Charm Learning Shard (Worm/Exalted) (COMPLETED)

[Whitesnake Pelinal]

To create hate incidents to both gauge the new cape's powers and justify being harsh on them once he takes over the PRT. Though the wording is extremely sus but that might just be cause I never heard the saying before. Is it a more extreme version of ''an eye for an eye''?

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The scene is suspect, but there's also a Doylist explanation. In wormfic, when Taylor goes out to find trouble, she routinely finds skinheads assaulting minorities and lesbians. It stands to reason that in this grim derp world of 2011, Empire!Taylor runs into minorities assaulting whites.

 

[Alucard 109]

The scene is suspect, but there's also a Doylist explanation. In wormfic, when Taylor goes out to find trouble, she routinely finds skinheads assaulting minorities and lesbians. It stands to reason that in this grim derp world of 2011, Empire!Taylor runs into minorities assaulting whites.

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Well, the *wording* is also suspect. "Vengeance threefold" is an *old* concept. One with European pagan origins, as far as I'm aware. It's not the sort of thing that the average layman would know, I don't think. But it *is* the sort of thing the viking/norse obsessed Empire members would say.

 

[Paralein]

Yeah, "Vengeance threefold" made me go "huh?" too. That's some really weird wording. Although I'm a bit dubious about the "it's a Coil plot" theory.

I have to admit that I only read parts of Worm, but weren't pretty much all of his helpers (except the parahumans) male?

Also, the woman using weird wording implies that there's something special about her, not her employer. Wouldn't a detail-oriented control freak like Coil make sure to use someone normal and inconspicuous for a plan like this? After all, he does not need a minion who willingly goes along with getting mutilated - he can just use his power to make things work out alright for him. Unless there's AU elements we don't know about in play, of course.

Regarding the wording itself, it being something that fits someone with a pagan/viking background could fit. But it's also definitely something I could see someone coming from an Exalted-related background say...

Though that's maybe just my wishful thinking talking. I think Exalted is an interesting setting, I would enjoy more elements crossing over.

 

[omni001]

Or the simple explanation could just be that when a crime is committed in E88 territory there's an above average chance that person is either affiliated towards the E88 even if it's just as a casual supporter, or picked up a bunch of Norse lore through cultural osmosis.

 

[Paralein]

That's certainly the more realistic but also much more boring explanation.

 

[Waterfly]

Also, the woman using weird wording implies that there's something special about her, not her employer. Wouldn't a detail-oriented control freak like Coil make sure to use someone normal and inconspicuous for a plan like this? After all, he does not need a minion who willingly goes along with getting mutilated - he can just use his power to make things work out alright for him. Unless there's AU elements we don't know about in play, of course.

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Why would he need the woman to work for him? Any white person within earshot of Taylor would do. If the point is to get dirt on Taylor for later use. Things to leak to the media or intel to get the Protectorate to prioritize her, then a record of her dog kidnapping the minority is all he'd need. We see plenty of that kind of media manipulation so it isn't a far stretch that Coil would utilize it. Hell the minion doesn't even need to be willing, only rendered compliant enough to go trough with it. Bribery, blackmail or simply egging someone on to do it while abusing his timeline power would do the trick.

 

[Daniel Snuts]

You feel a lot better the next morning, at least physically/spiritually. You're not dying of soul hemorrhage, you mean. Your soul still hurts... but less so than last night, and you're able to turn sorcerer's sight back on without issue. Mentally you're still lamenting Uber's death (and everyone else who died you guess, but you didn't know any of them personally). The few pieces of unsafe-to-use tinkertech you were able to salvage from their lair is scant consolation.

You debate dragging yourself out of bed, but settle for browsing the internet on your phone instead, to see how people are reacting to last night's events. You don't really know why you bothered. It's exactly the mix of awed, horrified and celebratory you'd expect. Though you imagine the heroes must be quietly shitting enough bricks to build another headquarters, because there's basically no way the amethyst bomb wasn't intended to be set off next to their current one.

