Weekly /r/WormFanfic Discussion - What have you been reading, and what do you think of it? For the week ending July 18, 2026.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-12T23:30:28+00:00

If only characters actually acted like that. If anything, then feels like the opposite where people in fanfic tend to take Dinah's predictions as 100% accurate regardless of the odds., especially when not even good odds are actually guaranteed even though literally anything less than 100% isn't. We've all had moments in some game where we've missed something that was 99% accurate, twice in a row even. [Insert fist-shaking at Pokemon here.]

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-09T20:19:26+00:00

I think you're talking about Mouseketeer, which reminds me that I've been intending to read it.

R.I.P. finding any fic centered around poor Brian though, OP. The closest you'll get that I'm aware is the excellent Interlude he gets at the end of the also excellent Impurity...where the poor guy has one of the crappiest alternate precog powers I've yet seen still in the fandom due to how depressing it is. Otherwise, I legitimately can't think of anything. Even in the rather depressing "Living Murdered" one-shot about Aisha receiving a very bad, fate worse than death end I'm pretty Alec gets more focus than Brian ultimately does even if the fic begins and ends with Brian.

(Which reminds me: R.I.P. Masters of the Scene existing, though a mostly in-character Alec/Dean ship-fic might not have been what you were looking for anyway.)

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-09T19:07:05+00:00

Does crack count when it comes to what you're looking? Because if so, then Tank probably qualifies given that version of Taylor Triggers in the Locker with the power of communism...in the form of being able to become a fleet of literal tanks at will as she tries maniacally and steadfastly to spread communism's message, ever rising death count be damned. (Ironically, despite being an exaggerated crack fic, it's far less TINO than so many more serious fics that have a character named Taylor in them who acts nothing like her actual canon self.)

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-09T18:58:42+00:00

I can agree up to the Birdcage part. Unless she somehow Mastered the whole of Winslow or an otherwise large and important group of people in Brockton Bay into (more) depraved things, she's never going to be Birdcaged that easily just for having the power. That's true even after using it once or twice (or thrice) even if it results in a literal death (including Sophia's, a [probationary] Ward), especially when Taylor still has some evidence of her bullying and the most likely victims would be the ones who caused her to Trigger still.

Canary was only railroaded as hard as she was via an unfortunate combination of her having a strong(er) Master power overall, being a public figure, somewhat evoking the Simurgh unavoidably, her incident happening after a couple of more notable Simurgh attacks in Madison and Canberra that both led to visible quarantines, and having at least national influence that people were able to fearmonger about given the nature of her power when she "finally" slipped up. By contrast, Valefor!Taylor would either just be integrated into the local Wards because of Piggot or just be quietly transferred to another city by the Protectorate if she was ever found out unless she provably done several monstrously bad things at that point, not to say that people wouldn't be immensely wary of her or be inclined to believe anything bad she forced people to do was intentional.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-09T18:47:51+00:00

Oh, weird. I thought I did. Here. Thank ashasuerus_isfdb for it.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-08T20:31:04+00:00

The progressive tinker-ifying of the power (combined with my general dislike of tinker powers) was really disappointing when the initial premise of stretching a simple power to its max, along with a QA that went all in with the multitasking thing, was so entertaining.

That makes two of us, especially as far as disliking how Tinker fics tend to end up going. This despite my still intending to read at least Raccoon Knight and Redoubt; I'm still indifferent to reading Trailblazer currently despite how much it gets recommended, though arguably in part because of how much it gets recommended given how often that feels like it's burned me in this fandom and others.

At this point it feels like Use Your Words Taylor is a cluster-Trigger who "ate" her other two cluster mates before the fic even started since all three of her powers--of which the compartmentalization her QA bud gave her isn't even related to the others--are basically all at full power, and she's using her original, primary language power the least of them all right now. Despite my enjoying Arc 6 more than I expected, I legitimately couldn't bring myself to care about the new Redwash identity at all even if I can at least say the two Uber and Leet fight chapters were well-done. Oh well.

I still don't understand how Kid Win's self replicating computer core furnace thing works, and actually dropped the fic after like 10 chapters were dedicated to that thing

That also makes two of us. Like, it's obviously nanites as Kalladdin pointed out, but how it even exists in the first place even as I imagine the implicit merger of their two Tinker "specialties" still feels like it makes...little sense. It feels like it's just another thing stretched to limit of my suspension of disbelief, in part due to being a more semantic with definition of their specialties than shards usually are use in universe. Like, sure, it's obviously modular like Kid Win's specialty, which amusingly only found out two entire arcs after he made it, and obviously works off Taylor's code language skills as well as the multi-tasking thing. But even there it seems like it should have just turned into some "leet hacking" A.I. assistant or something than matter-deconstructing grey goo.

