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Confrontation (Worm fanfic)

Reader mode
It's less joining the Wards that makes me wonder, and more the helpless feedback loop she got into. That's exactly the kind of thing her power breaks her out of, and exactly the kind of thing her derangement protects her from. It's entirely human to have a panic attack after a violent conflict like that, but Taylor isn't entirely human anymore, and it seems OOC for her to break down like that.
 
Navrin said:
Hn, would it be better or worse for her if she joined the Guild instead... There are a lot of pros and cons involved.
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The Guide only takes high level heroes. Taylor nearly died and failed. They're not going to take her.

DeAnno said:
It's less joining the Wards that makes me wonder, and more the helpless feedback loop she got into. That's exactly the kind of thing her power breaks her out of, and exactly the kind of thing her derangement protects her from. It's entirely human to have a panic attack after a violent conflict like that, but Taylor isn't entirely human anymore, and it seems OOC for her to break down like that.
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She has normal human functions. In similar situations she used her swarm to calm down but that was often in times where she had at least some control. Here she started to hyperventilate almost instantly. She had no time to try and control it.
 
... she nearly died fighting against LUNG and his minions, on her first excursion, without backup up to the point where she was incapacitated, with very little time to gather information or formulate a plan. And, of course, her power is LEAST suited towards dealing with opponents like Lung but EXCEPTIONALLY useful in a lot of other areas.

What she's done so far might not be enough to qualify her, but if they're even remotely sane they wouldn't discount her for what happened. Her power is very high-tier and allows for her to crush essentially any number of people whose preparations don't specifically hardcounter her, in addition to being ludicrously effective for reconnaissance. Especially once she improves in her "interpret bug senses" skills.
 
You've definitely captured Armsmaster as he was before he took the blame with Lung, now let's see how Piggot and Armsmaster handles the Taylor/Sophia situation....and how they'll be able to spin it against Sophia because just how was she able to get either the Winslow's janitor's master key for the lockers/open Taylor's locker to do the new year's prank.
 
Chojomeka said:
You've definitely captured Armsmaster as he was before he took the blame with Lung, now let's see how Piggot and Armsmaster handles the Taylor/Sophia situation....and how they'll be able to spin it against Sophia because just how was she able to get either the Winslow's janitor's master key for the lockers/open Taylor's locker to do the new year's prank.
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Chojomeka, I think the general fanon consensus is that Emma and Sophia alone were responsible for actually putting the waste in the locker and that Sophia phased it in instead of opening it. Same way they got everything in/out of her locker.
 
Navrin said:
Chojomeka, I think the general fanon consensus is that Emma and Sophia alone were responsible for actually putting the waste in the locker and that Sophia phased it in instead of opening it. Same way they got everything in/out of her locker.
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And probably did the same to steal Annette's flute.
 
Navrin said:
Chojomeka, I think the general fanon consensus is that Emma and Sophia alone were responsible for actually putting the waste in the locker and that Sophia phased it in instead of opening it. Same way they got everything in/out of her locker.
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Exactly~ Thus Sophia used her powers in an act that by all rights breaks her probation allowing Piggot and Armsmaster to ship her off the juvie quietly...or as quietly as possible.
 
My thoughts on the story so far are basically that I need more of the story before I can even have a first impression of it or even expectations. The first two chapters are... mostly forgettable? This may have sounded nastier than I intend, but I think that Ack may be doing his stories an injustice if he puts them up for voting when so little is there for us to judge them on.
 
DeAnno said:
It's less joining the Wards that makes me wonder, and more the helpless feedback loop she got into. That's exactly the kind of thing her power breaks her out of, and exactly the kind of thing her derangement protects her from. It's entirely human to have a panic attack after a violent conflict like that, but Taylor isn't entirely human anymore, and it seems OOC for her to break down like that.
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Wait a second.

Let's define terms here. What is her derangement, exactly? And where does it state that she shuffles her emotions off into her swarm, because canonically, when she had strong emotions, that's when she had the most trouble controlling her swarm, holding it back from attacking whatever was agitating her.
Here, now, in this fic, she's right at the beginning of her career. She hasn't had the experiences that gave her confidence in herself. She has had sn encounter that's on par with the locker for sheer unpleasantness; if she hadn't already second-triggered, this would have done it. A normal human reaction is understandable and to be expected.
 