The PRT have been working overnight, using live mice and very long poles to determine the exact shape of the effect (perfectly circular - or rather, as some rodent-dangling drone flights demonstrated, spherical) and cordon off the area. No timetable for any solution, or even recovery of the bodies, because unmanned vehicles that enter the area stop working as surely as the streetlights did.

You could maybe help analyze the effect - if you were ever going close to that area ever again, which you're not. Instead you make a throwaway account and describe how you felt really sick after being close to the boundary - there must be all sorts of horrible radiation going on that they're not telling you about, best keep your distance. It sets off a minor panic among everyone who doesn't call you a hypochondriac conspiracy theorist, which is the intended effect. The fewer people who expose themselves to whatever-it-is the better.

But the world doesn't stop moving just because a huge tragedy happens, and you've got powers to steal. Luke is very understanding of your low spirits - a lot of people died, some of whom you knew personally. You do your best to ensure it doesn't affect his enjoyment of your time together.

The thought occurs to you that you could perhaps ask about some of the things you're curious about now. You do know each other quite well now, so to speak.

Tomorrow, you decide. You'll bring the matter of his origins up tomorrow.

---

"Luke?"

"Yeah?"

"You know I'm a Thinker."

"Boy do I." He reaches over and affectionately gropes your butt.

"Stop that. No, it's fine, you can continue. I mean, I'm a bit of a regular Thinker as well. I can sort of tell when someone has a big secret."

His groping hand freezes in place. "Oh."

"I don't get... details. I'm just asking... Do you want to talk about it?"

He sighs, lets go of you and sits up in bed, hugging his knees. "I don't know."

"That's alright."

"I suppose I'd have to tell you sooner or later, if I didn't want to be the worst scumbag on earth." He sighs again. "Yeah, I'll talk about it. I was in Madison during the attack, way past the safe limits. I had to escape the containment zone afterwards."

What!?

He closes his eyes and turns away after seeing you recoil in surprise, only to startle in turn when he feels you cuddling up to him from behind, resting your head on his shoulder.

"Poor boy." You know exactly how he feels. You'd like to pretend that you don't hesitate before offering him the truth about Simurgh victims, but you do, just a little bit. It would be very dangerous if the wrong people found out that Quicksilver knows it. "Do you want to know a terrible secret that almost no one knows? It will make you feel a little bit better, and a whole lot worse."

He considers that for a while. "So overall, it will make me feel worse?"

"Almost certainly."

"Then no." You just nod, and keep hugging him. "Out of curiosity though, when you say that almost no one knows..?"

"You'd have been the third person on earth to find out."

After another period of silence he starts telling his story - incidentally revealing his interdimensional origins. "See, that's the secret I thought I was talking about!" you say, with somewhat strained levity. When he describes the scream, you hang on to every word. You need to know just how abnormal your own experience was.

"You start to have- not quite hallucinations, but really vivid mental images, that you can't stop thinking about."

"What were they? If you don't mind talking about it."

"A lot of what you would expect. Being trapped in a cave, hunger, loneliness... My friends abandoning me... My father spanking me..." He feels you tensing up, because he hastens to add "He never did that in real life! He was a perfectly fine dad, never raised his hand to his kids. Just something she put in my mind." You try to relax and let him believe that was what upset you. "In the vision he kept shouting 'what's in store for the tailor?' and for some reason it completely terrified me at the time. In retrospect it just seems absurd."

You completely fail at relaxing. As you do, when an Endbringer addresses you personally.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," you say.

"Okay."

"I'd like it if you turned around and hugged me back, though." At least her plans include playing matchmaker. Silver fucking linings.

He does. "Does it have something to do with the terrible secret?" he asks.

"Yeah. It's making me feel a whole lot worse."

---

But life keeps going on, eventually bringing you to your Friday patrol shift with the Empire. As you enter the bar, you hear a familiar voice. A loud, familiar voice.