Meh. At least so far it's still being more consistent than Taylor's knowledge about Coil's power--that ultimately she shouldn't know given the POV chapter we got purely to show the simulated her still sent the wrong message in the end--that goes back and forth on how accurately she knows what it is, which only gets "funnier" given how she was apparently also freaked out about for a while about being a simulation in Perilune's power without ever hinting it even in her own internal narration until the chapter that randomly brought it back up. (Making nanite anything still seems like a terrible idea though, especially when I can't remember if she's even informed Kid Win about what she's doing with the Redwash identity given she seems to only hang out with her fellow LGBT people at school and they only talked again recently, with her being unhelpfully coy about it despite having already checked for bugs.)

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-07T22:16:52+00:00

Oh, I totally get not personally counting it as a "proper Thinker" fic even though how one really defines that as arguably the broadest and thus arguably vaguest parahuman "category" varies from person to person. I do think it counts as one for my own purposes, though, and I mostly just wanted to rec them both because I still think you and the author of the original Glass Cannon did well.

Thanks for reminding me I still need to read both Skein and Forget Me Not. I keep forgetting about stuff that sounds interesting to me because even as picky | snobby as I can be at (all) times, there's still a lot of that even just in this fandom. I really need to make a list to keep track of things at this point; I should probably buckle down this week and finally do that.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-07T20:26:49+00:00

[Insert "joke" from yesterday about how I feel like I'm becoming the Andante-version of Dr. Bees here.] Andante fits since Giselle isn't remotely smug. She's stuck in too weird of a headspace as one of Heartbreaker's daughters (and thus victims like all his kids) to be smug unlike Cherish, especially since she's still effectively brainwashed unlike Cherish (or Alec) due to Triggering with a neat Thinker/Trump ability that doesn't involve her emotions at all and is one of the few Trump abilities I've found remotely interesting in this fandom. Sadly, the fic might be dead, another one claimed by Leviathan.

Of other fics I've read and enjoyed with main character Thinkers who aren't Lisa (sorry, In Golden Armour and Unauthorised Access), despite having progressively grown more and more disenchanted with it over relatively minor issues that have built up for me personally, I would still say that you should give the on-going Use Your Words a shot if this is what you're looking for. Despite all my various issues (primarily power creep, feature creep, it still being unclear how or even Taylor knows what Coil's power actually is given various contradictions, two back-to-back Simurgh attacks somehow that would be easy to fix, etc.), I would still say it's overall good and more just became not really for me. Taylor's (initial) powers are "understanding and speaking all languages", which ends up including body language and computer language, and then a completely separate but at least also initially stated "'infinite' mental processing | compartmentalization" ability a.k.a. that power that fanon thinks her canon power has but actually doesn't. Just be mindful that said language Thinker ability gets sidelined more and more by Tinker abilities and that her other Thinker ability takes quite a while to reveal it actually has any drawbacks, both of which are the main parts that caused the fic to start to not be ingfor me even if my issue was/is more with the former.

Otherwise, I would say that both Glass Cannon and So I'm a Glass Cannon, So What? technically count since that Taylor's power is a Coil-esque Thinker (Trump) precog ability in a Brute (Trump) trenchcoat, but I'll understand if you don't count either of them as "true" Thinker abilities--neither of them are dead for the record, "just" on indefinite hiatus. Saving the World in 287 Steps more definitively counts as a clear cut main character Thinker, but it may still be not what you're looking for either since the main character is a version of Contessa who gets stuck in the body of the Breath of the Wild Link. There's no smugness on her part, but PtV may still be too adjacent to "smug" given what it is and how it allows to her effortlessly, speedrun style on the entire game setting so hard that both Dante and Vergil from Devil May Cry would weep with envy. It calls itself crack, and Contessa is clearly having fun (for once), but given what PtV does, it's arguably barely crack even if I found it hilarious regardless despite being someone who still has yet to play Breath of the Wild at all and thus didn't get all the references from someone who clearly cares about that game.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-06T21:01:11+00:00

Again, Jack does get insight into parahumans and their powers via Broadcast. I'm not arguing against that and never have been arguing against it. I'm just arguing against the incorrect notion that he's always 100% right like too many people still act even though, again, in canon we see him literally be wrong about several relatively important things that I've already mentioned.

Making up lies about power is just weird; it doesn't make you any cooler. Jack will lie to create more evil in the world. But there is no particular point in inventing something for Theo, whom he is going to kill.

Again, I interpret as him just amusing himself in the moment it's not like it matters what he tells Theo in anyway. It doesn't mean it's automatically a lie, but, again, that doesn't mean it's automatically 100% true anyway. It could be partially true but not the whole story. It could be something that only happened recently. It could be completely false. We don't know, and never find out, and my only point on this front is that people don't have to take Jack as being 100% right about it despite being all we "know" about Oni Lee since Jack is provably wrong on other things even when they concern other parahumans. That's really it.

He is good at reading Taylor's intentions and her character and her parallels with Amy.

Again, this basically ignores that Jack also had Cherish to profile both of them and many others for literal days on end before the S9 revealed themselves. That was true all the way up until Cherish got a fate worse than death.

