A Finely Honed Blade [Worm/Kara no Kyoukai | Garden of Sinners]

[Phearo]

sequewayed

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Hoping not to come across as anal, but it's spelled segued, mate.

I've heard this before, and I've been debating how to go about dealing with it. Yes, I understand that it's pretty overdone, but there are in-story reasons for how quickly Amy gives in and how empathetic Taylor is. I'm a big fan of subtle hints and foreshadowing. The last chapter in particular has a large one towards that. Also, Amy didn't agree to anything. Taylor didn't tell her to stop healing, or suggest anything. We had a sixteen-year old girl with a minor meltdown, and Taylor noted the next day that in the end the conversation achieved practically nothing.

But a destined meeting? Between someone who literally personifies death and a person who has absolute control over life? Hmmmm. It's not really "destined", but KnK plays a lot with the themes of life, death, and knowledge, and it's something I'm doing here as well.

I'll try and figure out a way to make it more subtle, but I can't guarantee anything.

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I do agree with the other guy though that while I can see where you're going, the particular brand of interaction Taylor and Amy has had so far has come across.. rather cliched? At least to me. It might have been better if it was a relationship happening in the background and only further explored during one of the latter arcs. Amy clearly isn't Mikiya; she parallels a different aspect of ying and yang than him, more literal in spirit than Mikiya's saintly constitution, but the depth of that original relationship was only really shown at the latter half of series. Of course, it could just be that they got away with showing that as it was due to the in-media-res structure of KnK.

Well, I think there's not much one can do here than to rework parts of the story, but I also don't think you should. Things are already set in motion, it'd be a shame to turn the wheel away at this point.

 

[ensou]

Eh, Taylor having a subtle Thinker power seemed hinted at for a while, if that's what you mean. And that's fine. But the Amy thing still feels jarring compared to almost everything else in the fic.

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Spoiler: Taylor's QA power

Taylor has a Master/Thinker power from triggering with QA. The trigger scene basically covers what she triggered with and the thoughts she had that influenced the powers she got. But put plainly, it's "how to win friends and influence people".

It's a result of the feelings of loneliness at the time of her trigger and her regret that she had nobody around her to connect to. She influences the people around her similarly to Glory Girl's aura, granting extremely high sensitivity to other people's feelings, high charisma, the ability to influence another person's emotions and thoughts, and (extending the near-precognition of MEoDP) knowledge of the absolute positioning of people in her immediate vicinity at all times.

Basically, she's a Master 4 (Thinker 3) with just QA, specializing in mental and emotional manipulation, subversion, conditioning, and control. Taylor's comment of "gathering friends" is more literal than she knows.

Well, I think there's not much one can do here than to rework parts of the story, but I also don't think you should. Things are already set in motion, it'd be a shame to turn the wheel away at this point.

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If I were able to rework that part (and I totally am, I've done more extreme things to stories before, and the Amy sub-plot is a background thing right now), what would be better? Less sharing? Less of Taylor's introspection in 2.1's first scene? Because I've had people tell me that that scene is what pushes things over the edge into cliche, and I'm not at all above editing or even outright rewriting that.

 

[Kinunatzs]

Wow s very interesting fic though I wonder if the MEoDP works on Endbringers and from the OP does that mean that Taylor has second personality called Void Taylor along with the so call abilities of Void Shiki?

 

[HymnOfRagnarok]

Spoiler: Taylor's QA power

Taylor has a Master/Thinker power from triggering with QA. The trigger scene basically covers what she triggered with and the thoughts she had that influenced the powers she got. But put plainly, it's "how to win friends and influence people".

It's a result of the feelings of loneliness at the time of her trigger and her regret that she had nobody around her to connect to. She influences the people around her similarly to Glory Girl's aura, granting extremely high sensitivity to other people's feelings, high charisma, the ability to influence another person's emotions and thoughts, and (extending the near-precognition of MEoDP) knowledge of the absolute positioning of people in her immediate vicinity at all times.

Basically, she's a Master 4 (Thinker 3) with just QA, specializing in mental and emotional manipulation, subversion, conditioning, and control. Taylor's comment of "gathering friends" is more literal than she knows.