"Of course I have empathy for them!" Mike is shouting. "Their situation sucks! If my country sank I would want to go somewhere else too, and displace the native population to continue my line! That doesn't mean that it's morally wrong for the natives to fight back against invasion! I'm a native, of course I'm fighting back!"

"Someone accused Mike of hating japs," Sven explains to you, sotto voce.

"I don't hate anyone!" Mike shouts, having overheard. "I'm not a hateful person!"

"You hate people who accuse you of being hateful," Alex quips.

"Shut up!"

"You hate people who interrupt your rants," Johnny offers.

"Shut the fuck up!"

"You hate jews and their shabbos goys," Sven says.

"Okay, that's fair," Mike admits calmly, before instantly regaining his volume on the next sentence. "But I don't hate anyone else! I don't even hate niggers! I don't want to live around them, because they fucking suck! But I don't hate them!" Several people nod along with that.

"What?" you demand, causing the collective listener of the Empire 88 to turn towards you. "I suppose it's easy enough for you fuckers with a cushy inner patrol beat, huh? 'It's just a little race war, no big. We're winning, right? They show up with their little war parties, and the brass sends them packing for us.'"

"Her trigger event-" Sven leans over to Johnny and starts adding commentary your own rant.

"Never fucking mind my trigger event! That shit was personal! This isn't about me, this is about him!" You point an accusing finger. "This is about Serious Policeman Mike never having to put faces on the numbers! This is about him never having to arrive too late! Maybe he'd begin to hate if he saw the hate crimes that will never get prosecuted, huh?"

No one really has anything to say to that. You, too, get nods of agreement from the audience. Some brave soul pats your shoulder.

"The whole 'hate crime' thing is just jewish bullshit made up to attack white people," Otto tells you. "You should trying hating jews instead."

No one has anything helpful to say.

With no more shouting forthcoming, people turn away and conversations resume as they judge the show to be over. Mike beckons you to come sit as his table.

"No hard feelings," he says. "I get where you're coming from."

"I'd fucking hope so, or you'd be a pretty shitty nazi," you say, but your heart isn't really in the banter.

"You can hate niggers all you want," Sven agrees. "It's fine. Otto's right though, it's not productive. If you want to change anything, you have to realize who brought them here in the first place, and turned them loose on us. Who was behind civil rights and forced integration. That's who you need to attack."

"Hey," Alex says, "cool it with the antisemitic remarks. She's down with the 14, the 88 will happen on its own eventually. You don't have to force it. She's not in the mood." Part of you wants to bristle at how he's speaking on your behalf, but he's right. About that last sentence, you mean, you do not share his conviction re: the inevitability of antisemitism.

"Yeah, okay." Sven offers you an apologetic shrug.

"You gotta read the room," Alex continues. "You don't just show up at a party and start denying the holocaust."

"I denied the holocaust at a party once," Mike says. "It was great, I made a jew cry."

Something about his straight-faced, matter-of-fact delivery of that line just completely destroys your somber mood and forces an unladylike snort out of you.

"So what's up with the rank and file now that the crisis is over?" you ask.

"I heard blockbusting might start up again, with ABB's gone," Sven says. "Weren't you gonna sign up for that, Alex?"

"Nah. Wife wouldn't go for it anymore, not with a kid on the way," Alex says.

"Blockbusting?" you ask. Apparently loudly enough for Big Brain to overhear, because he jumps into the conversation before anyone at your table can open their mouths.

"Well you see Low Key," said worthy begins, "about a hundred years ago - a better time - people used to enter into gentlemen's agreements with their neighbors, that they would not sell their house to a black person. As a countermeasure, blacks would hire white lawyers-"

"'''White,'''" Sven interrupts, pronouncing more quotation marks around a single syllable than you thought was physically possible.