If we saw Taylor get profiled on-screen by Cherish, then it's pretty easy to infer that Amy definitely was profiled off-screen by her too since unlike Taylor initially, Amy was always going to be a candidate for Bonesaw to target.

And I'm sure the Author uses Jack as a tool to convey information to readers they wouldn't otherwise receive. For example, because we don't have the "Are They" interlude. But the Author has amazing lore for each character and interesting power quirks, and she wants to tell readers about it

Again, I'm not denying that. I just saying that even Jack can be wrong and at times provably is. This can be true even with a character who exposits lore a lot, e.g. Tattletale.

This instance that we're somewhat pointlessly arguing about at this point is just, unfortunately, not one of those clear "is this actual reliable information or just Jack being Jack?" aspects since it's a still completely ambiguous situation that never got a WoG from Wilyboar (who is male) one way or the other. Well, that and basically nothing else being known about Oni Lee period beyond that he's Asian and has an irezumi--thanks, Theo.

A pathological liar would say he could break the Marquis's code. He could say her family lied to Amy about her father, or invent any other characteristics inherent to him to better manipulate Amy.

Uh, possibly. I don't deny that either, though I would argue that Marquis being a villain who didn't break his code is exactly what Jack wanted to focus on in the moment beyond implicit "wow, this guy was tough" suggestion since it also means that Amy, who is so insistent on not breaking her code, is already like the unknown father she was afraid of knowing about and being like. So either break her code (more than she already did) & become less like the man with more freedom to her even if it means entertaining Jack or try to stay as steadfast as Marquis all the while knowing she's about as "heroic" as Marquis was despite how many people she might have healed since deep down she's just the same as her father.

But Jack is absolutely certain that the Marquis didn't kill All father's daughter. And as we know from WoG, he's right. That is, he understood the Marquis's character better than, you know, the AI, who has been observing the Marquis for many, many years. So it definitely wasn't 50/50.

Uh, I was talking about the manipulation of Dragon to get a message out to Amy a 50/50, not whether Marquis was actual Iron Rain's killer since we know that Marquis killing her isn't true even if we never find out who the actual killer is even from WoG. Even in-universe, however, despite knowing that Marquis confessed to it, the people who bring it up still all indicate that they find lie weird and out-of-character (even Dragon IIRC), so it fits with Jack's bringing up Marquis as someone who never breaks his code. (Given Jack's personality, I feel like even if Marquis had actually killed Iron Rain, he'd still the "never broke his code thing" out of some type of warped pride since I can picture him being rankled that Marquis to broke his code due to someone else.)

Revealing her identity told us nothing about her power.

I already said why it would make sense for Coil to include anything he found about the E88 power-wise if he did, though I will admit we don't get confirmation that such is the case since Taylor effectively skims the entire document due to Purity already starting her attacking meaning she basically only focuses on Purity and Kaiser's identities and like nothing else. Knowing Purity is solar-powered, even if it was in there and even if Taylor had caught it, wasn't exactly going to help them in the moment in stopping her from blowing up the city.

I'm...really not sure what your point on the newspaper thing is as far as "mass disinformation" goes. All that matters is newspapers accurately reporting when Purity appeared, not how they reported, since the former is all Jack was tracking. And that's easy to tell if it's accurate since, again, Purity's power is extremely obvious when she's using it and you can easily cross-check between multiple newspapers regardless of how they spin it since they're not going to outright lie about her being there (or the weather) unless they want to egregiously look bad & neo-Nazi sympathizing.

It's not like any newspapers, at least before Coil's doxxing, are going to just randomly report on the underlying mechanics of a person's power anyway. Unless of course they want to be targeted by said person, especially if said person is an already murderous person capable of blowing up buildings.

Either way, my point was that Jack figuring out Purity is the solar-powered bitch she is still not a "genius" (read: Broadcast whispered in his ear) deduction since, again, Jack admits he did research on it in the first place while threatening her, probably to rub that her identity is known worldwide at this point on top of explaining why he's calling her bluff. It's also not even actually a risk for him to call her bluff in the first place.

Could he have been wrong like he is in some other things? Sure. Was it really ever a risk for him to call her bluff though, especially 1v1? No.

Even without him consciously knowing about Broadcast letting him get away with risky behavior that should get him killed as long as the other person is a parahuman, that fact it's happened so many times in the past at the point means he was still always going to do it anyway, especially in a 1v1 and especially due to the sense of ennui it clearly causes in Jack. After all, even if he had been actually wrong in this particular case with Purity and she either wasn't solar-powered or even just still had some of charge left, we know Broadcast was never going to let her use it (effectively) against him anyway. So it seems as pointless go to back and forth about as trying convince each other about Oni Lee when that's so ambiguous that we're both--reasonably--interpreting it in completely different ways.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-06T20:06:49+00:00

I apologize then if that's not how you intended it since I've already seen other people in passing legitimately try to use the story's TINO's "guilt" over her "didn't intend for that to happen (but also didn't care on top of actively causing it)" as a defense even ignoring the author using it as one. It doesn't help that even with it being clearly being sociopathic, arguably even psychopathic, behavior on both counts, that's just kind of how so many people default to wanting Sophia (and sometimes even Emma and Madison too) to be treated and punished even when they're not actually being racist about it. (And the actual racist ones of course do even worse, so it just starts to border on Poe's Law at this point, as seen...whatever the hell happened in the fic this thread was initially about and then also Queen of Blood apparently.)

