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Just a Phase [Worm]

Reader mode
Garreon said:
She has more pressing things on her mind, isn't feeling charitable towards anyone affiliated with the PRT and is trying to live a double life without getting arrested....while she lives in the building she considers hostile territory, controlled by the people she isn't feeling charitable about and can arrest her.
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Still a basic description of the other characters would be appreciated since we have yet to get even a hair color for any of them.
 
Rymu said:
Now that you point it out, it is a bit weird that Taylor isn't eyefucking much of her team. Guess this situation might kill her labido whilst canon couldn't.
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KingCrimson1081 said:
I mean both Roulette, Lily, and Connie are girls so it is very weird that Taylor isn't doing her totally not gay evaluation of their looks. I guess them being Wards is a total turn off for her after everything that happened.
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Garreon said:
She has more pressing things on her mind, isn't feeling charitable towards anyone affiliated with the PRT and is trying to live a double life without getting arrested....while she lives in the building she considers hostile territory, controlled by the people she isn't feeling charitable about and can arrest her.
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A lot of this -- as her relationship "improves" (a term I use loosely here) with the other Wards, she'll start to take notice. At the moment, their eyefuckability is hampered by their, er, triggerremindedness?

Something like that.
 
I'm probably just not remembering nearly 50 pages of commonly heated discussion right but it's kinda nice to see one of weird points the thread latched onto get resolved by WoG rather quickly.

Anyways, Taylor's tendency for eyefucking other capes (girls included) makes me wonder how a healthy enough to be horny Taylor in the BB wards would go if she had no conflict with anyone there. As there's always the entertainment value of Dean's PoV which would probably have Taylor at a very notable level of lust when interacting with basically the entire cape roster in the wards/protectorate and maybe some of the villains.
 
Rymu said:
I'm probably just not remembering nearly 50 pages of commonly heated discussion right but it's kinda nice to see one of weird points the thread latched onto get resolved by WoG rather quickly.

Anyways, Taylor's tendency for eyefucking other capes (girls included) makes me wonder how a healthy enough to be horny Taylor in the BB wards would go if she had no conflict with anyone there. As there's always the entertainment value of Dean's PoV which would probably have Taylor at a very notable level of lust when interacting with basically the entire cape roster in the wards/protectorate and maybe some of the villains.
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Holy shit how has someone not already done this? Just normal Taylor with normal bug powers and normal narration-derailing horniness, doing normal Taylor things like sleeping with her teammates and cleaning up with bugs.

Dean is Not Ready for that part of being a hero.
 
Who is willing to sleep with her is the big question though. Assuming Taylor goes full Skitter with her lack of fucks to give about being covered in bugs and everyone on the team is at least willing to expirement with a girl
 
Rymu said:
Now that you point it out, it is a bit weird that Taylor isn't eyefucking much of her team. Guess this situation might kill her labido whilst canon couldn't.
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I'm as straight as a ruler (and male) and yet I was always watching my gang of (male) bullies enough that they were able to easily spread rumors about me being gay in an era (mid '90s) where that not only made you a pariah, but "faggots" were often beaten.
That isn't to say I didn't look at girls, but I spent all of my time at school being on Yellow Alert and went to Red Alert whenever a bully was in visual range and kept most of my attention on them because I never knew when they were going to do something or if an attack was going to come without warning. As such I wasn't ogling girls when they were in range. On the other hand, the times I had a period without them around I DID tend to look at girls.
I imagine Taylor is doing something similar at both the base and at the high school. She has justified paranoia and only stands down from Yellow Alert when she's alone. Maybe in the public library too, but certainly not when at school or interacting with the people at the PRT. She probably isn't looking at anyone at school or the PRT that way because of the stress.

Sorry I just realized this isn't SpaceBattles or SV, although the site is a spin-off from them, but I'm not sure if I can expect everyone to get the Star Trek references. I was a bit of a Trekkie back then. Still am to a very mild extent in that I watch the shows I can, although I haven't seen the ones on PPV.
 