"-yes, thank you, ''white'' laywers to represent them-" He's not quite the verbal virtuoso that Sven is, but you get the gist. White skin, but perhaps also prominent noses and elevated risk of Tay-Sachs disease? "-and in so doing obfuscate who the ultimate buyer of the property was, sometimes through multiple layers of intermediaries. Once one such gambit succeeded, the block was 'busted open' for further encroachment, as the remaining white population would want to move out, no longer caring who they sold their property to."

"Because once a neighborhood is full of niggers it has this mysterious tendency to turn into a shitty slum," Alex finishes for him.

"Indeed. And since no one wants to live in a slum, not even blacks, this process would repeat over and over, gradually destroying large sections of our previously fair cities as they sought to escape the inevitable results of their own dysfunction. What we do when seeking to expand our territory is simply the reverse. A handful of our own people moving into a block is enough for people to get the hint."

You nod. He could have used a lot fewer words to explain that, because it's pretty obvious once you think about it. Another gang might gleefully annex the territory of a fallen rival, but what the hell would the Empire want with a neighborhood full of asians? It has to gentrified first, in a technically legal manner so as to not invite direct retaliation from law enforcement.

"All right you fucking nerds, break it up!" Rune shouts from the door. "I'm here to save my girl before her ears fall off!"

 

[Fernando]

...

yeah no

 

[Anonymous Brainwash]

Aisha, your boss's head, please remove it from her ass. I know this story is going to be a slow-burn but please let it be soon.

Please let there be payoff by Taylor destroying the ideology that the E88 hold so dear.

 

[wargonzola]

This Nazi arc needs to end, man. My willingness to trust that you're leading up to a moral realization is rapidly coming to an end, and it sounds like I'm, quite frankly, near the back of the line here.

The racist aspect is not well handled - it's coming across as an author's screed at this point. If that's not your intent, at a bare minimum this section of the story needs to wind up ASAP, and the less we see of the boys in the bar the better.

If, on the other hand, espousing white supremacist dogma sincerely is your intent, I hope you understand when I (and hopefully the entire forum) ask you to fuck off.

 

[ojmandias]

She's unironically spitting out the koolaid she's been drinking now, and I hate it.

Racist Taylor or Nazi taylor stories are fine, and this one is very well written. However, usually the Author's morality does shine through with things happening in the story like "bad things happen to bad people". However, this story doesn't seem to have any sort of internal condemnation of the racism. The closest thing we got to it was the interactions with Theo but they were kind of glossed over and Theo was described as a loser etc.

 

[randomlurker44]

For those unaware, blockbusting was a real thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting

Of course, unlike the version spoken of by the Nazis in this chapter, it was actually mostly driven by real estate people trying to make a quick buck by convincing racist white people to sell their houses at cheap prices. Those houses then would be sold to colored people who were already relatively well off (some white people too I guess, but not many because of the racism).
And those areas don't magically fall into disrepair after the white people move out lol.

Yes, just rumors of black people in the area were enough to start getting people to abandon their homes. The level of racism displayed in that time was absurd.

This Nazi arc needs to end, man. My willingness to trust that you're leading up to a moral realization is rapidly coming to an end, and it sounds like I'm, quite frankly, near the back of the line here.

The racist aspect is not well handled - it's coming across as an author's screed at this point. If that's not your intent, at a bare minimum this section of the story needs to wind up ASAP, and the less we see of the boys in the bar the better.

If, on the other hand, espousing white supremacist dogma sincerely is your intent, I hope you understand when I (and hopefully the entire forum) ask you to fuck off.

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Most of the Nazi parts are an insight into actual far right people and ideologies that a lot of people rarely encounter. These are... questionable, but acceptable to me. The parts where she's at the nazi bar and talking to the nazis are relatively accurate portrayals of these types of people.
What's very much not okay are the parts where all the criminals just happen to be various colored people... in an area where there are less colored people because the Empire drives them away. There's not even been incidents where there were white people committing dumb crimes where people don't regard it as bad because of implicit bias.
This is statistically very highly improbable and the thing that really makes me wonder whether author is actually espousing far right extremist views.