ArisKatsaris said:
My thoughts on the story so far are basically that I need more of the story before I can even have a first impression of it or even expectations. The first two chapters are... mostly forgettable? This may have sounded nastier than I intend, but I think that Ack may be doing his stories an injustice if he puts them up for voting when so little is there for us to judge them on.
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Right now, we're just laying groundwork.
 
Ack said:
What is her derangement, exactly?
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Skitter hates being trapped, as it reminds her of the locker. Her passenger actually rewards her for getting trapped, expanding her range in what seems like either a reaction to help her escape, or an enhanced connection due to similar mental state to the trigger condition. She focuses obsessively on her goals to the exclusion of all else (proving herself to the Protectorate, then saving Dinah, then averting the apocalypse.) She has a fundamental urge for control, coming into conflict with established authority in every instance she interacts with it, from her high school days with Gladly to her confrontation with Alexandria.

I very much doubt the meek girl who was bullied for a year and a half had many of these tendencies, much less at this level of intensity, before an alien parasite burrowed into her brain and rewrote her personality.

Ack said:
And where does it state that she shuffles her emotions off into her swarm?
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Her determinator ability to persevere through extreme pain is a partial result of this (and Bakuda's bomb, which made it even more). Alexandria's Thinker power was unable to read her effectively due to this ability and the miscalculations led to her death.

After Taylor was nearly killed by Leviathan and then tormented by Panacea on her hospital bed, did she freak out and need to be pulled out of a state? No, she used her bugs to open her handcuffs and stumbled into Shadow Stalker's secret identity. When Taylor was hit by Bakuda's pain bomb, did she curl up and stop? No, she cut off her toe.

I'm not saying that traumatic experiences don't produce bad reactions, that people don't go into shock and get caught in hyperventilating loops. I'm saying Taylor doesn't, because she has frankly been in situations just as bad as this not very far into her career and never exhibited such a tendency.
 
In both those examples, there was something Taylor could do. After Leviathan, she had a lot more experience in handling her bugs. With Bakuda's bomb, she was still in fight mode.
In this specific instance, she's literally just woken up from a near-death experience. She's not in personal danger, but she's got the very immediate memory of it. She's immensely traumatised. Once she gets through that reaction, with Panacea's help, she can put it behind her, but she does have that reaction. (A normal person may have gone catatonic at this point).

In this fic, she starts off with less in the way of initial confidence, because she did everything she knew how to do against Lung, and lost.
 
.. wait a second. DeAnno , you say I'm doing it wrong?

Suggestions on how to fix it, please.

While keeping the bonding moment with Panacea, if you can.
 
Ack said:
.. wait a second. DeAnno , you say I'm doing it wrong?

Suggestions on how to fix it, please.

While keeping the bonding moment with Panacea, if you can.
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Thinking out loud here:

First, Taylor was sort of kind of trying to kill herself that first night. She won't admit it to herself, but it's true (I think TT noticed it) and I don't think the near death experience is her main take away from this. Her main problem with the result is that her obsession-objective of the time was impress Protectorate ENE to join the Wards on good footing. She was basing her whole life around it, and the urge to impress them even drove her to infiltrate the Undersiders. The thing she is going to be in shambles about is that she looked like a scrub in front of Armsmaster, not that she almost died. It means she failed her mission, and to Taylor the mission is absolutely everything because the alien in her head is forcing her to think so.

So thinking about it, that means if she has a breakdown, it isn't delayed and physical; it's right away and mental. Right upon waking up and seeing Armsmaster, she is going to realize that she's under the gun. If she looks bad now, her plan is done, and first impressions are everything. I'm not sure how Amy can help with that specific core thing. Taylor will be very thankful for being healed and happy to not be a cripple forever, but her combat trauma will be over post-healing (we saw this with Leviathan, where she had a lot of horrible angst about being a cripple for life before Panacea came in, and all her angst after that was about being arrested.) Either Panacea has to bond with a Taylor is who is freaked out as she is being healed from her life-wrecking injuries, or needs to bond with her in some other way, probably a purely social one (because Taylor has an ultimately social driving goal right now.)

I'm not exactly sure how to structure a social thing like that; it'd be OOC for Amy to suddenly get all tactical and talk up Taylor's power from a pure optimization viewpoint. Maybe Armsmaster gets aggressive about Taylor being an unprepared idiot and Amy defends her with words? Armsie doesn't even have to be particularly malicious; his social skills are bad enough that mere chiding could sound like a debasing attack to Taylor.
 
