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Firebird, a Worm AU/Xover?

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chibipoe said:
In the Dark Phoenix arc, he engaged Dark Phoenix in psychic combat and subdued her, letting Jean regain control. Unfortunately, this was, in the murky beginnings of The Phoenix, the stage where there wasn't really a Phoenix entity, simply that Jean had become That Powerful that she was a cosmic being. There was retconing/adjustments later to reveal that Phoenix was a separate being so they could revive Jean Grey. Armsy will not be engaging The Phoenix and/or Taylor in psychic combat, however.

On a more centrally focused topic:

Glady... well, he took an indefinite leave of absence for health reasons.
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I think that particular battle would be a tad bit one sided.
 
I remember reading some of your previous work on Accelerator but I dropped it because the characters were subtly off, they didn't act quite like real people and there was a sort of uncanny valley result that ended up turning me off the work.

Reading this though I finally worked out what was wrong, your characters don't act like normal humans, they instead act like comic book characters. Normal people don't care about the plot of the story and they act according to their own needs and desires, your characters however put the plot ahead of that, if the plot demands that Armsmaster go to highschool to be a school teacher then that's what he'll do regardless of how he'd normally act.

The result is that your characters all have an uncanny valley effect, except rather than being a physical effect looking similar to humans but being slightly off, it's a psychological uncanny valley where they act almost but not quite like what humans would.

With that realization made it's now a lot easier to read your writing, although immersion suffers from that knowledge.
 
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WorldSlayer said:
I remember reading some of your previous work on Accelerator but I dropped it because the characters were subtly off, they didn't act quite like real people and there was a sort of uncanny valley result that ended up turning me off the work.

Reading this though I finally worked out what was wrong, your characters don't act like normal humans, they instead act like comic book characters. Normal people don't care about the plot of the story and they act according to their own needs and desires, your characters however put the plot ahead of that, if the plot demands that Armsmaster go to highschool to be a school teacher then that's what he'll do regardless of how he'd normally act.

The result is that your characters all have an uncanny valley effect, except rather than being a physical effect looking similar to humans but being slightly off, it's a psychological uncanny valley where they act almost but not quite like what humans would.

With that realization made it's now a lot easier to read your writing, although immersion suffers from that knowledge.
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Because no law enforcement officer has ever gone undercover. Not to mention the fact that we know exactly how real people react to having super-powers. :eyeroll:

I could understand if you thought Taylor and Armsmaster were out-of-character. After all, they are to some extent or another since it's, you know...fanfiction. But this reasoning that 'real people' would never act like this is total nonsense. Armsmaster clearly stated a need to investigate the manifestation over Winslow. He's clearly a law enforcement officer as he's an upstanding member of the Protectorate. Striding in there in his power armor clearly did not accomplish his objective. His face is generally unknown. Going undercover is a logical action.

As for Taylor and others... This is Worm. The universe where having powers includes a mindfuck free-of-charge. I can't think of another universe so tailor-made for AUs, alt-powers, and out-of-character characters.


chibipoe: I was very pleased to find this story. I very much enjoyed Acceleration, and it's probably my favorite Worm!fic. Frankly, I consider it the definitive example of how to write an "over-powered" character and still maintain dramatic tension. There are plenty of writers, including professionals, that could learn from you in that regard. I suspect this story might provide another example. Although I suppose there are quite a few directions you could go with this. I look forward to finding out. :D
 
Rhostadt said:
As for Taylor and others... This is Worm. The universe where having powers includes a mindfuck free-of-charge. I can't think of another universe so tailor-made for AUs, alt-powers, and out-of-character characters.
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Given how many Wormfics this place has (never mind SB), this really shouldn't be news to anyone either.
 
WorldSlayer said:
I remember reading some of your previous work on Accelerator but I dropped it because the characters were subtly off, they didn't act quite like real people and there was a sort of uncanny valley result that ended up turning me off the work.