 

[wargonzola]

However, this story doesn't seem to have any sort of internal condemnation of the racism

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This. This is how I should have phrased it.

 

[zharshoul]

This board literally had a story with pedophilia and vore among other things, not really sure why you think some racism is crossing the line. Tons of stories where people are just killing and mind controlling each other but this is supposed to be some hard line lol.

Just enjoy it, don't or move on.

 

[Mentos]

This board literally had a story with pedophilia

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Speaking of I hope we see more Vista.
Taylor might stumble into Dinah, too, I forget when exactly coil does his thing compared to when Bakuda does her thing.

 

[SageFlare]

This board literally had a story with pedophilia and vore among other things, not really sure why you think some racism is crossing the line. Tons of stories where people are just killing and mind controlling each other but this is supposed to be some hard line lol.

Just enjoy it, don't or move on.

Click to shrink...

Agreed.

Nazis gonna Nazi, and people gonna people. The words of characters should not be taken as the author's viewpoints, unless explicitly mentioned by the author themselves.

A story told through a person's perspective is unreliable narration. Why people expect the author to write lines condemning racism in a story told from the perspective of a person falling down a slippery path confounds me.

Also, to the people who say this arc is taking too long
.. it really isn't. You are saying that from the perspective of someone who has to wait between updates. When binge read, its still in the green, time wise, though it is starting to near the orange.

 

[tseptim]

Yeeeeeeeah I'm with the other commenters on this one. At this point it's crossing the line from a readable fic masquerading as white supremacist apologia, to white supremacist apologia masquerading as a readable fic.

Which really fucking sucks, as Exalted is woefully underutilized and pairs excellently with Worm.

 

[ses]

Speaking of I hope we see more Vista.
Taylor might stumble into Dinah, too, I forget when exactly coil does his thing compared to when Bakuda does her thing.

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Pretty sure Dinah already got nabbed when Taylor fought Lung this time round.

 

[bridielux]

Why was this so freaking shameful and funny to read?

It was like watching It's Always Sunny...

 

[Placeholdername]

As I've said before, y'all are reading too deeply into this if you think Taylor is becoming or has already become a racist. As her callous attitude toward Bakuda's victims so aptly demonstrated yet again, she just doesn't care enough about people one way or another to be racist, bigoted, etc., AND she's turned into something of a chameleon due to her powers, both socially and in the more literal sense thanks to her shapeshifting.

If anything, she's some blend of relatively benign sociopath and psychopath. Acting racist around the racists is just part of her maintaining cover as Low Key.

That's not to say the author isn't racist. I don't know them so can't make that kind of judgement, and doing so based off a fictional story of a mentally compromised teenager seems kinda weird to me.

What's even weirder, though, is how many of you keep coming back to whine about it each chapter. If you're so offended, why continue to subject yourselves to it?

 

[Mentos]

Pretty sure Dinah already got nabbed when Taylor fought Lung this time round.

Click to shrink...

Ah, well, it's been a bit.

 

[wargonzola]

This board literally had a story with pedophilia and vore among other things, not really sure why you think some racism is crossing the line. Tons of stories where people are just killing and mind controlling each other but this is supposed to be some hard line lol.

Just enjoy it, don't or move on.

Click to shrink...

Up until today, I've been reading this on the assumption that the author is just inelegantly handling a tricky topic and I've been sorta reading around it. Today it crossed a line for me, so I said what I said because I want to imagine that most people in the internet aren't Stormfront chuckle fucks. If I'm wrong, so be it, I'm out.

Have you been reading this with the understanding the author was a Nazi and you liked it?

 

[Stanley_Jeb]

This is statistically very highly improbable

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True. Hell, interracial crimes period don't happen nearly as often as intraracial crimes, and we had like... One in the story so far. It's annoying enough when it's the E88 beating up PoC and the author acts like that's about the one thing that happens in the Bay, but with the focus on the E88 I'd really like if we saw a few more cases like the abusive girlfriend one.