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Rymu said:
I get the logic of the idea of Taylor's tendencies are some sort of defense mechanism but there are things she does that rather disprove the theory iirc. Like trying to get close to Sundancer one time they interacted.
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You mean, trying to make friends with another superpowered girl she's working with? Sounds in character for a friend-starved straight girl, especially as she was oggling Newter at the same time.
Or, as another counterexample, during the Leviathan warcouncil, she paid only a glance to Narwhal (y'know, the statuesque nudist) in favor of practically drooling over Legend.

Edit: I think this needs to be restated with emphasis. If you ignore a beautiful naked woman covered only in a skintight layer of fine scales in favour of a man, you are unlikely to be attracted to women.
 
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Tzardok said:
You mean, trying to make friends with another superpowered girl she's working with? Sounds in character for a friend-starved straight girl, especially as she was oggling Newter at the same time.
Or, as another counterexample, during the Leviathan warcouncil, she paid only a glance to Narwhal (y'know, the statuesque nudist) in favor of practically drooling over Legend.

Edit: I think this needs to be restated with emphasis. If you ignore a beautiful naked woman covered only in a skintight layer of fine scales in favour of a man, you are unlikely to be attracted to women.
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It took me a second to absorb that picture. That was the head of the Protectorate, the leader of the largest team of capes in the world. What's more, he was right in front of me, having a conversation with someone I'd talked to. Ridiculous as that sounded, it affected me.

Legend sported a skintight blue costume with a design in white that fell somewhere between flame and electricity in style. He had a perfect physique – one I didn't mind giving a second glance-over – a strong jaw and wavy brown hair. If Alexandria was the flying bruiser that just about every other flying bruiser strove to match up to, then Legend was at the head of the pack when it came to being flying artillery. His firepower was on par with Purity's, if not outright surpassing her, and he was far, far more versatile.
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Narwhal turned heads as she entered the lobby. She stood seven feet tall, with a curtain of glossy, pale hair extending almost to the backs of her knees. She was unclothed, not even wearing a skintight costume on her long limbed body, but it somehow wasn't obscene. Her skin was layered with fine crystal scales that caught the light and scintillated with faint rainbow hues. A single horn stood out from the middle of her forehead, three feet long. She ignored stares as she found a space to lean against a wall near the front of the room. She had her chin against her chest with her eyes closed, as though she were resting, or concentrating. Or maybe it was a habit she'd picked up when standing straight meant stabbing the average ceiling with her horn.
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She didn't 'ignore' Narwhal at all. She spent longer describing her appearance than Legend's. In fact, half of Legend's description is the awe at seeing the head of the Proctectorate, and a brief description of his powers.
 
wulfztar said:






She didn't 'ignore' Narwhal at all. She spent longer describing her appearance than Legend's. In fact, half of Legend's description is the awe at seeing the head of the Proctectorate, and a brief description of his powers.
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Sure, but length is not everything. Content matters too. And 90% of Narwhal's description is just a factual description of her forcefield "costume". That's why I said "paid her only a glance". In short, Narwhal's description is only longer than Legend's because "she wears forcefields as a costume" requires elaboration for the readers' sake.
Legend's description on the other hand mentions his attractiveness and is in general more complete of what he looks like.
 
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Tzardok said:
Sure, but length is not everything. Content matters too. And 90% of Narwhal's description is just a factual description of her forcefield "costume". That's why I said "paid her only a glance". In short, Narwhal's description is only longer than Legend's because "she wears forcefields as a costume" requires elaboration for the readers' sake.
Legend's description on the other hand mentions his attractiveness and is in general more complete of what he looks like.
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The most she describes Legend is by his 'perfect physique', which is no surprise. Taylor seems to appreciate muscles. She mentions them in both Alexandria and Weld's description just before this scene. If her appreciation of someone's physique is enough to get her to drool levels worth of attraction, then half the cast probably gets her horny.

The rest of him is summed up by strong jaw and wavy brown hair. Narwhal's hair gets more description than that. Her 'costume' of scales gets the same 1 line description than Legend's costume does, unless your also including the part where she describes Narwhal's naked body as long-limbed, and not obscene? The part definitely not showing Taylor describing her physique?

