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friends romans cuntrymen, lend me your eyeballs
which Worm fanfic would you read
AU Alt Power Master/Thinker Taylor bonds with Broadcast instead of QA
Worm-Verse Peter Parker triggers in a cluster in 90s NYC
AU Eden Survives and becomes Taylor’s Mom
Whatever Furcate was doing that whole time
Old idea about reversed powers.
Amy Dallon aka Courage. Part II
This is the kind of person who reads worm alt!power fics and then asks why Taylor doesn't go by Skitter.
Dishonored/Worm au I've been stuck thinking about at all times Pt.1 (The Powers)
Thinking about a dishonored and worm crossover story, one with a few distinct (and long) thought processes for it. here's part one, dedicated mostly to what her powers would be exactly:
Taylor is given the outsiders mark, and has a powerset that follows the more basic rules yet is still distinct from the powers of other marked we've seen in dishonored.
Marked people are given about 5-6 active powers, with an additional smattering of 5-7 passive abilities depending on the game.
While there is often some shared powers between marked, it looks like the general limit is about 2 powers between different marked.
The core conceit of marked powers seems to grant mobility to their user as their most basic ability, even if that ability isn't inherently meant for moving the user around. this power appears to either come in the form of teleportation with different limitations depending on the caster (ie; Corvo and Daud each receive a line-of-sight short range Blink, whereas Delilah and her coven are given a more indirect form of teleportation that seems to cover more area than the directed blink) or a form of personal transformation that sends the caster moving towards their next objective (Emily's Far Reach transforms her arm into a tendril that is able to pull her forwards).
Additionally, it seems that all marked are given some variety of Dark vision, a fairly generic sight enhancement that seems to also commonly allow the user to detect Runes and Charms, assuming they aren't given a different tool to detect them with.
Lastly, all Marked people seem to have an overarching theme between their powersets regarding who they are as a person and what they plan on doing. For instance, Corvo's Primary theme is that of a directed, singular unit of force capable of projecting far more damage than he should be able to, using Blink and Possession to get into an area, and then combining Bend Time with Windblast and Devouring Swarm to be an utterly unstoppable one-man army.
So what would Taylor's overarching theme that her powers grant her be? while control or other things along that line would work, I would argue that Taylor's primary character conceit throughout worm is closer to engaging in a diffusion of the self to achieve her goals, with how she tends to treat her body as just one marginally more important part of her swarm as the text goes on.
Therefore, Taylor's abilities should all focus on diffusing or transforming herself to perform certain actions, with a minimum starting base of one power that gives her greatly enhanced movement and another power that improves her senses, 3-4 other powers that more thoroughly follow the theme, and a limit of about 2 powers used by other marked people.
Shadow Leap allows Taylor to transform into a shadowy creature(think Emily's Shadow Walk) and leap forward at great speed, only ending the transformation on contact with a wall, floor, or ceiling. Notably, she cannot cast other spells while in this shadow form and is mostly incapable of interacting with the world around her. The initial velocity added by the leap is in a straight line similar to Blink and she is capable of casting the spell in midair, with her velocity prior to casting the spell being set to zero before the leap. Additionally, while she's harder to spot while doing this, she is still visible during the movement when compared to Blinking. Upgrades for it would include improving the velocity of the leap, allowing her to transition into an immediate takedown if she lands on someone, and reducing the effects of gravity on her shadow form, allowing her to have a limited "glide" while leaping.
Whispering Gaze allows Taylor to enter a state where her senses are sharpened temporarily, losing her ability to hear most normal things but gaining the ability to see objects and people through walls, see the amount of noise she makes, and listen to the "hearts" of people in her line of sight, which offers her insight into what they might be thinking. Upgrades would include letting her "mark" the people she listens to the hearts of to let her see their planned movements, better distinguishing the objects and people she sees through walls (ie; alarm systems and other defensive emplacements are now notably distinct from treasures, which are again distinct from food or medicine), and being able to see nearby Runes and Charms while using the spell.
