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hottakehoulihan · 1 month ago

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Mutant Deviations

Characters behave recognizably canonically: No Not abandoned incomplete: Complete. Engaging (Funny/cool/thoughtful/feels): Sometimes funny/clever. Do I recommend it: Y..es? It's insufferably self-indulgently 'cute' Curbstomp, Cuddles, Crack, Cyoot: All four

Premise: Taylor bumps into Amy early, and they become fast friends, then Taylor--while pretending to be two people at once by using a clone--ends accidentally (injuries, healing) sort of externalizing her unconscious and shard into a bug-body. ...and this has consequences that escalate. Also, this isn't pillbug or smugbug. This is ALL the buggy. This is one of those self-indulgent stories where the author is saying "ain't this cute?" and the audience is squeeing, and if I am not quite into it? well...who am I to deny anyone some indulgence?

The story sincerely has some creative approaches to many of the conflicts and the resolutions. It is surprisingly imaginative.

Also, there is no smut...though I read it on SV (linked) because AO3 required an account I don't have yet, and SB's version has all the fan/reader convo and I'm not into that but if you are I'd suggest reading it on SB.

Spoilers/lengthy after the cut, because these posts are also me leaving notes for future me whose memory is forgor

Skip to the end for a true summary:

Okay I considered typing Taylor TINO but then I'd have to type Amy Aino and Lisa and Vista and...most gals end up in the romantically semifrustrated harem. Which would be kind of gross and YMMV, but the any of them get is hugs, nuzzles, and kisses. No makeouts, no petting. There are a few sentences that only exist on the AO3 version--per the author--and I'm assured they don't add much except an additional joke here or there.

But yeah; the story has the "flaws" of assuming the characters know everything the readers of Worm know (like Sabah not being white--something that Taylor knows right away upon meeting Sabah even though masks are on) and also of Taylor having all the subtlety of advanced poweruse mastered at the start (she's talking and listening through her bugs like a pro on week one.)

Anyway, here's a summary: Taylor's dad is !Coil (his wife's death motivates him to FIX the CITY) and he's not quite the asshole Coil was (his 'surprise adoption' of Dinah was actually covertly with consent of all involved because they weren't equipped and she was going mad) but he's a lot more distant from her than even in canon and didn't visit her in the hospital, and also she's way more skilled at using her bugs, so she knows what he is and she's scared and won't go to the PRT because of Sophie and CoilMoles so she ends up shacking up with Amy and Amy helps her become two vigilantes--a case53 (Hive) made up of a swarm of bugs, and also a bug-controller (Queen) that is made up of Taylor in costume. And then Taylor gets badly hurt and Amy frantically heals Taylor a bit wrong and now Hive has some agency and autonomy.

Also, Amy gets mad at her home life and walks out and shacks up with Taylor. ...and starts making weapon bugs (carefully skirting things that'd get her a kill order) so Taylor begins curbstomping threats almost instantly.

(Amy gets a pre-approved not-active-but-just-in-case kill order ANYWAY, and this pisses Taylor off, and somehow this is important, but other stuff is going on.)

Madison is a computer hacker nerd who was playing along with the bullying because it's better to be on their side, and she's overwhelmed with guilt and hasn't been out of her room since The Locker and so she thinks Taylor died. ...but she doesn't trigger. Eventually she's recruited into the !harem and forgiven and becomes instrumental when Lisa (rescued from Coil by Taylor) also joins the !harem and the two of them connect with Armsmaster to unshackle Dragon. Yup.

Amy's shard sees that Hive has some autonomy and is getting to act as a person and also that there's a whole lot of creativity and potential for MORE creativity in this. ...and since The Cycle is kinda broken and stupid anyway, maybe this whole

STOMP STOMP

mutualism and symbiosis

is way better than just raising up a cluster of realities full of cattle and then digesting the entirety and moving on like a bunch of one-trick locusts.

(This is actually the theme of the story.)