I feel like if you managed to get a clearer picture of how Legend looked from that description than how Narwhal did, that's more to do with your imagination than anything in the text.
 
FirstSelector said:
A lot of this -- as her relationship "improves" (a term I use loosely here) with the other Wards, she'll start to take notice. At the moment, their eyefuckability is hampered by their, er, triggerremindedness?

Something like that.
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This just makes me think that once Taylor becomes more comfortable with Lily as Lily shows her the ropes of being a cape Taylor will start noticing her more and doing her usual totally not gay evaluation of her looks which Lily notices and draws the entirely wrong conclusion from and just makes things extremely awkward for the both of them.

And on the topic of Lily teaching Taylor how would the rest of the Protectorate and Wards react to that? Would they think it is a good thing to get Phase closer to the team or mad at Lily for allowing Taylor to circumvent their training programs, which require power testing to begin, so she can be a vigilante on her own.
 
KingCrimson1081 said:
This just makes me think that once Taylor becomes more comfortable with Lily as Lily shows her the ropes of being a cape Taylor will start noticing her more and doing her usual totally not gay evaluation of her looks which Lily notices and draws the entirely wrong conclusion from and just makes things extremely awkward for the both of them.

And on the topic of Lily teaching Taylor how would the rest of the Protectorate and Wards react to that? Would they think it is a good thing to get Phase closer to the team or mad at Lily for allowing Taylor to circumvent their training programs, which require power testing to begin, so she can be a vigilante on her own.
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This situation falls down with the part where Taylor actually trusts a Ward. Right now Taylor is literal years of therapy away from trusting the Wards, Protectorate, and PRT. And she hasn't even reaching the point of reconsidering her distrust as more than justified. Which would be the starting point of accepting said therapy.

She is civil with Connie, because Taylor is interacting with her as Connie. The fellow student at her new school, and over safe topics like homework. And Connie didn't push on powers or the Wards. If Taylor had to deal with her as the Ward, Valve? A much cooler interaction would have happened.

Lily mentoring Taylor on cape things? Wouldn't be Taylor interacting with Lily, it would be Ghost interacting with the Ward Flechette. Whom Taylor has a well deserved distrust of on the institutional level.

Taylor only unmasked because her plan A, keeping masked up and not sharing of civilian identities rapidly proved too clunky to keep up for the next two years and change.
 
Nikas_Zekeval said:
Lily mentoring Taylor on cape things? Wouldn't be Taylor interacting with Lily, it would be Ghost interacting with the Ward Flechette. Whom Taylor has a well deserved distrust of on the institutional level.
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True but the question there would Lily and the other Wards see it that way. Because while Taylor may draw a distinct difference between Lily and Flechette I don't imagine Lily doing the same thing between Taylor and Ghost which will just make things awkward. It also shows that Taylor will always butt heads with the Boston Wards leader Weld since there isn't a separation between cape and civilian identities for him.

Also on the topic of Taylor separating the Wards into their civilian and cape identities makes me think that the whole movie night the Wards planned with Taylor will just end in failure due to it basically tying their civilian identities with their Wards identities. In the end it will just make Taylor distrust them as both Wards and civilians which is the exact opposite of what the Protectorate and PRT are trying to do with the forced interaction.
 
KingCrimson1081 said:
Also on the topic of Taylor separating the Wards into their civilian and cape identities makes me think that the whole movie night the Wards planned with Taylor will just end in failure due to it basically tying their civilian identities with their Wards identities. In the end it will just make Taylor distrust them as both Wards and civilians which is the exact opposite of what the Protectorate and PRT are trying to do with the forced interaction.
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Frankly all the forced interaction with Boston is like Fluttershy going "YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE ME!"
 
Nikas_Zekeval said:
Lily mentoring Taylor on cape things? Wouldn't be Taylor interacting with Lily, it would be Ghost interacting with the Ward Flechette. Whom Taylor has a well deserved distrust of on the institutional level.
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Actually I could imagine it working out fairly well. Remember that Taylor isn't just hostile to random Wards for funsies; she's rational enough to realise that they're not all Emma-grade monsters. She's just also realist enough to suspect that any friendships she makes will be immediately used as a lever by the organisation to strong-arm her into spandex.