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Spoiler

Okay, I suspected something along those lines, this is kind of Jack Slash's Thinker ability writ large but....honestly that kind of makes the problem worse. Because Taylor doesn't display any of that charisma anywhere except with Amy. Everywhere else she's more soft-spoken, coming out of her shell and feels like she's slowly learning to connect to people and socialize again. Other people, more extroverted people, are coming across as friendly people who reach out to Taylor. And since this Taylor is making an effort to meet them halfway and accept their efforts, they aren't moving on, and a friendship is blossoming. It's also happening over time in the background over the more mundane stuff, which lets you get away with not showing everything.

Except, as I said, with Amy, where suddenly she's given speeches and apparently hitting all the right notes, even though I couldn't see them working that easily. That also happened to a lesser extent with Lisa suddenly reaching out to Taylor, but Hurricane Lisa is more IC and we got to see less of her motives and thoughts. At least, when Lisa showed up to buy Taylor a $300 coat which was....kinda Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but we know Lisa has an agenda and is a meddler. So when that happened, and Lisa walked off I was willing to settle in a wait to see how this played out.

It also didn't help that Amy apparently immediately feels like she remembers Taylor, intuitively understands where Taylor was going with things, and continues to dwell on it long after she's left. It was very long-winded.

Credit where it's due, it helps explain Brian leaning to not recruit Taylor like Taylor wants, Alec being interested, and Rachel making the right move with Taylor and vice versa, while still remaining plausibly IC without thinker powers.

 

[ensou]

Spoiler

Okay, I suspected something along those lines, this is kind of Jack Slash's Thinker ability writ large but....honestly that kind of makes the problem worse. Because Taylor doesn't display any of that charisma anywhere except with Amy. Everywhere else she's more soft-spoken, coming out of her shell and feels like she's slowly learning to connect to people and socialize again. Other people, more extroverted people, are coming across as friendly people who reach out to Taylor. And since this Taylor is making an effort to meet them halfway and accept their efforts, they aren't moving on, and a friendship is blossoming. It's also happening over time in the background over the more mundane stuff, which lets you get away with not showing everything.

Except, as I said, with Amy, where suddenly she's given speeches and apparently hitting all the right notes, even though I couldn't see them working that easily. That also happened to a lesser extent with Lisa suddenly reaching out to Taylor, but Hurricane Lisa is more IC and we got to see less of her motives and thoughts. At least, when Lisa showed up to buy Taylor a $300 coat which was....kinda Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but we know Lisa has an agenda and is a meddler. So when that happened, and Lisa walked off I was willing to settle in a wait to see how this played out.

It also didn't help that Amy apparently immediately feels like she remembers Taylor, intuitively understands where Taylor was going with things, and continues to dwell on it long after she's left. It was very long-winded.

Credit where it's due, it helps explain Brian leaning to not recruit Taylor like Taylor wants, Alec being interested, and Rachel making the right move with Taylor and vice versa, while still remaining plausibly IC without thinker powers.

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The only extroverted people we've seen are Lisa and Alex. The twins, John, and Michael are all pretty introverted. Sarah and Emily are more middling. However, we've also had the most interaction with Lisa and Alex, so I can understand that conclusion.

Amy remembers Taylor via her power. She got an image (bio-impression? snapshot?) of Taylor when she healed her in the hospital in January, and has the sense of deja vu from that. Like "oh, I saw that person on the side of the road before and vaguely recognize them because they stood out to me." It's really more her shard prodding her and being like "this person is important and this isn't the first time you've seen them" though.

 

[HymnOfRagnarok]

The only extroverted people we've seen are Lisa and Alex. The twins, John, and Michael are all pretty introverted. Sarah and Emily are more middling. However, we've also had the most interaction with Lisa and Alex, so I can understand that conclusion.

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Okay, though the fact that it's Alex introducing Taylor to all these people and helping Taylor opportunities to join their groups, like the sports team, still means that Alex has helped Taylor bypass some of the more tentative, awkward stages of starting a friendship. Even if the other people are introverted, given that the theme of Taylor's new friendships is Alex introducing them I implicitly assume that's how the rest of the friendships started.

