Goddamn Teenagers (Worm, AU/time travel)

[dc2008]

Compiling here from the other places some of the author comments from the other places. Will do this periodically to compile some of the stuff that is individually too short to make sense as its own thread mark. Will still use full informational thread marks for the longer ones.

Chapter 2: What Kind of Sickos Does The PRT Hire?

This is partly a riff on the physical therapist idea. Partly, it's going off Alec's perception that his power is all about pratfalls and body jacking. He doesn't actually know whether his power causes nerve damage, but the fact that it might be used for healing has never occurred to him.

I have not had a chance to bring it up in game yet, and I'm not sure when I'm the timeline it happens, but Alec has been given assurances by jaded!Taylor that his family will not be allowed to exert malign influence in BB (although she is open to 'saving' more of his siblings). Scion and Endbringers will be dealt with off-screen, which makes PRT, Protectorate and Cauldron more comfortable taking strong action against threats like HB.


Chapter 9: An Attempt at Outreach

Jaded!Taylor has perhaps forgotten that while Teen!Taylor's social skills are underdeveloped, Teen!Taylor is excellent at detecting bullshit and manipulation. You see it's the bit where someone's mouth is moving.

Or, Teen!Taylor's trust issues have trust issues, to a degree that Jaded!Taylor has allowed herself to, not forget so much, she knows intellectually. But it's not something Jaded!Taylor likes to dwell on because thinking about it is painful.


Chapter 11: Slither Slither

Coil: Oh noes, I has learned the world is full of scary monsters!
Coil: I know, I will go to the biggest monster I can find and sell my soul for power! I'm sure that nothing can go wrong!
Coil: Ants! You are ants! I SHALL NEVER FEAR AGAIN!
<Door opens>
Coil: Oh no! How could I ever have foreseen this! <rolls over, shows belly>


Chapter 14: Lisa Has AWESOME Plan

Also keep in mind this is very early Lisa. No S9, no warlord, no Leviathan. Heck, no bank. She had a lot of growing up to do before she got to where she was by the end of Worm.

And as much as jaded!Taylor loves her uptime!Lisa, jaded!Taylor has no intention of letting her friend's counterpart go through even a tenth of that trauma.


Chapter 15: The Use Of Cocaine To Facilitate Custody Proceedings

To be fair, this only worked because Taylor had Coil's people get the recording, and then had someone from the PRT presenting the evidence. Coil could have done this on his own but it would have taken longer. At this point in the story TT likely would have messed it up somehow. Brain couldn't do it himself, he doesn't have the knowledge or contacts.

Although this hasn't come up yet in story, this is more for Aisha than Brian. For her Alec and Brian are people she is vaguely fond of who are long dead, she has a vague sense of goodwill to their counterparts but not a huge amount of motivation. She actually feels closer to some of the heartbroken (although I'm not sure yet if they will be addressed on-screen). Aisha, Rachel and Lisa are all people she knows uptime. Taylor is not precisely conscious of this aspect of her thinking and would not be pleased with herself if she did realize it. I haven't decided yet if Lisa will eventually point out how sentimental and irrational some of Taylor's behavior is, and how much that diverges from Taylor's self-image as a cold-hearted operator (which is a lot easier when your peers, friends and family can all either take care of themselves quite


Chapter 18: Family Matters

You've also got the things where uptime!Aidha has been Jaded!Taylor's friend, ally, and general pain in the ass for decades. While Brian is merely That Guy I Dated Once God That Was Awkward, and the she went to Chicago and stuff happened and he died horribly.

Or rather, Taylor is more invested in helping Aisha (and Lisa and Rachel and even the Heartbroken) than she is invested in helping Brian. Jaded!Taylor hasn't articulated this to herself yet and would feel vaguely bad if she did, but Taylor despite the progress she's made is still far better at compartmentalization and denial than she cares to admit. Uptime she kind of leaned on uptime!Lisa to call her on it when it got bad (I don't have a *problem* it's just a one-off).


Chapter 22: Meditation Is The Answer

Yep. And for all that Zion's grand pronouncement to Eidolon was dramatic, remember that Zion said it in a context where he was trying to kill Eidolon. And by using that line, Zion succeeded.

 

[dc2008]

It's not Brian getting custody. Mom loses custody, Aisha goes to dad. I'm going to say that the reason this didn't work before is that dad and Aisha were not capable of pretending to get along long enough for him to win a contested custody fight against mom, even if that was something he wanted to do, which I'm pretty sure he was not.

Dad immediately signs something saying he is ok with Brian and Aisha living independently, because hell no she is not living with him. Even if mom complains, mom is persona non grata at CPS so no one listens, and anyway BB is such a shithole that even if CPS did investigate, she's happy, getting fed, there are no drugs around and the heat works. For the Bay, that's good enough.

Aisha could still mess things up if she gets into enough trouble with the law, but Taylor will run interference for that. And even if Brian struggles to deal with Aisha, Taylor has decades of experience dealing with Aisha bullshit, and little!Aisha is basically easy mode.