The problem is exacerbated by the - for want of a better word - incestuous environment she finds herself in, where her room-mates are supposed to be her co-workers and also in many cases her "siblings" as fellow lower-case wards of the state. One is even supposed to be her new line manager. It is painfully obvious how that ambiguity can be used to put pressure on her by creatively misinterpreting any leeway she gives them. "Oh," says the PRT apparatchik, "you didn't realise that the Wards' pizza party you agreed to attend was going to be a full PR event? Well, this is my surprised Pikachu face... now go get into costume, we're about to let the public in. You wouldn't want to disappoint your new friends, would you?" If she came out of her shell in the Wards quarters, she'd just be substituting loneliness now for angst later when she has the gall to resist the PRT's carefully-constructed spider-web of peer pressure.

Outside the Wards quarters, there isn't the same ambiguity between social and power relationships. If Flechette tells Ghost "you should definitely go in for power testing", Ghost can just say "thanks but no thanks" and change the topic. If Flechette keeps pressing, it's her who would appear to be violating social etiquette and making a mountain out of a molehill, and no-one would think twice if Ghost just walked away from the situation. As a result, Ghost can afford to build rapport with Flechette in a way that Taylor wouldn't dare to with Lily.

I could also imagine Taylor using this as a back-channel to explain herself to the Wards. "So," says Flechette, "why don't you want to be a Ward?"

"Well," replies Ghost, "I had a really bad experience with some Protectorate members a while back, and as far as I can tell they went completely unpunished because they were 'heroes'. I absolutely detest the thought that my heroics would be indirectly helping to protect people like that from the consequences of their actions."

"Really? Where did this happen? I have trouble imagining any of the Boston Protectorate behaving that badly - we're all pretty straight-laced really. You'd be safe with us, I promise."

"I'm afraid I can't go into details - got tricked into signing a legally-dubious NDA, you know how it is. But even if none of this went down in Boston, those monsters didn't evade justice because they were members of Branch Insert-Name-Here; no, they got off scot free because they were members of the Protectorate. Because genuine heroes across the country have given that name enough teeth that individual branches can lean on it to get away with some heinous shit. You seem like a nice person, but that's kind of the problem: heroes like you are the reason my abusers aren't in jail. Heroes like I'd be, if I joined your team. And I cannot abide that thought."

"What would it take, then, to get you on board?"

"Basically? The local Protectorate and PRT would need to publicly disavow That Other Branch. Then I'd be perfectly happy to join."

"Isn't that a bit unreasonable of you? It'd look really bad to have two Protectorate regions at war like that."

"It would indeed, which is one reason I can't ever see myself joining the Wards."

"Right. Um... just out of morbid curiosity, what are the other reasons?"

"Well the biggest one is how they've taken a nice friendly hero and trained you to worry about how things look rather than how they are. I don't want to be on the receiving end of that social conditioning shit."

That kind of conversation simply couldn't happen between Flechette and Phase or between Lily and Taylor, since Tay would be too busy trying to avoid entanglements to effectively communicate her position. If it happened on a Ward/Independent joint patrol, though, and makes it back to one of the more determinedly heroic members like Weld? Talk about emotional damage.

Edit - PS for FirstSelector: you missed one older omake :p
 
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apeljohn said:
she's rational enough to realise that they're not all Emma-grade monsters.
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While this is true, Taylor is going to be very distrustful of any Teenaged girls or Wards, simply by association. Any Teenaged girls who are Wards if going to have a long and difficult road if they want Taylor to trust them, and any involvement in one of the idiotic attempts by the PRT to force Taylor to interact will just make things worse.

All in all, I really can't see Taylor becoming close friends with any of the Wards she's stuck with in Boston.
 
The Unicorn said:
While this is true, Taylor is going to be very distrustful of any Teenaged girls or Wards, simply by association. Any Teenaged girls who are Wards if going to have a long and difficult road if they want Taylor to trust them, and any involvement in one of the idiotic attempts by the PRT to force Taylor to interact will just make things worse.