Spoiler

It makes it feel less like Taylor is especially charismatic, and more like she's met an out-going, charismatic person who is friendly enough to set Taylor up during her first days at school.

 

[ensou]

snip

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Alex only introduced her to Sarah and Emily, and then the soccer team. Everything else has been Taylor, it just hasn't been explicitly shown (yet). But there have been references to it.

You wonder about how everybody in our little group got together? Yeah. Me. Me and my fucking inability to leave things alone.

It was a recurring problem.

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"I think I know you well enough at this point to tell you that if you ever need a place to go and get away from anything, you can come over. All of us do it. I usually end up at Alex's or the twins' place, but at this point my Dad half-expects someone to crash on our couch at least once a week."

"I'm not the only one you've done this for, am I?" she asked, looking from the napkin to me.

I smiled, thinking of the others. "No. Not really."

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[HymnOfRagnarok]

Alex only introduced her to Sarah and Emily, and then the soccer team. Everything else has been Taylor, it just hasn't been explicitly shown (yet). But there have been references to it.

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I did not notice that at all. I'll have to reread to be sure but that may be too subtle.

I mean on one hand I approve of keeping a brisk pace and not dragging everything out between the exciting plot points just to show how everything's going alright for Taylor. On the other hand, if this is supposed to be showing important personality traits of Taylor from which to base future interactions with people, we need to be noticing this stuff.

Spoiler

If I had to make a suggestion, now that Lisa's figured some stuff out, have her point it out to Taylor so that she can think about this stuff in retrospect and show the readers more examples of this ability at work.

 

[newwriter]

I am curious will Taylor start dressing in a kimono like Shiki after she takes over the ABB?

 

[FinalPyre]

If I were able to rework that part (and I totally am, I've done more extreme things to stories before, and the Amy sub-plot is a background thing right now), what would be better? Less sharing? Less of Taylor's introspection in 2.1's first scene? Because I've had people tell me that that scene is what pushes things over the edge into cliche, and I'm not at all above editing or even outright rewriting that.

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I'm only going off of what I remember reading maybe two/three weeks ago (I think I read it on FFn? I seem to remember commenting about Amy's very expressive eyes), but I remember feeling that their relationship progressed alarmingly quickly in a clunky way. They found one or two points of connection between them, and then suddenly they are sharing some of their deepest, darkest secrets. It set off alarm bells of "That's not how people work!" and I got very, very close to dropping the fic at that point, because it seemed like the universe was doing back flips to suddenly force this plot progression. I can agree with Hymn that it read like it was suddenly going to turn into a ship-fic.

It could work a bit better if they/one of them was currently under a tremendous amount of strain/pressure, like if Amy had them bad thoughts so strongly she fled the hospital or something like that... but that might be hard to do without breaking her character or making the situation seem overly forced. It would require more setup and hints to lead up to it.

The easiest "fix" I can think of would be to slow it down, and have them wait awhile until they are closer friends, and then one of them has a particularly bad day, to connect like this. That's a pattern that works for real relationships.

Spoiler

If you want this as an aspect of Taylor's power, then I think it should be made clear something is up earlier on. We're told that Taylor has been attracting friends off-screen -- which could have any number of explanations, and I remember thinking it felt odd that we were just supposed to roll with socially-awkward Taylor picking up friends in the background -- and then suddenly see an extremely blatant application like this. A few more solid hints would not go amiss.

Even if you dropped more info on the power, though, I still think their relationship would be improved by progressing slower. Heck, Amy has been around powers enough that she might stop in the middle of the conversation and go "Wait, why am I trusting this person again?" if she has no previous reason to trust Taylor. If Taylor's influencing power is weak enough that she herself hasn't noticed it, then it is probably easily resisted.