Reading this though I finally worked out what was wrong, your characters don't act like normal humans, they instead act like comic book characters. Normal people don't care about the plot of the story and they act according to their own needs and desires, your characters however put the plot ahead of that, if the plot demands that Armsmaster go to highschool to be a school teacher then that's what he'll do regardless of how he'd normally act.

The result is that your characters all have an uncanny valley effect, except rather than being a physical effect looking similar to humans but being slightly off, it's a psychological uncanny valley where they act almost but not quite like what humans would.

With that realization made it's now a lot easier to read your writing, although immersion suffers from that knowledge.
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A valid statement. I will admit that I did remark at least once in Acceleration that I was approaching this from a more comic book perspective. Armsmaster is a Hero with a capital H.

Regarding characters acting in accordance with the plot, well, I don't know what you got out of Worm then, cos it's loaded with that. My reading of characters, particularly Armsmaster, is this is something he would do. *shrug* But anyway, Worm is loaded with instances of "Plot demands I do X now because it Makes Things Worse, so here I go."
 
chibipoe said:
A valid statement. I will admit that I did remark at least once in Acceleration that I was approaching this from a more comic book perspective. Armsmaster is a Hero with a capital H.

Regarding characters acting in accordance with the plot, well, I don't know what you got out of Worm then, cos it's loaded with that. My reading of characters, particularly Armsmaster, is this is something he would do. *shrug* But anyway, Worm is loaded with instances of "Plot demands I do X now because it Makes Things Worse, so here I go."
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Eh, Armaster was one of those characters that struck me as being caught up in a really bad moment at just the right time to make things worse for Taylor if you want an in story explination, for his early actions, all the dominoes to effect his psyche just fell in at the right place at the right time (No, I'm not saying it was a ziz/cauldron plot). In my opinion you do write him a tad more heroic then he is at the start of canon, but not by much. AU in effect so slight changes are acceptable. I don't think any of the things he did, were anywhere near what he would normally do, he tries to be a good guy and would even help people in a bad spot usually, ia am convinced he had some kind of psychotic break in there somewhere.
 
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scullymulder123 said:
Eh, Armaster was one of those characters that struck me as being caught up in a really bad moment at just the right time to make things worse for Taylor if you want an in story explination, for his early actions, all the dominoes to effect his psyche just fell in at the right place at the right time (No, I'm not saying it was a zip/cauldron plot). In my opinion you do write him a tad more heroic then he is at the start of canon, but not by much. AU in effect so slight changes are acceptable. I don't think any of the things he did, were anywhere near what he would normally do, he tries to be a good guy and would even help people in a bad spot usually, ia am convinced he had some kind of psychotic break in there somewhere.
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Funnily enough Taylor was the Catalyst for that in a round about way.

Her constant thwarting of the heroes and using Coil's power to humiliate them + Bakuda + Purity + Sleep Deprivation, quickly pushed Armsmaster over the edge. It wasn't intentional or wholly her fault, but she was a factor.

So it's cool seeing a bit more calm Armsmaster.
 
notes said:
Locker credibility concerns? Go low, not high.

Conscious conspiracies, explicit tradeoffs, deliberate action... these can be fun, these can be fascinating, but they are not the default setting for many.

Most people make startlingly few deliberate decisions, letting habit, convenience, and imitation handle most of the 'choices' made; most everyone sees what they wish to see.

So work from there: initial incidents have no evidence (and besides, investigations are inconvenient), and that shifts T from 'victim' to 'annoying girl who keeps making unprovable accusations', this becomes habit, imitated more widely (Teacher A: 'Hey, T said something about bullying'; Teacher B: 'Yeah, she keeps crying wolf about that). Meanwhile you have productive girls, who get their homework in on time, who run track, who smile nicely, who are so very much more believable, who tell a different story. And, after the loss of her mother, is it any wonder that T is acting out? Seeking attention, even negative attention? Doing worse in classes and on tests?