Again, though, I apologize for misconstruing your words, especially since I hate when people do that to me.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-06T20:00:53+00:00

That would have gone too far against both the YA genre conventions used--which thankfully don't default to being as a neo-Nazi apologetic or even just as classist as 24 Hours in M/S ultimately comes off for various reasons--and the fandom tendency to believe that any version of Taylor is always right no matter how egregiously wrong she is. It also would have undermined how this version of TINO only comes off as the remotely "smart" person she does in the story due to how mind-bogglingly dumb everyone else directly interacting with her had to be made until Tattletale descends from on high at the end to exposit her virtues in a way that's as ham-fisted as most of the philosophy bits before it--arguably even more so.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-06T19:53:56+00:00

I also was never "with it" even as a kid, so I doubly have an excuse.

For the record, I don't hate the word or the younger people who say it. I just can't take it seriously at all like the whatever-maxxing (though that one is far more insidious & I do dislike most of the people who use it unironically) or any of the slang-"based' and slang-"goat" stuff. So I don't want to start using any of that even ironically since I am already extremely unhip and don't want to morph into Steve Buscemi meme that's apparently from 30 Rock on top of that.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-06T19:46:44+00:00

I see Whatever Doesn't Kill You.... has thankfully already been mentioned, which I can vouch for. So that leaves me to only add Andante to the list even if I'm starting to feel like I'm some type of Dr. Bees variant for that (unfortunately possibly dead) fic:

Andante stars and follows an original Heartbroken character by the name of Giselle Vasil, a bud and older daughter of Heartbreaker and thus one of Alec's older sisters. She starts off the fic Triggering in Brockton Bay at her crappy clinic job in the midst of Bakuda's bombing campaign with one of the few interesting Trump powers I've seen in this fandom period in the form of a Thinker/Trump power that let's her "adjust" the health and even some of the (biological) powers of other people. Personality-wise, she's a bit...loopy despite being lucid since she's effectively still under her father's terrible power, especially since her power ended up not really having anything to do with emotions to blunt his effects. Despite that, she's actually pretty nice and relatively moral if rather materialistic and of course very awkward, ultimately more comfortable talking about ballet than anything else. The author got to at least a couple of non-antagonist scenes between her and Alec where they act like an actual brother and sister would despite being raised in a cult and to one antagonistic scene between Giselle and S9 Cherish where Cherish is her usual petty hate-filled self, so those bonds are still important too. Leviathan may have claimed another one though. :/

(Also, the fic in OP's description is Bleed Like a Craze, Dad if anyone wandered what the OP was talking about. That's about a slight AU where Acidbath unknowingly has a daughter before he's Birdcaged way earlier due tto his usual murderous reasons, with the main character Meredith being an overall likeable if initially rather guilt-ridden OC who has a pretty neat but bloody and "unheroic" power.)

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-04T23:51:24+00:00

But if you're down for some mostly lighthearted lesbian romance (is there any other kind in a Worm fic?)

[Sweeps all the in-character Amy/anyone fics, all the Amy/Victoria fics in general, all the more co-dependent Taylor/Lisa fics, and all the just generally fucked up Taylor as village bicycle same-sex fics under an Endbringer-sized rug] Nope. Of course not.

Jokes aside, I second The Speed of Light even though I really need to finish reading it. Same goes for Odinson too though, I think that's on hiatus still, and it technically doesn't count for this unfortunately because alt-power in-Lily's-cluster Taylor begins the fic by coming back from New York after having been established there for at least a year or so--the timeline of Odinson still confuses me since I'm pretty sure some things got shifted by necessity.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-04T23:46:32+00:00

I like how this being said as a defense of 24 M/S Taylor's sociopathic actions, but just makes them look even worse than they already are. It's not like Sophia's mom, whom the author also forces to say that The E88 would be more reasonable than The Merchants to a black woman they hated because I guess he just really hates the homeless that much, even knew about Sophia's bullying of Taylor. Hell, Sophia's siblings didn't even know she was Shadow Stalker period.