 

[YuffieK]

So Taylor (or more accurately Shinigami) has effectively taken over the ABB, will be using Tattletale as her proxy, may have Aya and Saya as lieutenants (depending on if they triggered and/or if their parents died during the kidnapping) probably will be incorporating the rest of the Undersiders after dealing with Coil. (And probably the Travelers as well, since Taylor can kill POWERS, Congratulations Noelle, you're cured!)

And then Levi shows up and Taylor goes "Huh, wonder what that thread between him and Eidolon is?"

 

[Battleship_Fusou]

This is simply amazing @ensou even if it takes time, I honestly can't wait to see how this goes. I honestly like the idea of Taylor deciding that she's just going to stay out of things unless they come to her.

And if she happens to mop the floor with everyone who does darken her doorstep, so much the better.

Shiki!Taylor is epic. Keeps bringing back memories of a KnK amv set to 'No Giving Up'.

@YuffieK Shinigami should totally be the title/name/moniker they give her!

 

[ensou]

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Yeah, pretty much, haha. You've got just about everything spot-on, at least with regards to the ABB, Lisa, and the twins. Taylor hasn't (yet) figured out about shards or how to kill powers directly, though.

Not quite sure about the Endbringer stuff, considering we're never really told where the Endbringers' cores truly reside (other than they're somehow layered and "dimensionally lensed" to have greater density but none of the apparent mass). I don't know if that means alternate dimensions or higher dimensions or both. Higher would make more sense, but it involves dimensional shenanigans either way.

If I were to have Taylor realize the connection between them and Eidolon, I'd probably have her go through forcing herself to see them like Shiki did for Araya. Probably won't, though. At least not for her first EB fight. Radio waves are comparatively simple. Nothing particularly exotic about them.

Shinigami should totally be the title/name/moniker they give her!

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The PRT/Protectorate is already calling her Switchblade. That was in Armsmaster's section of the interlude.

 

[Dopplerdee]

This is great.

 

[Twei]

Admittedly I'm not quite as fond of this one as the other, but that's probably because the subject material there intrigues me and it hasn't gotten far enough to do anything I dislike yet.

This is still pretty good, though.

 

[CalumTraveler]

Well... Shit! Bakuda had no idea what kind of hornets nest she kicked over with her little public message, did she? And leaving the tablet behind? Really? She might as well have just left the keys to the whole ABB there in that moment alone. XD So sure of her time stop bombs. PFT. Yeah... you should have realized that wasn't going to work when she cut through a forcefield, Bakuda.

Story Followed with huge interest of what's to come! :33

 

[Skelter]

Wow s very interesting fic though I wonder if the MEoDP works on Endbringers

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This seems like a good question. One one hand, in Tsukihime Tohno couldn't see Arc's lines under certain conditions. On the other hand, Ryougi Shiki's eyes aren't quite the same, cause they don't see points IIRC, and also she (and also Taylor) can cut abstract stuff, so they're not quite the same eyes...

I think the eyes would work, personally.

To be honest, I don't think it's something Taylor could feasibly do, though. She does have to get in close which is... easier said than done, to say the least.

But yeah, this is good. I love Kara no Kyoukai. Probably my favorite thing in the Nasuverse.

Fingers crossed for updates ASAP. Though it'll probably be a while. Oh well.

 

[lbmaian]

Already following this on FF.net.

I really like how Taylor was skirting the line mentally and trying to ward off her power's natural proclivities, and how circumstances force her hand.

Taylor, the reluctant warlord as seems to be her destiny.

Please continue.

 

[Dopplerdee]

This seems like a good question. One one hand, in Tsukihime Tohno couldn't see Arc's lines under certain conditions. On the other hand, Ryougi Shiki's eyes aren't quite the same, cause they don't see points IIRC, and also she (and also Taylor) can cut abstract

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From what I've heard it was about understanding and when faced with ArchType Earth Tohno didn't have a frame of reference....no clue on the points though.

 

[Teucrian]

So, the fic is great and written at a very high level of quality, and I absolutely love the KnK cross, but I got EXTREMELY confused about the sequence of events surrounding the Lung incident, Amy healing encounter and beginning of school.
Basically, when reading straight through, it looks like Amy at the hospital knows Taylor from history class before Taylor ever sets foot in Arcadia.
My [edit: original] interpretation of the timeline: Locker > leaving hospital > recovering, but restless > midnight encounter with Lung > skip first planned day of school/Panacea healing > one week since leaving hospital > first day of school.

