#To make up for the fact I fucked up Regent's paint job I gave it a mandlorian shaped head for Ali

[masterrainb0w]

I am still thinking about Counter/weight..... Still thinking about Them....

[lillyblogs]

[Insinuation 2.7]

(Sorry about posting these out of chronological order; I didn't have a Tumblr blog yet when I first posted this one. Also, consider my liveblogs of 1.1 -> 2.6 lost to the ether.) [Insinuation 2.7] Brian and Alec were good looking guys, in very different ways. Lisa was, on the sliding scale between plain and pretty, more pretty than not. So Taylor admits to checking all of them out and also to finding them all attractive. Undersider harem when? Bug Please don't stick please don't stick I still want her name to be something cool like Myriad, but there's bound to be something of a joke to it. Lisa, though, put one of her arms around my shoulders and gave me a one-armed squeeze of a hug. She was a little older than I was, so she was just tall enough to be at the perfect height to do it. What caught me off guard was how nice the gesture felt. Taylor is attracted to girls theory: Confirmed?????? Actually, I get the impression that Lisa is supposed to be this but it's not quite coming across right and makes it seem like she has a thing for Taylor. We passed a twenty-something artist and his girlfriend, sitting on the sidewalk with paintings propped up around them. The girl waved at Lisa as we walked by, and Lisa waved back. Guessing she's an important character, a cape probably, but not one of the Undersiders. Circus? Spitfire? IDK I know too few names at this point. Alternatively, that was Uber and Leet. If that's the case, Leet was probably the girl and Uber the artist. If Tattletale's really a hacker, it'd make sense for her to be friends with someone named Leet. I supposed they might have a TiVo, though I’d never seen one. TiVo?????? Seriously, though, the Undersiders have a pretty fucking sweet loft. Also, Alec's an artist apparently. Knowing young fiction, this will either be the only thing he talks about ever or he'll never mention it again. ```“I’m jealous,” I admitted, meaning it.

“Dork,” Alec said, “What are you jealous for?”

“I meant it’s cool,” I protested, a touch defensively.

Lisa spoke before Alec could reply, “I think what Alec means is that this is your place now too. This is the team’s space, and you’re a member of the team, now.”How all great friendships start.“Last time he went up against Shadow Stalker, he came back here and bled all over a white couch,” Lisa groused, “nine hundred dollar couch and we had to replace it.”

“Fucking Shadow Stalker,” Alec commiserated.OOOH! Shadow Stalker sounds like they might be a rival villain. (Part of Faultline's group, maybe? Or perhaps the Empire, though the Undersiders don't seem to have major issues with them yet.) Can't wait to see them.Brian came back from the other end of the loft, raising his voice to be heard as he approached, “Rache’s not here, and neither are her dogs. She must be walking them or working. Dammit. I get stressed when she’s out.” He approached the couches and saw Alec sprawled on the one.OK now I'm 99% percent sure Brian and this Rachel girl are a couple, or he wants them to be. Or alternatively, she really is a mass-murderer with a dog fetish and that's why he's worried. Either way, isn't her identity public? If so, _why_ does she walk her own dogs, instead of having the other Undersiders do it for her? Indication of obsession? Possessiveness? Or maybe they have someone who can disguise people; Regent, maybe? Not sure if it would fit with his name, though. Regent, to me, suggests he might be part of some sort of Parahuman lineage (not sure how far back it could possibly go, since didn't Scion only appear in the 80s?) and that his power is _really fucking good_. He's their heavy hitter, the one who packs the most punches. Maybe he's a mini-Superman, complete with the "powers as the plot demands".“We’ll get you one,” he said, like it wasn’t even a concern. It probably wasn’t. “We generally haul in anywhere from ten grand to thirty-five grand for a job. That gets divided four ways… five ways now that you’re on the team.”Sounds like Taylor will be rich very quickly; she'll probably be against spending the money at first but give in after a little. She is the Queen Of Slippery Slopes, after all. In fact, I suspect the Undersiders are aware of that, b/c of Tattletale and are actively baiting her into falling all the way down and becoming a villain. However, they probably won't like the new, unrestricted Taylor Hebert.“I do know everything,” Lisa said, “It’s my power.”Still thinking superpowered hacker, possibly with some sort of tinkery flavor to it, with a probable focus on spying on and tracking people.“What?” I said, interrupting Brian. My heartbeat quickened, though I hadn’t exactly been relaxed to begin with, “You’re omniscient?”

Lisa laughed, “No, no. I do know things though. My power tells me stuff.”

Swallowing hard, hoping I wasn’t drawing attention by doing so, I asked, “Like?” Like why I was joining their team?