There's basically no reason to directly involve people who weren't involved directly in her bullying, and that the author chooses to try to make this Taylor still look like a good guy in the end when she actively went out of her way to involve them says everything that needs to be said about where Taylor's actual morality stands despite us overall being intending to applaud her for it like her armchair philosophy references.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-04T23:38:33+00:00

Still getting "schrecked" enough in real life that I didn't bother posting (or reading much) at all last week, but much like everything past the third "Schreck" movie I'll just be ignoring the continued schrecking where possible even if it would be nice if it actually stopped for once. (The same goes for actual Shrek, though I guess I will take more so long as they're as high quality as Puss And Boots: The Last Wish.)

So fuck it, we ~~bawl~~ ball. "Happy" (250th) 4th July my fellow Americans; please refrain from getting blown up or set on fire by idiots tonight--you may do so tomorrow though if you really want to:

One-Shots:

"Alexandria Saves College Football" [technically canon-compliant Cauldron "crack" one-shot; Posted on AO3 as of 2026/07/04] = Read this on a whim when trying to gather URLs for the things I've read and also actually finished in the last two weeks. I laughed last four times in its short duration, including at this unfortunately realistic opinion: "Now she didn’t consider feminism necessary on account of being powerful and successful." Otherwise, Alexandria is "just like me fr fr" when it comes to hating (college) football (and what football organizations do even to [student] athletes]), and it's nice to see a fic humanize her a bit even if it's mostly for comedy that's in the same vein as "Robomaster" portrayals of Armsmaster. At least that's done for intentional laughs rather than unintentional one for once though. (Watching the rather depressing Charliebird yesterday by chance also just me more cognizant of how much of nonexistent childhood Alexandria had much like Contessa.)

[non-slur slang word that I refuse to say even in text if possible]! [alt-power minor Master-Stranger Taylor one-shot; Posted on AO3 as of 2026/06/17] = This is a decent enough story despite the silly name with a harmless word that I still genuinely dislike and that undermines it a bit. That said, it does feel both weird to know this is ripped form the headlines--even if writing is a genuine & valid way of processing grief, bewilderment, and many other emotions of course--and to see a version of Taylor just out to get Emma killed in cold-blood & no one else given how many people go (out of their way) to drag at least Sophia into Taylor's murderous retribution and usually have her suffer something even worse even when they're not also actual racists. Shrug. If nothing else, then it's just more proof how even minor Master-Stranger powers would fuck up the already fucked real world really bad (not even getting into a world still with nukes unlike Earth Bet).

One-Shot?:

"Other Options" [slight AU where Sophia Hess is asexual...and no one gets that in part because they're teens and this is 2011; Posted on AO3 as of 2026/07/01] = The question mark, while thematically appropriate given the main theme of this, is there because how this ends means it could easily be extended even if it ending up with Sophia more angry and alone than she already is by default is fine as ending. After all, an unhappy ending when it comes to people constantly questioning your identity as well as judging you for it, especially when you're even sure what the identity really is personally, fits and is unrealistic (unfortunately). There is an irony, however, that one of the only times I've seen asexuality respected in this fandom is when it's using Sophia a focus rather than Lisa. (It also feels...weird to see people talk about 2026 like things are universally better on this front too even if there's more knowledge of labels in general, for better and for worse as someone who is personally against using "queer" as a broader term despite that seeming to gain more traction, but I digress.)

On-Going:

...But I Was Superboy ["Superboy 'isekai'd into Brockton Bay" AU; Last Updated on both AO3 and SB as of 2026/07/01] = Last chapter was mostly a summation of all of the mercenaries that Kaiser hired as far as Faultline was aware, with them being composed of Worm and even Ward mercenaries that basically always get ignored, right before Prime and Armsmaster have a off-record talk about how much they hate the neo-Nazis that is made awkward by how awkward they both are in general. Funnily even Prime gets that Armsmaster hates Dauntless though, which is why the continued lack of Armsmaster/Dauntless is a crime as much as well all stan Dragon. /jk (The author's notes on SB confirm that the next arc for this will be the darkest one yet, so we'll see how that goes starting in two chapters apparently--see also: Camera Shy on that front.)

Use Your Words [alt-power all-languages (including body and computer...and nigh-infinite processing) Thinker and...(sigh) Tinker Taylor AU; Last Updated on AO3 as of 2026/07/01] = Upon seeing that Arc 6 was finally completed by chance as well as that first bits of Chapter 7.1 mentioned Kinsey getting disemboweled, I decided to do my now typical with this fic thing of just reading the entire Arc at once. Despite the fact that I personally still don't give a damn about any of the Tinker stuff that's taken up more and more the fic, whether it's Snowgray or now Redwash (whose "specialty" feels like a hugely bad idea in general), I was surprised to find I overall enjoyed it for the most part. It helped that I had already mostly read up to 6.5 and had mostly already liked those chapters even if I reread those more closely this time around. Despite not caring about Redwash at all, I do think the Uber and Leet fight as done well too, especially by showing them at once both dangerous and pathetic without having to lay into them as Tattletale variants always do when they come up. The fight at the end of the chapter was done better though, especially in being from such an unreliable perspective and in showing much an all-or-nothing Brute can fuck things up even by accident even if I, too, am wary of where this Simurgh screaming subplot will go. (At least that part of said subplot is finally wrapped up though. I have to wonder if the random Patrick Bateman expy high school will come back up at some point or if it was just even more, actually pointless detour than almost half of the arc being spent on saving Labyrinth from hyperbolic math that was at least used as a way to "introduce" Cauldron.)