They might actually run into more trouble if they relocated to a less shit city with more functional CPS, but even then Taylor could set up some sort of witness protection plausible deniability thing. There is real, not even fake evidence of a creepy villain stalking Aisha (Coil), and if need be Taylor can make Coil generate more proof of such on demand. And soon enough Brian will be eighteen or emancipated, and with mom not able to contest dad will sign WHATEVER IS NEEDED to let Aisha legally stay with Brian and not him.

 

[dc2008]

A couple of reasons. First, here the bandaid is getting ripped off fast. She got the whole mess very quickly. Second, this Lisa is younger and less jaded/experienced/traumatized.

When Coil switched from freaking out about the grenades to freaking out about Cauldron and Contessa, Lisa got something like He now thinks he knows who did this, and has worried they will send a teleporting assassin to get him. The woman in the room with me sent the grenades though, and is not surprised at Coil's double freak out, so she knows about the assassin and conspiracy. The woman who my power strangely told me was the most influential in the world. She runs the conspiracy (not quite true actually, but Lisa is missing he some nuances of what her power is telling her). But she works in RCB's office, oh noes RCB is in on it which means the entire PRT and by extension the US government AND ALL GOVERNMENTS IN ALL THE WORLDS are compromised by the teleporting assassin people (true but way overblown, again this Lisa has a long way to go in learning how to listen to exactly what her power tells her). She also picks up on vial powers, a sense that the conspiracy is doing something deeply messed up to give out powers, possibly involving something alien and other-worldly and eldritch that her power finds uncomfortable and unnatural but can't or won't fully explain, so Lisa's imagination fills in the rest.

At some point, law of large numbers says that she realizes that some internet conspiracy theory she saw once was if you squint close to part of "the truth", concludes that poster is some kind of thinker or pre-cog (this one is all Lisa, not her power), and then her power starts filling her in on other things that are "true" if you start on the assumption that everything some random internet nutter says is correct.

Basically she's doing a power-assisted speed run through the EVERYTHING I KNOW IS A LIE spiral most teenagers go through at some point, aided because her power is curious what sort of nonsense new data it can generate by "assisting". Look! If you get a human in a certain mindset you can feed them snippets of context free data and they get Re ally creative! Much of the results are garbage but some are not! Neat!

Also Power knows from QA that Best Host wont let Power's pet human be permanently damaged by this so why not have fun.

Sort of the thing kids do with cats sometimes where they give kitty ALL THE CATNIP to see what happens.

TLDR Lisa is getting a mix of all of canon dumped on her at once plus OH NY GOD EVERYTHING VOID COWBOY SAID IS TRUE REALITY IS A LIE AND I AM CHEESE.

 

[dc2008]

Significantly, Victoria is not stupid. Basically as soon as she and her mother were in private she immediately confessed. She didn't realize how badly she had goofed until her mother explained in excruciating detail, but from Dr. Weaver's tone Victoria did realize that she done goofed. Again, Victoria is not stupid. Most of her problems can be summed up as "is a teenager".

Similarly, Carol is not stupid. She knows that this issue is being raised in what is basically the most low-key way possible, and a part of her is waiting for the other shoe to drop. She knows, for example, that if Piggot was the one delivering the message, it would not have been so circumspect. And she knows that if Victoria does not come clean now, the alternatives could be very unpleasant.

I might at some point write some or all of (1) jaded!Taylor giving reasons why she is being so nice, (2) Carol and Victoria's very calm and reasoned discussion or (3) other events going on around this. The messy details of whatever deal gets cut for Victoria will be largely or entirely off-screen because we've all seen that done before, in other fics, no doubt better than I could.

 

[dc2008]

The collective set of (1) people she wants to look out for (e.g., Taylor, Aisha, Sierra, Charlotte, Vicky, etc.), (2) people she doesn't trust and wants to reprogram I mean rehabilitate I mean ensure they don't follow the path of their uptime counterparts (e.g., Amy, Dinah), and (3) people who are in for Reasons (e.g., Missy).

Not willing to firmly and finally state the complete list yet, but the above names are definitely included.

Also, I'm not sure that Taylor has really thought through what the effect of including Missy will be. Uptime, she and Missy have after many years improved their working relationship to "that person you don't like and don't trust but can, sigh, work with" (uptime!Missy never really forgave uptime!Taylor for being Skitter). So Taylor doesn't really like uptime!Missy but also isn't going to excludedowntime!Missy from the super awesome secret club, because that's just what uptime!Missy expects and Taylor will show her! Oh and also downtime!Missy is an at-risk (pre?)teen, and a super-strong shaker, and has a messed up personal life, and is criminally under-utilizing her power, and that's totally the reason it's all to help this adorable girl and the world and stubborn spite doesn't play a role at all.

My take on uptime!Taylor is that she didn't so much get over or grow past certain of her main issues, but rather developed coping and masking strategies because when you are the most correct and right person in the whole world it is easier to present a lie to the world all the time than it is to admit you are wrong. Unfortunately, certain of those strategies rely on having someone (e.g., Aisha, Lisa, etc.) occasionally dope-slap her, and she doesn't have that anymore. I'm sure it won't cause problems.