So anyway, Amy's shard creates some more bugs and they take the acceptable targets from Amy's mind (the E88) and sneak off and start growing and building and killing.

Yay! Nazis become bugfood!

Except Amy and Taylor don't know about this, and since this rogue shard (Monarch) and its creations are sincerely a real potential world-ending threat...

Something super cool the author does is write what Adam Warren might call "counterfactual scenarios" that are also "bad ends". (Adam Warren wrote the best Iron Man comic ever, and also Livewires, and some other stuff that I hesitate to endorse but guiltily admit I enjoyed without one exception though I might enjoy some of it less now and his largest work is a thing that started as fetish art commissions because artists gotta eat but it got self-indulgently cute oh dear we've come full circle) ANYWAY Slider214 wrote down what would have happened if the heroes didn't respond appropriately, and basically Monarch ends the world. Later, Slider did the same thing for if Noelle wasn't handled correctly.

This is cool. Taking a chapter to show the bad end and then backing up and continuing with the story? I like that and haven't seen it in this medium before.

But Monarch gets tamed and becomes part of the new gang.

And then the story survives Leviathan, with Taylor (who now has a brain-to-shard connection that lets her talk to shards like they're children, on account of having so much practice with Monarch and Hive and also some weirdness with Amy's healing-of-her) participates in the battle as a brute because between Hive, Monarch, and Amy all working to make big bugs with novel abilities she's a threat.

Thing is, she gets so immersed in 'being in the head of the big bugs" that she loses herself a bit and now she's leveled up even MORE at talking to shards and she manages to piss off Levi and drag him away from the city.

Oh but they have to free Noelle and let her run from the town.

Things get quiet for a bit. Sophie gets put in jail. Piggot retires with a smirk. Emma has a breakdown and apologizes and has powers and is sort of adopted on probation because of power fuckery (by now the shards of everyone nearby are talking to Taylor's shard and making friends with it) We learn that Contessa is complicit in things working out the way they have with Taylor. Rune was redeemed and adopted. The surviving members of E88 agree to be on their best behavior or else.

and then the S9 show up. ...and mostly they're curbstomped. The exceptions are Jack and Siberian.

Super satisfied that Riley ends up smeared all over the pavement. I'll play along with redemptions--a fanfic AU is its own thing and even I try to disregard canon entirely when I judge a fanfic, just as I'd judge Disney's Hercules with zero consideration of which 'canon' Hercules it didn't emulate--but I like seeing her dead. They recruit/repair/redeem Burnscar tho. !Harem +1.

(and yeah it's flanderization but I think that's actually on the label of the box; this story doesn't have one character that is written true to canon and if it did it wouldn't work. Lung at one point smirks and announces he'll be lounging in his La-Z-Boy. This is CANDY. Not exactly my sort of candy, but I still appreciate the things it's doing well and acknowledge that many things it's not doing are things it's purposefully not doing)

And this is fun. Siberian's actually the important one here. They figure out that she's a projection right away, but it's the shard that is the villain here and they can't just kill the dude they have to keep him alive or the shard will just find a new host and keep being a villain.

So she gets away for now.

Madison takes the tame Monarch off and kills Jack, but Taylor rushes off to help and--whoops, Sophia was rescued and conscripted and she's rarin' to kill her a 'take that you worm'. ...and Sophia is introduced to electric bugs and long falls into pavement, but drags Taylor with her. Taylor experiences catastrophic deconstruction of her brain matter.

Amy arrives on the scene swiftly, and is nowhere near the useless handwringer she is in canon, but she doesn't know how to repair the mind within the brain. ...and Hive, who is still there somehow, decides that Taylor Must Live.

The Cycle Is Flawed And Stupid And Doomed. ...But Taylor's Way is interesting and has potential. Taylor MUST live.

So Amy and Hive meld shards a bit and work together and Taylor gets to walk off death.

Some of this is caught on video. This might be what led to Piggot laughing, taking a shot, and retiring.