Create Swarm allows Taylor to create a small swarm of insects with a limited lifespan of a few hours from her body that she has complete control over, effectively giving her a more limited version of her canon powers, with all the theoretical insane tricks that can come of that. Upgrades would include allowing her to create even more insects from a single cast, allowing her swarm to perform proper non-lethal takedowns, and making the lethal takedowns it was already capable of now increase the size of the swarm and get rid of the body of her target.
Void Infusion would act very similarly to the Havoc slab from Deathloop, allowing her to take on the timeless invulnerability of the void to move faster, hit harder, and take hits better, effectively giving her a minor Brute rating at the cost of being seriously expensive to cast for any proper amount of time. Upgrades would include letting her regenerate while in this state at a further cost to her focus, removing the base drain on her focus leaving only the loss when she gets hit or is regenerating, and greatly speeding up her non-lethal and lethal takedowns while in the state.
Impersonation is effectively Semblance/Masquerade, allowing Taylor to steal the appearance of another person. The impersonation looks physically identical to the impersonated target at the exact moment of the theft, and lasts for as long as Taylor has focus and is not touched hard enough to dispel the impersonation. the impersonation will additionally end if the impersonated target dies for any reason. It does not initially mimic the voice of the impersonated target, and will not initially knock out or otherwise disable them, meaning that the impersonated target can cause problems by obviously still being around and potentially even seeing Taylor impersonating them. Upgrades would include knocking out the people she impersonates, cloaking the unconscious bodies of the people she is impersonating, and giving her the voice of the people she is impersonating.
Entrapping Tendrils allows Taylor to create flammable and prehensile tendrils from her body that stay in one location and attempt to restrict the movement of anyone who goes near them, completely constricting normal people who lack the strength or tools to remove the tendrils from themselves and still slowing down the people who can as they have to dedicate time to clearing them or pushing through. upgrades would include increasing the strength and durability of the tendrils, increasing the amount of tendrils that can be summoned, and covering the tendrils in small spikes that have a non-lethal poison which knocks out anyone who is fully constricted and slowing and weakening anyone else who touches them.
With this powerset we've defined Taylor's powers as revolving around transforming and shifting around parts of herself to perform different things she would never be capable of doing otherwise, while still following the rules set out at the start and clearly functionally and aesthetically being void powers granted to her by the outsider. thoughts and opinions would be appreciated!
A summery of a fic I'll probably never write...for shame...
...
Path to Victory!Izuku
...
Worm and Bnha crossover where Izuku has a version of Path to Victory. The ultimate question; how to make the Path to Victory not completely OP? Give it to someone with morals. Also, make it horrible.
So it starts out nearly the same as cannon, except Izuku is diagnosed as 'functionally quirkless' rather than 'quirkless', as he doesn't have the toe thing that quirkless people have...
...
At five years old, Izuku Midoriya had been diagnosed with functional quirklessness, due to having an invisible quirk.
"It means-" the doctor had said, "-that you do, definetly have a quirk."
The doctor scratched his nose as he squinted at the x-ray of Izuku's foot, side by side with the results of his quirk factor blood test. Izuku wiggled in his chair.
"But an invisible quirk...basically it means your quirk is either so weak that it's unnoticeable-something like having a slightly enhanced sense of balance, or growing hair slightly quicker than everyone else. Or, it could mean that the activation requirements for your quirk are so obscure or unlikely to happen, that you may never figure it out."
"I can recomend a quirk councilor for you." The man said, finally slapping Izuku's file down on the desk in front of him and looking up to meet his mother's eyes. "I'll warn you that their success with cases like your son's are...middling."
...
And from there he it goes exactly like cannon, because kids don't care about the difference between 'functionally quirkless' and 'actually quirkless' until Izuku is around the 8 to 10 range when he discovers the activation requirement for his quirk while asking for directions.