Wait, she's trying to impress the Wards in order to join them? The thought process about not wanting to join them was canon. Teen drama, adult oversight, rules, etc. All that was part of her decision not to want to join.
It was her urge to be a hero that drove her to accept the place in the Undersiders, to infiltrate them, but not necessarily to become a Ward.

But she did not (consciously, at least) want to join the Wards. So I can't see that causing a mental breakdown.

However, I can do a little bit of a rewrite to remove the physical reaction.
 
Okay. Rewrite done, to take shard factors into account.

I still don't believe that she set out to become a Ward, though. Not from the beginning.
 
I think LacksCreativity put it rather well. Can't recall where he made the comment, but it's basically that early Taylor seeks validation. She wants to be a hero because she wants acknowledgement that she is worth something. She doesn't want to join the Wards because she's convinced it'll just be more of the same hell that she went through at the trio's hands, only with superpowers, possibly with the powers defining everyone's niche, and her low self-esteem prevents her from seeing her power's potential, so she thinks it's weak, thereby putting her at the bottom of the social hierarchy there for two reasons, being the new girl and having a "weak" power.
 
ArisKatsaris said:
I think it's very clearly a part of canon that she didn't. I don't know where DeAnno got his alternate interpretation from.
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Cyclone said:
I think LacksCreativity put it rather well. Can't recall where he made the comment, but it's basically that early Taylor seeks validation. She wants to be a hero because she wants acknowledgement that she is worth something. She doesn't want to join the Wards because she's convinced it'll just be more of the same hell that she went through at the trio's hands, only with superpowers, possibly with the powers defining everyone's niche, and her low self-esteem prevents her from seeing her power's potential, so she thinks it's weak, thereby putting her at the bottom of the social hierarchy there for two reasons, being the new girl and having a "weak" power.
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Whereupon she proves repeatedly that her power isn't weak, over and over again.

Incidentally, comments on the rewrite? I haven't ported it over to the other sites yet.
 
Thanks for the chapter, Ack.

<sarcasm> Also, good job practicing information security, PRT. </sarcasm> There was quite a bit of information in that file that he absolutely didn't need and put Taylor in more danger because it now exists in more places.

Anyway, nice adaptation of a good snippet.
 
Two words: Ant Theme.

Nobody goes for it but the fact is Ants are the cutest bugs that aren't caterpillars or butterflies.

Giver her two antenna that can easily be ripped off (Cause gabby hands might happen) and an Abdomen shaped fanny pack that can be swung around to face er rear (Her clairvoyance power can compensate) and maybe a change to show a little of her face with the Bug eyes and Mandibles still on and she's got a somewhat cutesy outfit that fits the bug theme.

Then you can call her Ant Queen.
 
That was a good chapter, although I'm nearly certain I've ready something very very similar to Glenn's comments on her costume before... Ah, now I remember. It was some snippet that I think had Taylor being older, around 17 or 18 and trying to join the Wards or Protectorate with Emma I think? It looks like you took a lot of inspiration from that.
 
Navrin said:
Thanks for the chapter, Ack.

<sarcasm> Also, good job practicing information security, PRT. </sarcasm> There was quite a bit of information in that file that he absolutely didn't need and put Taylor in more danger because it now exists in more places.

Anyway, nice adaptation of a good snippet.
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I loved the original. It's a pity he didn't write more of it.
 
gammoregan said:
That was a good chapter, although I'm nearly certain I've ready something very very similar to Glenn's comments on her costume before... Ah, now I remember. It was some snippet that I think had Taylor being older, around 17 or 18 and trying to join the Wards or Protectorate with Emma I think? It looks like you took a lot of inspiration from that.
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I did. In fact, I adapted it directly, as noted by the comment at the head of the interlude :p
 
DoggySoup said:
Two words: Ant Theme.

Nobody goes for it but the fact is Ants are the cutest bugs that aren't caterpillars or butterflies.

Giver her two antenna that can easily be ripped off (Cause gabby hands might happen) and an Abdomen shaped fanny pack that can be swung around to face er rear (Her clairvoyance power can compensate) and maybe a change to show a little of her face with the Bug eyes and Mandibles still on and she's got a somewhat cutesy outfit that fits the bug theme.

Then you can call her Ant Queen.
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That actually works really well.
 
DoggySoup said:
Two words: Ant Theme.
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Like this?

Whoop Ant of Freedom City said:
Whoop_Ant_by_D_MAC.jpg
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Only, you know, female.
 
The rewrite definitely falls into the "believably Taylor reactions" category, and I did like the interlude.
 
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