mannequin (rip) (although we haven't seen Bonesaw's trial yet...)

If Jack dies, the S9 will probably disperse, and Shatterbird go berserk. If Bonesaw dies, Siberian will be furious. As for the others, I don't think any of them cares.

Anyone cares to conjecture Bonesaw's trial? I can see a few options, something to do with Ylva (unlikely at this point, but i can see her cloning Ylva later), with Danny's corpse, depriving Taylor of powers for some time or infecting her with sth (for instance a vampirism virus or something like in canon), a trial to force her to use her shapeshifting (for instance a chemical that makes her mutate horribly like Noelle, and she has to contain the result and stay functional)...

We'd need to see what she still cares about. Other than Aisha, who she probably doesn't remember, the only thing I can see that they'd want to break would be her belief that she's better than the rest of the world? (Not sure though, that could help with being in the S9, and her self esteem is already in tatters)
Other option, does Taylor have a line in the sand, line Panacea?
Yet another option, force her to make a show of power that makes her public enemy n°1. Like mass mastering through emptiness endowment or showing that she can sort-of copy powers and shapeshift.

Something appropriately horrific would be to Hatchetface/Murder Rat the Good Dog. But that's not possible, since he became a pile of spirit metal.

... right?

 

So ever since the Leviathan fight I've felt very disappointed with the way this fic was going with lots of plot contrivance grimderp, and after thinking about it I think figured out what the biggest problem with the recent story is. It's the pacing.

Both Arc L and S had a much more slowburn feel to them with Taylor slowly learning new powers and integrating herself into cape society. They consisted of a combined 75 chapters and took place over half a year in universe. Arc B has only been 13 chapters long and has covered about a single month and has had more bad stuff happen to Taylor than Arc S and L combined. The S9 attack has been only 3 chapters so far and has had virtually everything that Taylor had or has accomplished in the story so far undone. The end result is a lot of the more recent stuff happening ending up feeling like it comes out of nowhere for no reason.

I feel like this arc, especially the S9 attack, would have benefitted a lot from better pacing. Taylor's confrontation with Jack should have been the last or near last trial not the forth or so, and there should have been a lot more interlude sections to show the rest of the Bay's reactions to the attack as well as pov's of the other nominees going through the trials. It would have made the S9 attack feel much more like an actual event and less like a meme of Taylor is suffering.

 

I agree that it's very dense. Though Jack's trial is the fifth (of seven) and imo comes very naturally at this moment.

I am also curious about the rest of the city. Taylor's just one candidate after all. Where are the 6 others? (Well, we have Flechette and Panacea. Cherish and Alec apparently killed each other. Who else?)

 

Any heroes die yet?

I'd love Taylor to fight the 9 to within an inch of her life and barely fail/win only for the heroes to swoop in and birdcage everyone.

 

The rest of your post is spot on, but this?

Nope. Jack's only advantage is Shard politics.
Unless there's a different WOG that contradicts this, read the top two comment chains.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/ll17h7/jack_slash_vs_contessa/

tl;dr - as others have said, Jack's plot armor is that the parahumans capable of smearing him get diverted via their Shards.
If Contessa was aware of this, she could Path in enough removes to nullify its influence just like actually happened in canon.

 

Yeah, it’s dense, it’s also like that in canon.
That’s why a lot of fics die after Leviathan, new state of the city, new power dynamics, S-class after S-class, etc… sclice of life fics are no longer relevant, heroes have to take care of civilians, vigilantes can’t really concentrate on small time actions against the gangs, and gang members must rebuild their power base, and Bam you still get the S9 and Echidna. After the hopekiller and the herokiller Leviathan is the plotkiller.

I think that’s why HP fanfic are so popular, the setting doesn’t really change for years. Voldemort comes back? Welcome to a new year of schooling anyway!

 

There's a variety of reasons I'm less than satisfied with how things are going, but one stands above all others in prominence: Jack Slash is just an obnoxious character to have on screen.

But yeah, Taylor not dodging Mannequin when she 100% knows he's about to retaliate for her refusal of his test is a close second.