"Sir, could you point me to *the path to the exit of the park?*"
Izuku's quirk doesn't wait for the man to answer. Izuku's body is puppeted into taking a certain sidewalk. Izuku is alarmed. Is a villain controlling him? He can't move or talk. Even his heart is beating at a steady, even pace, despite the fact that Izuku is losing his mind with fear on the inside. His body walks itself to the exit of the park in the most efficient manner possible, and it's only once he reaches it that Izuku's control of his own body is returned to him. He looks around, hyperventilates, and then runs home crying.
He eventually stops freaking out long enough to realize that he was controlled into doing exactly what he was already trying to do. Was it the man's quirk trying to help, or has Izuku finally found his own quirk? He repeats his own actions and thoughts leading up to the moment exactly, trying to repeat it.
"*-path to the exit of the park.*"
He feels the resonation of the words this time. He is still very alarmed when his body walks itself back to the park.
He expirements.
*"The path to getting the cookies off the top shelf."*
*"The path to finishing this homework question."*
*"The path to finding Kachan."*
His body walks itself back to the park, funny enough.
He finds little Bakugou, and tries to excitedly tell him about how Izuku has discovered his quirk activation finally, so they can be heros together now! Bakugou either thinks Izuku is lying and faking about having a quirk, or that the quirk is too weak for hero work. Bakugou rejects Izuku vehemently.
Then Izuku makes the worst mistake of his life.
He says, *"Path to making Kachan want to be my friend again."*
Izuku doesn't get his body back for a good year or two. He lives trapped in the back of his mind for that whole time, watching horrified as his quirk pilots his body around, pursuing a single goal to the detriment of all else. His body burns down people's homes at strategic times, so that he and Bakugou can run inside and save someone together. His body arrangess for people to get so stressed out and down on their luck that they go villain at just the right times and places for Izuku to be positioned to conveniently rescue people in front of Bakugou, or in ways that Bakugou will hear about. His body makes him voice agreement with some of the horrible things that Bakugou says, (but strangly enough, makes Izuku argue with Bakugou about other things...he can't really tell what his quirk is using to decide what should be argued and what should be agreed upon) His quirk pilots Izuku's body to perfection. Nobody notices the change in ownership, because Izuku's quirk mimics him perfectly, and makes any changes seem organic over time. Not even Kachan notices. Not even his own mother notices that Izuku has been replaced.
Izuku's quirk says and does all the right things. From the outside, if you don't get to see Izuku's body doing horrible things behind the scenes, it looks like a classic shounen enemies to friends speedrun, with declarations of rivalry, moments of stress and trauma to bond over with, all that jazz. Bakugou gets a redemtion arc even maybe. At some point Izuku's body says something about how they'll be the Symbols of Victory when they become heros or something, just work that phrase in there somewhere. A nod to both the Path to Victory in Worm and the Symbol of Victory in bnha. Tie them together.
The Path ends in the same place it began. They are at the park when it finally happens, a good year or two later.
Izuku's quirk finally manipulates the conversation into Bakugou admitting out loud that 'I guess we are friends or something you shitty Deku'
Izuku's perfectly positioned posture crumples and he falls to the ground as the Path is finally completed.
Izuku is in hell. His quirk has forced him to do evil things to accomplish his goals. He had to watch as it twisted his best friend's mind around and around until he couldn't help but be anything but what Izuku wanted him to be. Izuku has had a lot of time to think about the horrifying possibilities of his quirk while trapped in the back of his own mind. He could accidentally start a Path that takes ten years to complete. He could start a path that requires him to do even more terrible things. His quirk had acted on information that Izuku could not possibly have know. Phone numbers, bank account numbers, personal details about stranger's lives. It had acted in ways that implied it could perfectly predict the future, everything from big, world effecting events down to the smallest details. His quirk could probably tell him nuclear launch codes.
He immediately vows never to use it again.
At first, Izuku tries desperately to explain to a confused Bakugou what is happening. The person he has known for the last year doesn't exist, it was an imposter, I am the real Izuku! The fake Izuku tricked you and made me do horrible things! Bakugou is confused and angry. Izuku is not explaining himself coherently.