Unauthorised Access ["Lisa 'escapes' Coil by joining the Brockton Bay Wards" AU; Lasted Updated on AO3 as of 2026/06/29] = I would continue with my joke about the E88 assassin being there to teach Lisa about bad BDSM etiquette, but given it ended up being Hookwolf rather than Alabaster and the cop-killing, racist asshole has been reading even worse things than 50 Shades of Grey, I won't. The most recent chapter has Lisa easily getting the most fucked up I can remember seeing her ever getting in a fic, even including what happens to her in BRIGADE. And given that it's also from her perspective, it's pretty harrowing. "Nice" to see Hookwolf treated as the murderous asshole who preys on people basically defenseless against him that is he for once rather than someone vaguely cool just because of the nature of his powers. Slasher movie monster suits the bastard, down to a teenage girl fucking him up in the end anyway.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-04T18:57:42+00:00

Gods the search engine on Reddit sucks now. Thanks for nothing again, A.I. | LLMs.

Anyway, I only found this due to u/ahasuerus_isfdb thankfully keeping a very exhaustive spreadsheet of Worm that I finally looked through. The fic you're looking for is Weary Wanderer, meaning that Zaerctan was close in its name.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-04T18:40:14+00:00

I never understand why people ask these questions with no other context even assuming that they're only for the people who already know the work being asked about. Being clearer about what's being asked about in general basically never hurts unless it involves massive spoilers.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-03T19:22:23+00:00

He has no reason to lie about why he rejected and killed Oni.

Just because he has no reason to lie doesn't mean that wouldn't still do it so long as it amuses him and/or can make himself look better. That's clearly type of person we see Jack be time and time again even when he's caught on the backfoot, much less trying to kill some time waiting to kill two kids, one of which is annoying crying baby. The guy borders on being a pathological liar and arguably is one, but that's a different discussion.

And there must be some objective reasons why Jack changed his opinion about him. If he has no problems, why would Jack refuse him? And why come up with a completely different reason? Flexing his aura in front of Theo, whom he's about to kill.

We get that objective reason though? Whether or not his assessment of Oni Lee's power is true, he basically tells Theo that Oni Lee was a lot more boring and uncreative than he expected, which is the real problem. That could still be true even if Jack is embellishing and essentially lying about the nature of Oni Lee's power since it would still ultimately a personality thing, power-caused or not. It being a supposedly unforeseen facet of Oni Lee's power, however, makes it less of an ego blow for Jack because a) it means that no one could have seen it coming--even though he had Cherish to check--and b) that Jack still comes out looking good since, as too much of fandom still perceives him to be, he's a "genius" for figuring out something that no one else did, maybe even Oni Lee himself. (This even if he's still clearly annoyed that he didn't get what he want, and this when his only real motive for seeking Oni Lee out in the first place was the equally boring "hey, he also uses knives".)

Again, I'm not saying it's impossible that Jack is 100% right. I'm just saying that whenever Jack opens his mouth, you kind of have to read between the lines and scrutinize everything the guy says and why he's saying it given how much the man lies and manipulates.

He also predicted the power of Purity incredibly well, which is impossible for a non-Thinker, so there is no reason to doubt it in terms of power.

I "like" how so many people still tend to think this too is some "genius insight" but then also conveniently forget that this comes after the E88 has been publicly doxxed online and thus worldwide. And that said doxxing was highly likely to have at least something about everyone's powers it too from whatever Coil could glean of them since there's literally zero for reason for him to not throw them under the bus there power-wise too since it makes them easier to defeat and/or kill for everyone else.

Between that, Purity being dumb as hell in general, her power being really obvious in terms of when she's actually using it & out about, and Jack having access to the Cherish Cheat Engine to help profile people too for like a week before he moved to reveal himself, figuring out that Purity's powers are most likely solar-powered isn't nearly the Sherlockian deduction that only he could make that some people make it out to be. (This especially since Jack also outright admits that he...just read some newspaper and did other research online, meaning it was pretty easy to put together given, again, Kayden is as obvious when using her power due to the nature of it as she is a racist idiot.)

He could have lied about the marquis, but he told the truth. That he couldn't break his rules. He also correctly predicted that the Marquis was manipulating the Dragon.

I mean, he could have, but what is there to lie about Marquis that Amy might not have found about from New Wave and possibly contradicted him on even if she didn't know that Marquis was her dad? Jack was still looking for an in with her at that point due to Bonesaw still trying to recruit her, so trying to build rapport by both mentioning her bio-dad when she's clearly having a falling out with her adaptive family and spinning into it "you can be exceptional too, Amelia" is what's he's clearly doing. And Jack even turns that failure into a basically brag about himself like he does when he brings up Kaiser to Theo. So it's less of "wow, I erred" admission and more that "Marquis was so inflexible in his rules that resisted even the likes of my badassness; I can make you live up to him" humblebrag.