All in all, I really can't see Taylor becoming close friends with any of the Wards she's stuck with in Boston.
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Yeah, Taylor's ability to open up to any of the Wards in their civilian IDs is going to be highly dependent on one question.

Which is your mask, the cape identity, or the civilian one?

Comes up with Batman alot, that Batman is the real person, and "Bruce Wayne" is mask or disguise he uses. Same here, Connie comes off with her Ward identity of Valve being the mask. So she can take off the mask and talk to Taylor as a classmate at least.

Flechette? She's a company girl, her self-identity is her cape one, and being Lily in a way is putting on a mask. And Taylor picks up on that.

Weld is even worse. Lily at least has memories of her pre-Trigger life, so can craft her civilian mask with a degree of verissimilitude. Weld, OTOH never developed a self-identity beyond being a Ward planning to eventually be a Protectorate hero. He is a company man through and through. The worst personality to get Taylor to open up at this point.
 
Nikas_Zekeval said:
Connie comes off with her Ward identity of Valve being the mask. So she can take off the mask and talk to Taylor as a classmate at least.
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It probably helps that Connie is most likely not a ward of the state like Lily or Weld so she can actually take off the mask of Valve unlike Lily or Weld.

Honestly something like that makes me question the Protectorate's competence as care takers of minors. Like there is no parental relationships between the legal guardians and the Wards are treated more like employees rather than kids. Which can't be healthy for the Wards who have near universally suffered some kind of trauma.
 
Omake: Are We the Baddies?
  • Extras
    • Random idea, how to get through the PRT's self image about how much Taylor distrusts and despises them.


    Are We the Baddies?

    Kamil held out a cup of coffee for Gauss. Endbringer fights were always bad, even if you were lucky and didn't lose people like this time. Still something got the head of his Protectorate team to immediately meet him after getting back, rather than waiting and resting.

    Gauss took a long pull from her coffee before launching into the problem. "As we were mustering to leave, I caught Nebula and Roulette trying to talk Phase into joining. Saying independents showed up and they weren't power tested either."

    Kamil closed his eyes and cursed, "Right, I'll get Weld in on how to discipline Roulette..."

    Gauss kept going, "That is the least of our problems, Kamil." The use of his first name and not Director got Armstrong worried. "It was Hebert's reaction." That worried Armstrong even more. Besides OpSpec, everyone tried to use Phase's cape name, like repeating it would actually make her a willing part of the Boston department.

    Gauss closed her eyes, "She laughed at them. And said "so you want an Endbringer to do your dirty work for you?""

    Kamil sat up straight in shock, "Phase seriously thinks we'd shove her in front of an Endbringer to get her killed?!" He knew the situation with his reluctant Ward was bad, but not to this extent.

    Gauss looked, broken, in a way Kamil had never seen her before. "She described it as a Uriah Gambit. Basically that when she'd need help or support on S&R we'd hang her out to dry and say none was available." Gauss looked at her cup, as if wishing it was something more alcoholic. "In Taylor's words? She thinks we'd find her a more useful and cooperative Ward as a dead martyr than a living conscript. And she isn't ever going to paint that kind of target on her back."

    Kamil rubbed his face, "I knew things weren't going well, but I never thought Phase's view of us was this toxic."

    Gauss took a sip, "Where did we fail, Kamil? When did we become the bad guys in this?"

    Armstrong couldn't give her an answer.
     
  • Extras
    • The Unicorn said:
    Great snippit, and great job showing they still don't get it. It's all (according to them) the problem of Taylor's view point, not their own actions...
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    Gauss at least, who witnessed how sincerely Taylor believed this? Is more "how'd we fuck up so much she'd honestly think we'd do that?!" Gauss at least is coming to appreciate how damaged the Wards, Protectorate, and PRT's reputation is in Taylor's eyes.

    Which is another point, Armstrong still calls her Phase. Gauss? Never does in the snippet, calling her Hebert and Taylor. Accepting they aren't anywhere near close enough to bring her on as a cape, much less a Ward.
     
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