After his innital plea for understanding, Izuku comes a little more to his senses, and ultimately decides to reject Bakugou.
Their "friendship" is built on lies and deceit. He cannot stand the guilt of benefiting from the horrible things his quirk has done, so he lashes out, says whatever he needs to say to get Bakugou to hate and reject him and deney their "friendship". Izuku says horrible things of his own accord to achieve this objective. Bakugou and Izuku are no longer friends. Bakugou is now a bitter enemy.
As a part of convincing Bakugou to become his friend, Izuku's quirk had forced him to clobber together a peice of support tech that faked him having a fire breathing quirk. Izuku, still unable to stand benefiting from his horrible quirk, confesses to the ruse, and he goes back to being a "quirkless" outcast.
Years later, the UA entrance exams are comming up, and Izuku has actually come a long way towards accepting his quirk? He still treats it like a radioactive bomb, and he doesn't use it frivolously, and he learns to become the world's best words lawyer when he makes a Path, but he can bring himself to make a Path now.
He must specify that the Path must be completed within a certain time frame, so that he doesn't lose years they he did before. He must specify that the quirk absolutely not act like it is himself. (A lot of paths would be easier, if the quirk could pass itself off as Izuku, but Izuku can't stand the thought of his mother talking to the quirk and not seeing Izuku screaming in the back of his mind one more time) He must specify that the Path not break any laws. (This doesn't always stop it from acting immorally, but but it's the best way phrase what Izuku wants that he has found)
He uses it to make the perfect training regime to pass the entrance exam (without cheating or breaking laws, and to be created within one hour)
The plan it writes down is absolutely perfect. It accounts for every second of Izuku's day between now and the exam, even taking into account exactly what he should eat, and who he should talk to about training, and how he can (legally) get the money to pay for all that. At one point, Izuku gets sick of his whole life being scheduled, so for the sake of his mental heath, he resolves to do the opposite of the next thing on his task list! He looks and an entire hour is blocked off for Izuku to 'indulge in being contrary'.
Just to be contrary, he does the workout that is usually in that time block instead.
He struggles on if he should use his quirk in the actual exam, or if he should rely on his quirk's 'perfect training plan' to see him through it. He takes one look at the giant robots and makes a hastily worded Path.
Strangly enough, his body picks up a small rock and gargles it. Voice throughly ruined, but also now capable of going three octaves deeper, his quirk makes him take out his phone, and dial a certain number. A voice answers.
"Kurogiri." It says.
In a voice three octaves deeper, and a tone so casually menacing that Izuku is started his body is even capable of it, his quirk has him point in a seemingly random direction, and say, "Kurogiri, I need a portal at-" and then it lists out a string of numbers...longitude and latitude? The voice on the other end says, "Done." Just as there is a huge crash and a plume of dust as a robot goes down exactly where Izuku is pointing.
This repeats itself, with Izuku mimicking a stranger's voice to order someone on the phone to make portals in the exact places needed to take down robots. At the end, he also orders it to open a portal that drops a girl who was about to be stepped on by robot at his feet.
When time is called, Izuku's quirk hangs up without a word.
It is not a part of the Path's plans. However, the path doesn't care if Izuku gets on the radar of the number one villain. The Path only cares about its assigned task-passing the entrance exam. The Path would utterly destroy AfO with little effort. However, Izuku would first have to know that a top villain is interested in him, or he won't know that he needs to make a path to defeat that villain...
The school administrators pull Izuku out to talk after the exam, because he was so obviously "cheating" that it's kind of blowing their minds at this kid's audacity. Nedzu is just laughing evily. It looks from the outside like Izuku was using an undocumented clairvoyant quirk to direct outside help into helping him cheat, and that he wasn't even trying to hide it.