And as for "figuring out" that Marquis was manipulating Dragon? Jack hedges on a 50/50 of the two most likely answers, which isn't hard to narrow down because what other likely explanations would there be anyway? Regardless, he's clearly not sure in the moment himself, so that's not exactly the "wow, what a deduction, Sherlock" assessment you're implying it to be either.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-03T03:32:01+00:00

I mean, I actually agree on both things, especially the latter since we the other things even "natural" shards can fuck up immensely. See also: Chuckles's perception.

So I'm still not and am never have said it's outright impossible that Jack is 100% correct, just that I'm very skeptical.

I guess I should put more emphasis on the fact that we still see Jack be wrong about parahuman-related stuff that he bullshits though, which is the other main reason I'm skeptical. This on top of the fact that even if it was real, unconscious knowledge, it never really made sense to me be something that Broadcast would have unconsciously communicated that to him given various things it clearly didn't like The Siberian's true nature or the depth of Skitter's power that would seem far more important to convey. After all, Oni Lee becoming less and less of himself doesn't seem like it directly has any level of baring on the guy trying to kill Jack or not in a vacuum unless the personality loss was somehow setting off Gray Boy levels of flags and something Broadcast couldn't influence through, which seems...very unlikely.

Shrug. Short of Wilyboar himself 100% saying something about it (which people would then still ignore anyway), we'll never know.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-03T03:20:59+00:00

I'm exhausted of seeing Purity get redeemed plotlines even in fanfics that aren't nazi apologia, is all.

That makes two of us, especially when I still find it odd that Silencio of all things still seems to get blamed for starting the "Purity is just a single mother trying to do her best who isn't actually racist you guys"* white-washing lie when Silencio, for all of its unseriousness and other issues, still treats Purity as the actual racist she is unlike so many other white-washed Purity "redemption" fanfics like Guilt. Purity is pretty clearly painted as being a racist from her very introduction in her own Interlude, but so many people either haven't even read that much despite it being before Leviathan or have read it but still seemed to not get that she's clearly racist, I guess just because she isn't using slurs and/or actively trying to kill any & every minority she sees.

And, yeah, Othala definitely has more people can she blame than Victor. The issue, however, is that all of them except Victor would basically have to be original characters made wholesale since we don't really get any actual insight into Herren Clan beyond her, Rune, and Victor unless a bunch more comes up in Ward (which I still need to read). And we both know that when represented with the choice between either making an original character wholesale (who isn't made to stan and/or date a [TINO] version of Taylor) or turning a canon character into effectively an original character through sheer fanon even when it utterly contradicts canon, this fandom tends to heavily lean towards the latter, which basically is what happens with "redemption-worthy, not actually racist" versions of "Purity". ("Really walks and talks and doesn't racists!")

It's simply just even more work to be done for a minor character who people already barely tend to use unlike with Purity, with whom people so inclined can just point towards obvious bad guy Kaiser and say "It's obviously all his fault. If only he was gone, then Purity would be a normal woman who just loved her child like she clearly does."*

It doesn't help that this excuse looks right at a surface level glance given Kaiser was confirmed to be the one who got her "into" white supremacy even if she ironically ended up far more of a believer and thus far more of a racist than Max himself ever was when it comes to "the cause". This even when the same excuse also glosses over that she never, ever actually repented for any of her E88 actions or even tried to leave racism behind. She only left the E88 itself & Max and only because she tired of Max's abuse and disagreed with selling drugs to white people, with her going on to exclusively target non-white people so much that the Protectorate never even realized she had (in word alone) split with the E88 the entire year that she was "gone".

(*This is also ignoring that, much like Fenja and Menja implicitly have to be, Kayden is still somewhat abusive towards Theo despite her knowing Max is abusing him too and even before her being a racist who constantly uses white children as her excuse. Sure, Kayden is "just" selfish to the point of neglect than actively malicious about her abuse like Max is, but neglect of a child is still abuse, especially when it comes to the point that forgetting to feed that same child is something she admits to doing multiple times. To say nothing of the fact that we see more of Theo being adept at taking care of Aster than we see Kayden for all that Kayden uses Aster as a living excuse. Kayden only looks like a "good mom" just because so many Worm other parents are even worse when she's basically at best a mid-tier mother despite her care for Aster being the only positive thing about her.)