The locker, of course, is harder to dismiss... but at that point, admitting to the ongoing issue involves admitting to the ongoing dereliction. Much easier to say (correctly) that there's no hard evidence, and let the petty passive aggression available to any minor member of a large organization do the rest by sheer virtue of inertia. There's no need to bury an investigation when just going through the motions will achieve the same effect.

All of which is to say that Sophia doesn't need to be a Ward, that Blackwell and Gladly, et al., don't need to have secret motivations for turning a blind eye, for the bullying situation to occur. Indeed, given a T with no faith in authority, one who actively rejects milder disciplinary options (Suspension? That'll just make things worse!), it's not hard for those worthies to shrug and think 'I tried', or 'not my business, really,' following any half-hearted attempt to help T (or, more cynically, assuage the dull prickings of conscience that an effort was made).

Bottom line: setting up a world in which a non-Ward Sophia gets away with things is not an objective question, it is a question of chibipoe's skill.
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Honestly, the big issue with the locker, IMO, is that the school has any choice in the matter. Around here, if a pupil ends up in hospital as a consequence of a 'prank' like that, what would happen is that the police barge into the picture, tell the school administration to sit down and shut up if they try to get in the way, and then the perpetrators end up before a juvenile court. This is triggered by the child ending up in hospital; the school doesn't really have any input on whether or not the investigation happens.

The unbelievable thing isn't that the administration tried to brush the whole thing off, because there have been cases where schools have hushed up some pretty heinous stuff on the basis that one or more of the perpetrators are part of a flagship sports team (for example). What's unbelievable is that they got away with it once something as public and obvious as a child ending up in hospital occurred.
 
Screwball said:
Honestly, the big issue with the locker, IMO, is that the school has any choice in the matter. Around here, if a pupil ends up in hospital as a consequence of a 'prank' like that, what would happen is that the police barge into the picture, tell the school administration to sit down and shut up if they try to get in the way, and then the perpetrators end up before a juvenile court. This is triggered by the child ending up in hospital; the school doesn't really have any input on whether or not the investigation happens.

The unbelievable thing isn't that the administration tried to brush the whole thing off, because there have been cases where schools have hushed up some pretty heinous stuff on the basis that one or more of the perpetrators are part of a flagship sports team (for example). What's unbelievable is that they got away with it once something as public and obvious as a child ending up in hospital occurred.
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Well, that is worm for you. Filled with authority figures that suck at their jobs.
 
Screwball said:
The unbelievable thing isn't that the administration tried to brush the whole thing off, because there have been cases where schools have hushed up some pretty heinous stuff on the basis that one or more of the perpetrators are part of a flagship sports team (for example). What's unbelievable is that they got away with it once something as public and obvious as a child ending up in hospital occurred.
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I can kinda vouch for this, in a second-hand manner, because something like this actually happened to another student while I was in high school, and it wasn't simply big news locally, it made international headlines.

Granted, the Wormverse is significantly shittier, but the American media and populace aren't likely to be that significantly more jaded.
 
OverReactionGuy said:
Well, that is worm for you. Filled with authority figures that suck at their jobs.
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Even if that's true, the media would have gotten hold of it, and turned it into a firestorm. The police would have done their jobs for no other reason that to avoid the PR shitstorm falling on Winslow. Taylor then could have easily sued the school. She doesn't have to sue her bullies, just the school. The fact that she ended up locked in a locker full of biohazard waste for hours were virtually incontrovertible and extremely damning. She comes down on the school, the school would then come down on the bullies to take the heat off. Unfortunately, she let herself be bullied (again) and took the hush money.