 

[zharshoul]

Up until today, I've been reading this on the assumption that the author is just inelegantly handling a tricky topic and I've been sorta reading around it. Today it crossed a line for me, so I said what I said because I want to imagine that most people in the internet aren't Stormfront chuckle fucks. If I'm wrong, so be it, I'm out.

Have you been reading this with the understanding the author was a Nazi and you liked it?

Click to shrink...

assuming they aren't actually " teh ebul racis 1@!!!" In real life, its possible to like or enjoy things without believing in them yourself.

You ever read a scifi, fantasy or horror story where "good guys"(that are human) don't decisively win? Does that mean the author supported that outcome if it was real, does it mean you do?

Always remember Hitler also breathed oxygen and liked animals.

 

[wargonzola]

assuming they aren't actually " teh ebul racis 1@!!!" In real life, its possible to like or enjoy things without believing in them yourself.

You ever read a scifi, fantasy or horror story where "good guys"(that are human) don't decisively win? Does that mean the author supported that outcome if it was real, does it mean you do?

Always remember Hitler also breathed oxygen and liked animals.

Click to shrink...

You've got, uh, some strawman argument caught in your teeth there. It was a nice chat until it wasn't. Bye.

 

[Whitesnake Pelinal]

Up until today, I've been reading this on the assumption that the author is just inelegantly handling a tricky topic and I've been sorta reading around it. Today it crossed a line for me, so I said what I said because I want to imagine that most people in the internet aren't Stormfront chuckle fucks. If I'm wrong, so be it, I'm out.

Have you been reading this with the understanding the author was a Nazi and you liked it?

Click to shrink...

I showed up because I saw the Dark Mark on the clouds, but it turned out to be crackfic. Lots of the right words, sometimes even in the right sentences, but lol.

Still, it's entertaining crackfic and I would rather read this than most of what the current worm fandom is turning out. I am bored to tears with OP!Taylor effortlessly walking through cardboard cutout gangs. Hookwolf ought to be renamed to HookWorf, the way he gets mooked out every fic.

 

[anechoic]

If anything, she's some blend of relatively benign sociopath and psychopath. Acting racist around the racists is just part of her maintaining cover as Low Key.

That's not to say the author isn't racist. I don't know them so can't make that kind of judgement, and doing so based off a fictional story of a mentally compromised teenager seems kinda weird to me.

Click to shrink...

The problem isn't the socially isolated and increasingly amoral teenage MC mirroring or even coming to genuinely believe in the racism of the Nazi gang she's 'infiltrating'. The problem is that the narrative keeps going out of its way to show that the Nazis are right.

 

[Whitesnake Pelinal]

The problem isn't the socially isolated and increasingly amoral teenage MC mirroring or even coming to genuinely believe in the racism of the Nazi gang she's 'infiltrating'. The problem is that the narrative keeps going out of its way to show that the Nazis are right.

Click to shrink...

Yeah and it's not by accident, because making the fictional nazis right is hilarious. Empire fic is practically the Undiscovered Country of wormfic.

 

[goricnac]

This is statistically very highly improbable and the thing that really makes me wonder whether author is actually espousing far right extremist views.

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Honestly for me that ship sailed with hte library scene where it was confirmed by a separate source in universe that the Empire doesnt do hate crimes and jsut gets blamed for black on black violence by newspapers controlled by jews. The author either fully spouses these beliefs or is just trying to get a rise out of people, since even beyond the shit the Empire members say the actual facts of teh universe seem to have been adjusted to conform with the more extreme views of the alt-right

 

[goricnac]

What's even weirder, though, is how many of you keep coming back to whine about it each chapter. If you're so offended, why continue to subject yourselves to it?

Click to shrink...

Morbid curiosity