Looking back at it, it becomes clear that you were continuing the pattern of flashbacks but I think you missed a few cues for the people who just skim over the date headers to get to the meat of the chapter, like me. Basically, I picked up on the fact that there were flashbacks, but didn't identify the every-other chapter pattern because I was reading straight through and skimming over the headers, so I must have missed a transition indicating that Lung came four months after she got out of the hospital.

I dunno if this is a worthwhile critique, or if its just me, it's just that the timeline seems a bit... vague, in places, to the point of completely misplacing Taylor's first fight, unless you're carefully reading every chapter's datestamp.

Anyway, other than that distracting quibble, I've really enjoyed your story. I always love reading good Kara no Kyoukai stuff.

Crest-worm locker scene, anyone?

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OHGODWHY? No thanks, please.

 

[KaneTW]

This seems like a good question. One one hand, in Tsukihime Tohno couldn't see Arc's lines under certain conditions. On the other hand, Ryougi Shiki's eyes aren't quite the same, cause they don't see points IIRC, and also she (and also Taylor) can cut abstract stuff, so they're not quite the same eyes...

I think the eyes would work, personally.

To be honest, I don't think it's something Taylor could feasibly do, though. She does have to get in close which is... easier said than done, to say the least.

But yeah, this is good. I love Kara no Kyoukai. Probably my favorite thing in the Nasuverse.

Fingers crossed for updates ASAP. Though it'll probably be a while. Oh well.

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Ryougi Shiki's MEoDP can see points and are in general more powerful than Tohno Shiki's.

 

[Rukatin]

Taylor's all like: "Okay all right I guess I'm doing things now."

 

[Nuhuh]

Drat. I was writing a Knk/Worm fic to post in the ideas thread. May be too similar to this so I will have to scrap it.

Anyway, I like what you have done. Good atmosphere setting, always important in a nasuverse fic. That said, your tonal change between Taylor doing cape stuff and the slice of life stuff is very abrupt. It's almost like reading two different stories, just from the way it's written. I'm also wary and weary of Panacea. An unfortunate bit of cliche in an otherwise very interesting story.

Looking forward to more, love the most recent development.

 

[ShadowAngelBeta]

Holyshitthisisawesome!

life, death, and knowledge,

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Also, Har Har.

 

[ensou]

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I could see that. It's problematic for me, the author, to find things like that since y'know, being the one who wrote it, I know exactly what's going on and when. I was trying to futz around with the first sentence in 1.3 (Taylor's day home/Amy healing at the hospital) to give a better cue of going "back" to the April sequence, but I couldn't get anything out that felt natural. I'll give it another try.

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Ryougi Shiki's MEoDP can see points and are in general more powerful than Tohno Shiki's.

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No, they can't. Shiki specifically cannot see points. She's only got lines. However, she has small lines that can act the same way that Tohno's points did.

And there they are. One on each leg, one on her back, a little one in her left chest. I can see the lines, separating her body into little sections. The one in her chest is likely the best target. Hitting that'd mean instant death.

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Drat. I was writing a Knk/Worm fic to post in the ideas thread. May be too similar to this so I will have to scrap it.

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Well, darn. Now you've got me interested.

That said, your tonal change between Taylor doing cape stuff and the slice of life stuff is very abrupt. It's almost like reading two different stories, just from the way it's written. I'm also wary and weary of Panacea. An unfortunate bit of cliche in an otherwise very interesting story.

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Where specifically? 2.1? Because I noted earlier in here I'm actively working on smoothing that out. And I get that people in the forums have seen a lot of Panacea. However, I also post to other places (AO3 and FFN in particular), where there isn't much of Amy.

I'm working on keeping her three-dimensional instead of reducing her to the flat character I've seen often, and you have to remember that what Taylor sees and reports in the narrative isn't even close to everything that's going on.