Lisa sat forward and put her elbows on her knees, “Like how I knew you were at the library when I sent me the messages. If I felt like it, and if I had the know how, I’m sure I could have figured it out by breaking into the website database and digging through the logs to find the address you connected from, but my power just let me skip that step like that.” She snapped her fingers.Damn it. I was wrong, wasn't I? But honestly that's a _horrifying_ power; she just _knows_ things she shouldn't. Like "everything about everyone ever", apparently. Perhaps it's some sort of weird form of clairvoyance; her power sees everything going on at once, but she can focus it on a specific person/area and it'll relay whatever it finds to her for her to make sense of with her deductive skills. Like having an omnipresent, invisible and intangible drone. Heck, maybe she's lying and she's just a Tinker with a specialty in surveillance and cloaking; would certainly explain how Rachel's able to regularly go outside, seemingly.Not giving him a chance to reply, she turned to me and explained, “My power fills in the gaps in my knowledge. I generally need some info to start from, but I can use details my power feeds me to figure out more stuff, and it all sort of compounds itself, giving me a steady flow of info.”Honestly I'm not entirely sure what she means by this, but it definitely seems like _every single one_ of my guesses as to her power was wrong.Lisa’s smile widened, “I’ll admit I cheated there. Figuring out passwords is pretty easy with my power. I dig through the PHQ’s digital paperwork and enjoy a little reality TV by way of their surveillance cameras when I’m bored. It’s useful because I’m not only getting the dirt from what I see, hear and read, but my power fills in the details on stuff like changes in their routine and the team politics.”At least I was right about her tendency to spy on people. And the PHQ's the _Protectorate_ ENE HQ, right? So essentially where the heroes work, and possibly live. Makes sense that Taylor wouldn't want to join the Wards if it's actually like that; she rather seems to enjoy having _something_ of a normal life and the ability to just go home and get away from this, to just be her father's daughter for a while. (Angsty plot twist: He's actually her stepdad, in addition to being a cape (maybe Armsmaster if he isn't a villain; tinkers seem sufficiently bullshit for that to work, and he was relatively nice to Taylor, if a bit businesslike-- _just like her father_.) and she learns both of these secrets at an inopportune time (perhaps after her first mission with the Undersiders?) and ends up leaving him and her civilian ID behind and moving in with the Undersiders full-time.)she grinned her vulpine smileNo way this isn't a fandom meme. Honestly, this just feels like such a memetic phrase and Wildbow _just keeps using it_. There are other ways to call someone sly and mischevious that don't involve how foxlike their smile is. Still thinking she's going to end up with Taylor, eventually and probably only temporarily. Unless she's also a double-agent. Would explain why she hasn't been the nicest to Taylor (she went out of her way to mess with her...), despite seemingly wanting her to join the team and seemingly caring about her. Grue, Alec and Rachel probably aren't going to double-cross the team, however. They seem like they're actually villains, albeit probably sympathetic ones. I can't wait to hear how despite seeming to only be in it for the money, they all have tragic backstories. Actually, perhaps having a tragic backstory is part of gaining powers; Taylor's got a lot of trauma and the Danny interlude did suggest that things turned from idyllic to tragic rather fast. And logically speaking, it makes sense that the villains would all have a lot of mental trauma; they're the people who society has chewed up and spat right out. Calling it right now that every Undersider is some kind of minority or other oppressed group: Brian: Black, possibly not straight. Possibly a single (adoptive?) parent? He seems close to the other Undersiders, so it doesn't seem like he'd live away from them by choice. If he's got a kid who he's desperately trying to keep away from this, things suddenly make sense. Or maybe a little sister/brother (I'm leaning towards sister), if he's too young to even be adopting children? Either way, he's definitely doing this for someone else's sake. If said person is old enough (i.e. 13+; I don't think the Undersiders would employ such a small child), they'll probably join the Undersiders after a few arcs of melodrama. Or if they're not, they'll do it (complete with the melodrama) after they grow up. Which Wildbow may only do so they can be paired with whichever Undersider doesn't get paired up, since I'm 100% sure they're going to end up a set of three couples, instead of a proper team of five. Bonus points if this hypothetical sister thinks Brian's a hero before learning the considerably more unsavory truth. Alec: He's definitely either gay or bi. There is no way that boy is straight. Also, he's got a French name, which is a pretty good sign he's going to be a Flamboyant Gay, especially if he picked it for himself. Lisa: A woman, also gay (probably). Possibly asexual, maybe? (She's definitely not aromantic, though; there needs to be at least something to use for shipping bait and "will-they-or-won't-they" tension, as Worm is basically YA.) Rachel: Maybe she's transgender? I'm guessing here. Didn't Taylor describe her as unladylike in appearance or something like that? Also possibly a butch lesbian* / gender non-conforming in some other way. *If she's a lesbian, Tattletale isn't one. It's a rule of how these things work. Though in that case, Tattletale wouldn't be a proper token character and would instead exist as a plot device / excuse for exposition and probably only exists to avert the Smurfette principle.They didn’t get a chance to tell me. I heard barking from downstairs. A matter of heartbeats later I was standing, three paces from the couch. Three snarling dogs had me backed against the wall, drool flying from their mouths as their teeth gnashed and snapped for my hands and face.``` Rachel can't control her dogs = confirmed? Or maybe she's a bit more unhinged than I was thinking, or both? I'm currently thinking that she's actually the sweetest and most innocent of the Undersiders, appearances be damned (it also makes her alias of "Bitch" rather ironic), but I could be extremely wrong. Since she works with dogs, she also probably has some skill as a vet, and probably acts as the Undersiders' medic as well.

I'm also starting to think that the Undersiders are using their actual names, and that they really do trust Taylor. Unless they're all lying about their names to each other as well as to Taylor, though they seem too much like fire-forged friends for that.