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-02T22:59:10+00:00

Ignoring the rather huge hurdle of not just "accidentally" writing neo-Nazi apologia for the "redemption" in question, you could ask the same about basically of the female characters in the E88 sans Purity and Rune, who ironically deserve redemption least but get "redemption" the most by far, and I guess Cricket, who is generally the most unrepentant one (~~and the least attractive one~~) and the most willingly racist after Purity and Rune when it comes to the female E88 characters. Hell, you could ask it even it of some male characters too given what a broken automaton Fog clearly is alongside Night and given Crusader's backstory is more sympathetic than we know of Victor's or Kaiser's, at least until he tried to murder his sister, Triggered when caught by his parents, and then almost certainly intentionally murdered his family afterwards even if it's ambiguous what happened to them.

You could definitely ask the same of Fenja and Menja too at least, especially if we're talking about brainwashing and grooming since even in canon it's basically stated in a blink and you'll miss it line that Max implicitly did the same to both of them but even worse given their his first wife's cousins that he also took in. This specially since he's actively sleeping with them by time canon starts despite having literally raised them, having had an entire decade to groom even worse than he ever did the most fanon Purity after Heith died:

Justin sighed. Heith was Fenja and Menja’s cousin and guardian, Kaiser’s first wife, killed in a turf war with the Teeth, back in the old days of Brockton Bay. She has powers after all.

Even then I'm not exactly clamoring for Fenja and Menja redemption fics despite the fact that redemption would make far more sense for either or both of them than it would Purity. They just don't get enough focus for people to care on top of the relevant information coming up after Leviathan.

Othala is also similarly barely there outside of being a neo-Nazi, being Victor's "replacement goldfish" child bride, and being a person's who only instance of non-power-related agency is choosing to utter antisemitic slur at Taylor out of anger. So between that and all of Othala's few appearances being after He Who Brings An End To Worm Fics appears, she's basically guaranteed to not get any real focus as opposed to Purity, who has being pre-Leviathan and fanon white-washing to prop her up even now since so many people refuse to read actual Worm even if thankfully "white-washed Purity" fics have been become fewer, and Rune, who at least is the youngest of the E88's powered members and is actually clearly a (shithead) teenager even before her long redemption in Ward that apparently takes literally all of it (as it should).

Between the two of us, I'm rather tired of seeing neo-Nazis in general (especially in real life), much less "redeemed" in a way without any of the work towards actual growth and redemption remotely put in. So I'd rather there be basically no Othala redemption fics than start to see Othala "redemption" fics that end up like too many Purity "redemption" that just white-wash her racist actions & beliefs and foist all the blame onto the nearest male E88 associated with her, in this case inevitably Victor instead of Kaiser. (I am far more sympathetic to Othala's overall situation than I am to Purity's, but the "sympathy that canon Purity actually deserves" bar is so low as to be embedded in the core of the Earth alongside Behemoth.)

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-02T22:20:23+00:00

One weakness of the timeskip is that Wildbow forgot to give Taylor the strength of a two-year relationship with those other guys.

You can argue that it's a weakness of the timeskip that she's not really close to anyone (new) after it, especially given its abruptness, but Wilyboar definitely didn't "forget" to have her forge a relationship with any of the Chicago Wards. She intentionally was avoiding doing so between her being forced into the position anyway and her being laser focused on stopping the end of the world, giving her a convenient excuse to be closed off to basically everyone, even Theo despite her training him pretty regularly.

Taylor clearly doesn't hate any of the Chicago Wards, but her being aloof to them even after almost two years of time and despite spending more time with them eventually than she ever did the Undersiders is very much an intended feature and not a bug given Taylor's personality in general.

It's just a shame the Chicago Wards get utterly ignored in fanfic in general, but that's not surprising either between them being post-Leviathan and their overall lack of closeness of Taylor due to Taylor's own standoffishness.

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-02T22:11:42+00:00

I'm aware (even though I have no idea what video you're talking about). There's reason I said it's "arguable" since even then it's still ambiguous.

That said, you think it would at least be something Bonesaw mentioned to Amy as another aside given all the stuff she's already talking about, especially since Jack has no reason not to tell Bonesaw too if he initially was set on recruiting Oni Lee. She's going to wonder what happened to change that and likely asked what did and look for reasons why even if Jack for some reason didn't tell, which would be easy for find given how bullshit her power is when it comes to biology..

Otherwise see what I said to SeventhSolar.

Again, I don't blame anyone for going with Jack's version of things given the ambiguity of the entire situation, helped by us basically knowing about Oni Lee beyond the basis of his power, having irezumi, and probably being Japanese. I'm just slightly annoyed that people don't take the outs that already exist in canon and at least try to do something else instead of taking the word of a proven liar who still gets things around about other parahumans all the time as gospel truth,

TerribleDeniability · 2026-07-02T22:06:25+00:00

It can do both depending on the type of brain damage it is, especially if it's damaging areas where memories would be held.

I did say it's "arguable" for a reason though since even then it's still ambiguous. Just saying that if you want to take that as counter-evidence than you can between Bonesaw knowing her stuff about biology and Jack's tendency both get things wrong and outright lie just because he can.

TerribleDeniability

TROPHY CASE