Also, about now there are shards doing things in other universes and other star systems, like making dyson spheres and protecting alien life, all in keeping with what Taylor's desires would be. Because slash-and-burn is the old failed way. This is offscreen though so eh.

Alexandria shows up and asks for help. Time to deal with out-of-town Noelle, who has already got Eidolon swallowed whoops. Worse, Eidolon knows he's at fault for the endbringers, so now he's trying to do it On Purpose. He eventually figures it out, but just a bit too late. Curbstomping ensues. Lisa second-triggered earlier into a specialized weak-point-sniper during the S9 thing and snipes the fourth endbringer just as it forms. Eidolon's clones are murdered. ..but meanwhile, the three endbringers show up and...they're talking and Taylor can hear and participate on her shard network and it becomes Behemoth and Leviathan saying vs Simurgh because Simmy sees that the old cycle is pointless and that there's potential in the new, and the other two are stupid. Cut forward, and now Taylor is the boss of all three endbringers and gets them to work fixing what they've broken. Also Noelle's shard is destroyed and she's healed yay.

(Something I forgot to mention is Monarch and Hive--that is, the shard-managed-bugs--can eat the Corona Hakuna Matata in the brains of parahumans and give Taylor access to their shards. They don't do this for everyone; some shards are just assholes, but they did it for some of the E88 and S9)

(Also, during this Noelle fight, the folk that stayed home (to include Monarch) ended up doing that with Butcher. When you can just talk to shards, you can tell them "no" and so Butcher died offscreen like a loser and Taylor got extra powers during the Noelle fight)

Anyway, now Taylor's !harem includes a 72-inch "Simmy" angel gal wearing clothes and a black choker with the symbol of the !harem rogue hero team--to troll Taylor, as all the gals do, because "ain't we cute?"

Now to deal with Siberian. ...aaand Siberian kills Taylor by ripping her in half but Taylor walks it off and Foil+Lisa kill the Siberian shard because fuck you.

Now Alexandria comes back and says hey, gotta show you the garden of Eden grrl. ...and it's not actually dead and Taylor talks to it but it's stubborn so Taylor takes a big straw and...now Hive has all those shards and Eden is actually dead.

And Scion shows up and is like "WTF I finally noticed and you're full of shit what are you doing sure the system is broken but you're also broken you're doing it wrong" and Taylor's like "look it's my way or the not-so-hi-way because your way is stupid and broken and Eden was an idiot and I drank her milkshake she's dead"

And meanwhile all the guns were aimed at Scion and Scion throws a punch but Taylor says no...and the guns start to fire on Scion and Taylor says no...and things end with Taylor saying Look You Big Stupid I'll SHOW you it works and takes him to her house and shows him and he's convinced because his way really is stupid and hers at least has potential.

So she sends him out to make sure no other spacewhales are slash-and-burning, and tells him to call or visit anytime but "fish and visitors" (smell in three days you've been here too long get your ass moving)

and

TRUE SUMMARY: This was the story of Taylor creating a happy puppypile of...every likeable character and a few borderline ones and also shards, and using it to become the new Eden/Scion/Queen/galgod of not just Earth but the entire universe. Symbiosis with shards is the new way, and life after death is real now or will be once we have enough shards for everyone. The literal canonical Church of Taylor Hebert will make everything better forever. All hail.

and if that sounds "glurge" I totally get it. ...but it's an actually complete fanfic of significant length with consistently written (if non-canonically-written) characters who obey the internal logic of the story to do innovative things, and the story has its own innovations.

I had a good time. Even if the "ain't we cute' bits and the 'of course we all know [thing that nobody is supposed to know]' bits had me forcing myself to remember that 'this is not a perfect circle, but it is itself'.

I don't think I'll be rereading it, and I won't make any special effort to check out other things by the author, but this is a positive review. There was a story, it made sense, it was entertaining, and I am richer for having read it. Good times.

#HHH.txt #wormfic #Slider214

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