And I just realized we have wandered waaaayyyyy off topic. :oops:
 
Rhostadt said:
Even if that's true, the media would have gotten hold of it, and turned it into a firestorm. The police would have done their jobs for no other reason that to avoid the PR shitstorm falling on Winslow. Taylor then could have easily sued the school. She doesn't have to sue her bullies, just the school. The fact that she ended up locked in a locker full of biohazard waste for hours were virtually incontrovertible and extremely damning. She comes down on the school, the school would then come down on the bullies to take the heat off. Unfortunately, she let herself be bullied (again) and took the hush money.


And I just realized we have wandered waaaayyyyy off topic. :oops:
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True. But she didn't take the hush money, her dad did. Due to being poor and expensive medical bills and the fact that her dad did not know the extent that Taylor was getting bullied and the extent that the administration of Winslow has been ignoring it.
 
I reiterate, I'm okay with discussing the locker AS it pertains to this story, where it did become a bit of a debacle(though overshadowed by The Giant Flaming Bird that appeared in the sky over the school). But not as it pertains to canon. Those discussions have a place. And it isn't here.
 
notes said:
Everything is loaded with such instances: the trick is to keep them so well concealed that everything looks like it's proceeding somewhere between naturally and inevitably.
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Ha. Made me find it.

"Not a promise, not an oath, or a malediction or a curse," I said, sounding calm, probably inaudible in the midst of Tagg's screaming. "Inevitable. Wasn't that how she put it? I told them. Warned them."
 
Well, all this discussion over whether or not Professor Singer will be able to punish Sophia makes me curious on what your take on the bullying will be. I have to admit I've seen a lot, a lot, a lot of it being Winslow is covering for Shadow Stalker because she's a Ward, even though canon showed that Taylor was being bullied before that.

I like in Accel that you just bypassed the issue by having Taylor ignore them, and then push Shadow Stalker out of the picture, I thought it was nice and a subtle way of showing that she's beyond their influence, "can't touch her" by not showing them in the story, to show us, the readers, that they've became insignificant.
 
Woo, new chibipoe story. Glee and gumdrops!

Randomly, I find Professor Singer to be both hilarious in concept and actually highly logical!

...No, really!

I mean, he's supposedly a College Professor who has to take a High School Job due to Reasons. Thus he has a ready made cover story for any brusqueness or social mis-steps, as, well, I can't imagine any former college-level teachers being /thrilled/ about having to take a lower level job and being forced to interact with *shudder* teenagers.

...Also, that suit-holding briefcase of his...IronMaster, is that you? :D
 
Like the story so far, but question for the comic-lore people out there on the Phoenix Force; the extent of my background is the old X-Men animated cartoons back in the 90s with Jean Grey being taken over by the Phoenix arc, and then later the abomination that was the third X-Men movie. From the comments so far, it seems that story-line writers pretty much have carte blanche to use the Phoenix Force however the hell they want, in strength as well as influence over whatever character they are using as a host.

I've done a bit of wiki walking, and wanted to know if there was any recommended reading about the Phoenix Force you would prioritize over another? The concept always seemed pretty cool, but the execution of the two incarnations I saw were pretty... lackluster. Is there a specific source that the OP is using for inspiration, or a generally agreed on "best" version that I should check out?
 
Yojorocks said:
Like the story so far, but question for the comic-lore people out there on the Phoenix Force; the extent of my background is the old X-Men animated cartoons back in the 90s with Jean Grey being taken over by the Phoenix arc, and then later the abomination that was the third X-Men movie. From the comments so far, it seems that story-line writers pretty much have carte blanche to use the Phoenix Force however the hell they want, in strength as well as influence over whatever character they are using as a host.

I've done a bit of wiki walking, and wanted to know if there was any recommended reading about the Phoenix Force you would prioritize over another? The concept always seemed pretty cool, but the execution of the two incarnations I saw were pretty... lackluster. Is there a specific source that the OP is using for inspiration, or a generally agreed on "best" version that I should check out?
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In all fairness toward the abomination that was the third movie's Phoenix Force... that was made by Fox and the current owner of Marvel hates what they did with it so much that he shuns any and all of it.
 
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