 

[dc2008]

Piggot, and Tagg, are people who grew up in an age of soldiers, and have strong views about things like minimum training and discipline requirements for combatants. They fundamentally and logically do not like the new world's dependence on undertrained capes for basic police and military functions. You also have the problem that both the PRT and Protectorate are effectively gendarmeries, a sort of hybrid soldier policeman that the US military for historic and cultural reasons does not like and is usually bad at. You've also got the further problem that most capes fight as warriors, not soldiers, which is nails on the chalkboard of the soul to someone like Piggot or Tagg for reasons that are deeply rooted in the US and indeed Western military tradition going back to at least the Greek hoplites and conception of the polis.

Piggot does not find convincing the typical cape counter-argument of "But I can shoot LASERS with my nose isn't that AWESOME" and indeed views your typical cape as they might view a 16-year old ordinance technician with ADD who somehow snuck into the service and they aren't allowed to reassign or otherwise get rid of.

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Also, as an additional note, as frustrating as Piggot found this episode, Dr. Weaver got a lot of points for Calvert. The hand grenade alone was delightful but the fact he's gone? Just divine. Also whatever happened with Coil to flip the Undersiders was nice too, and the thing with Rory's cousin.

 

[dc2008]

This one spawned a lot of notes—

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Note from other place:

Honestly Lisa is showing her background. If she really wanted to outrage Aisha she would do better to get her reading materials about That Time The Government Gave Black People Syphilis for Reasons, or Malcolm X, or a stuff about how the FBI totally killed MLK. You know, stuff Aisha can relate to. On the other hand, proud rich white possibly neurodivergent business people just aren't going to get much sympathy from Aisha.

The best way to get Aisha to read Atlas Shrugged would be to emphasize to her how all the protagonists think different than the rest of the people and how society is keeping them down man, just because their parents while pregnant smoked opium or whatever old-timey white folks smoked.

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Note note: I chose Atlas Shrugged as the book to use here not to make any political statement but because it is a divisive book IRL that would in Worm further resonate with readers who identify Rand's protagonists with capes, and thus would likely be even more divisive in that setting.

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More Notes:
It's not about Atlas Shrugged specifically. Rather, Lisa is being a teenager about something and went "what's a book that if I get Aisha to read that will cause drama and be funny?" Because man can you imagine how annoyed Brian would be? The look on his face!

I'm pretty sure at this point Lisa's political and economic philosophy is basically "lol whatever I'm smart and as long as I can have nice things for me and my friends it's all good!"

 

[dc2008]

My take on Vicky is that at this point in the story she is an enormous nerd on certain subjects, like powers! And being a hero! And being a better hero!

Taylor didn't even have to massage the figures, she just dumped a bunch of anonymized stats on Ward performance and injuries and stuff, basically a similar packet to what they give Wards liaisons in cities that have budget for such things.

It's a win-win-win-win-win-win for Taylor (if not even more win), because (1) it gains her points with Vicky, (2) it means that Vicky and not her will be the one taking all that time to harass the local Wards to get their shit together, (3) same for New Wave, (4) it means Carol will be on the back foot and more willing to work with the PRT while not feeling called out about it because her daughter is the one being annoying and not any adult authority figures, (5) it means Amy is more likely to accept intervention on the "need to use your powers" point, and (6) will distract Vicky for the near term so Taylor can try to deal with the unintended consequences coming out of some of her other interventions.

 

[dc2008]

They key theme of this (and some other bits that are coming up) is that Aisha is super-grateful to her bro and is looking for ways to show it.

Brian also has the problem that as far as Vicky and her tranche of high school girls are concerned, Brian sends a lot of signals that he is safe. He's about their age but emancipated which is cool, and has a job and money for reasons (Vicky is like 80% sure he's a cape but totally won't say anything). PRT Lady clearly vouches for him! He's got his own apartment, and takes care of his little sister who has only good things to say! Also he's really fit! And fairly secure in his masculinity, so he's not going to get in a snit just because a girl is good at something or expresses an opinion.

Meanwhile Brian is so very, very done with the high school dating scene. He's been parentified massively, and when he sees the high school girls he sees kids.

 

[dc2008]

It really doesn't help that up until recently Aisha deliberately went out of her way to present to and interact with authority in a way basically designed to cause maximum friction. Because The Man never did anything nice for her so buzz off. Aisha likely has never had a positive interaction with the cops.

Couple that with the usual issues relating to race and poverty, the fact that Aisha's mom is drug-addled mess with a string of disreputable boyfriends, her brother was a criminal, as well as the fact that BB has an active and aggressive Nazi presence which canonically has made inroads into the BBPD? For her the cops are basically a gang that wants to take away her mom and brother and make her live with her dad or worse one of her mom's boyfriends.

Hence why it has never occurred to Aisha that Dr. Weaver is a cop. Cops are bad. Dr. Weaver is awesome. Hence, "secret agent", not "cop".

Also, kind of horrifying when you realize that however bad things are in the real world, in Worm race and poverty problems would be substantially worse than IRL.