Izuku realizes he either has to come clean, or accept being labeled a cheater and the consequences of "illegally hiding his clairvoyance quirk". He looks at the smartest being in Japan, a hero, and decides to come clean to Nedzu. (And only Nedzu)
Nedzu determines that Izuku did not cheat, as he simply used his quirk to win. He does not share the specifics of how with the other teachers. Izuku contemplates if his quirk did what it did because it knew that Nedzu would ultimately rule that what it did didn't count as cheating, even though if you go by the rulebook, Izuku absolutely cheated.
Nedzu does, however rule that hiding his quirk is still illegal, and its not something that Izuku can maintain forever if he wants to be a hero, unless he uses a Path to do so. They must register his quirk as *something*. They choose to label it 'clairvoyance' and are obscure on exactly how strong it is while filing the paperwork.
Izuku wonders if his quirk dilebretly made it obvious that Izuku was hiding a quirk, as it was ultimately deemed that is illegal, and Izuku told it not to do anything illegal...maybe he should start specifying that it obscure its true nature? He'll have to talk to Nedzu about what wording he uses...it's such a weight off his back to have the smartest being in Japan helping him word laywer his obscenely overpowered quirk.
Nedzu takes Izuku under his wing, helping him learn to wrangle his quirk and explore its positive possibilities.
Durring one session, Nedzu wonders what would happen if they asked the quirk to do something that is impossible. Yagi gets pulled into it somehow, and Izuku asks for a 'Path to beating All Might in an arm wrestling contest'. They are all suprised when Izuku's posture changes as the Path takes over. They sort of expected nothing to happen, if they asked for something that is impossible.
Izuku's quirk starts out the match by saying something shocking, like "Shimura Nana's grandson is in the hands of All for One." Or something like that, and All Might is immediately too frozen to even think about pressing Izuku's arm down to the table and winning. Izuku's quirk goes on an exactly five minuet long, absolutely hypnotizing soliloquy about a bunch of fucked up things like that that have both All Might and Nedzu frozen in their seats. Nedzu considers that the quirk might just be making shocking things up in order to freeze them with suprise and horror, but he knows that the quirk would know that Nedzu would think of that, so it would only say things that are true, in order to truly shock Nedzu into being too shocked to prompt All Might to win the contest. But then, what if the quirk knew that he would think that, and so told lies because it knew Nedzu would believe them? Or what if it knew Nedzu would think of that, and this whole thing was just to have him thinking himself in circles until....
After exactly five minutes, Izuku's body declares that it won the arm wrestling contects, because according to the international rules of arm wrestling, after five minuets with no winner, the winner is declared to be whoever is closest to winning. As Izuku's body had slowly and marginally pushed All Might's arm an inch down as the five minuets of horrifying information vomit went by, then the Path was complete, as Izuku had won.
That is how they discover that Izuku's quirk can word laywer as well. That is also how they learn that the Path to Victory has a very different definition of 'impossible' than them.
Erasure would work to cancel a path if Aizawa looked at Izuku. This of course means that the Path would never allow Aizawa to look at Izuku with Erasure while a path is running...unless that was a part of it's plan.
The Other Half of Queen Administrator
I know no one asked, but here’s my rationale on why Danny and Taylor got the powers that they did in my fic A Hummingbird Feather.
Everyone always says that QA’s power is about administrating large groups of simple minds, like rats or bugs.
This is true, but it’s only part of the story.
See, when part of the Warrior Entity and thus not deployed, QA’s job is to administrate shards.
Everyone seems to focus more on the administrate part, which isn’t exactly a bad thing. There’s a lot of places you can take administration, as canon will show.
But it makes people ignore the other half of the story.
Well, that’s not strictly true. Wildbow actually addressed this in canon. He made Khepri. Khepri’s QA in almost the unbound form that an Entity would have: she administrates parahumans and their powers.
So if, say, Danny had access to other agents nearby when he triggered, ones he needed to fight, he’d probably get something more focused on those agents. Such as, oh, I don’t know... the ability to enlarge miniatures (Fenja/Menja) and imbue them with powers (Othala) and skills (Victor) while maintaining control over them (QA).
And Taylor... well, a big part of administration is your database, right? So she’s want a database of shards to emulate (a ping off of Stitch in Time’s base power) and administrate?
This also makes sense in the context of other fics, most notably Constellations (where Danny can basically enlarge and use chess pieces).
Taylor and Altpowers Advice
I guess my biggest piece of advice is that the ability or superpower doesn't make for an interesting character. Basically, if you take away the powers, are you left with an interesting character? Canon Taylor is definitely one such character. Most fanfic Taylors, not so much.
In canon, the powers are a tool used to explore what kind of person Taylor is. She gets to use bugs and insects and has to find creative ways to make due with that in a setting where plenty of people are well defended against it or have no defense at all and how she balances that ability and that perception on her. It's all about giving her options and restrictions. When she uses it and most importantly, when she doesn't. Taylor doesn't take it out on her bullies in any way shape or form, even though she could get away with it very easily. That says a lot about the kind of person Taylor is. She also later on uses her powers to carve our someone's eyes and rot off Lung's crotch.
Those two aspects, of not harming the defenseless and civilians and also going all out against dangerous, vile criminals in extreme situations are what defines Taylor. Taylor is seen as this vicious, creepy and monstrous cape at some point, simply because her ability is conceptually horrifying. Very few people can handle being swarmed by insects and spiders. It's traumatizing by nature. Barring the very few people who can survive an all out assault with them like Lung, most people won't walk away from countless wasp stings and poisonous spider bites and Taylor has to be creative on how to use them in order to not kill anyone. Or with Alexandria, how to use her powers particularly ruthlessly in order to harm someone who can't be physically harmed.
All that works because Taylor is the kind of person who would do all of these objectively horrible things to other humans but she also needs a good reason to do so. Panacea has arguably one of the strongest powers and you can find a lot of stories where a Panacea with a different mentality and less ethics can do wonders with it, missing the point of Panacea who is, as a person, uncreative and bound by self-imposed rules and restrictions. She simply won't use her abilities to their fullest potential until she changes a lot and even then there are a lot of limits. Taylor as a person is someone who can get a lot of mileage out of anything as she is creative, brave and ruthless enough to come up with things under pressure. Give her any power and she would shine, which is part of the appeal as to why there are so many altpower Taylor fanfics.
Wildbow recently posted Amy joins the Undersiders snippets and those were certainly not happy ends where Amy’s incredible powers had amazing synergy with Taylor and co. Their powers might be compatible but the personalities are definitely not as too much bad blood existed between them and an allegiance of convenience between horribly traumatized teenagers in horrible situations where one party really loathes the rest can’t be anything but a recipe for disaster, no matter how well the powers combine. They are people first, with different goals, values and personalities and powers distant second.
Most alt power fanfics, though, waste a lot of time exploring the powers, what they can do, and how amazing they are and how far reaching changes they can have, when it should be about Taylor and the hand that those powers give to her. There are no training montages in canon, on how Taylor tries to practice with her powers. At most we get her trying to weave the costumes or collecting bugs in preparation.
If you can do something similar with whatever the alt power is, awesome. If it's just Taylor building something awesome, then stomp whoever the villains are and then have PHO and whatnot marvel at her cool powers, less so.
At least my thoughts on it, as always, feel free to completely disregard any and all of this.
Motion Sickness Chapter 39
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I took my position alongside the mansion. Stealth was the goal and it was the dead of night which made my semblance a no-no. My semblance was the antithesis of stealth. I waited next to Neapolitan for a pair of guards to approach the same blind corner we'd snagged Nickel from and killed his buddy.
Random chance that we ended up with Nickel and depositing the other guard's body in an alley. I suppose Nickel ended up in an alley too so there's that.
A patrol was coming up.
I activated my semblance at the last second and spent it leaping out and grabbing one of the pair. "Hey-gck." I broke his neck by using my semblance on the move. He had aura and I just went right through it. It was blue colored and small compared to the flare of my semblance. A double flash of blue accompanied the sound of breaking bones and cartilage.
