Camera Shy
is a Worm alt-power fic by TheGreatGimmick.
Taylor would never have imagined that going blind would have improved her life so dramatically, yet so it happened to be. Not only is picking on a blind girl too petty even for the Trio, not only has having to learn to care for a blind daughter helped her dad fight through the worst of his depression at losing his wife, but she even got superpowers out of the whole ordeal!
Not the most impressive powers, granted, but powers none the less.
Camera Shy contains the following tropes:
- Combo Platter Powers: As a grab-bag cape, Taylor has several apparently unrelated minor powers. In her case, these powers actually fit together pretty well into a cohesive whole.
- Her first ability allows her to see through the eyes of any sapient being who has any part of her in their field of vision. This power blocks her from using her own eyes, and if nobody is currently looking at her she is blind. She can process numerous separate perspectives on herself without issue.
- Her second power allows her to cause momentary disruptions in electronic systems: Lights flicker, cameras momentarily go to static, etc. If she really pushes this power, she can blow out light bulbs, but that's the strongest effect she's managed to generate. Using this ability rapidly tires her.
- Her primary power allows her to enter a kind of time-frozen "ghost realm" as long as she is not being directly visually observed by any sapient being, bringing anything she is wearing or carrying with her. Note that while she cannot enter the ghost realm if observed, she can "prime" herself to enter that state, such that she will then go ghost if unobserved for even a microsecond. Taylor's other two powers do not function in this state.
- Within this realm, Taylor is intangible, able to move freely in any direction at about the equivalent of a brisk jog and phase through solid objects. She cannot reenter the normal world in any location which is being directly observed by a sapient being, though she can move through such locations freely.
- When Taylor phases through objects, they appear to "smear" along the direction of her movement as if someone had smudged a painting. When she re-enters the normal world, anything smeared will be pushed along the direction of the smear. This force is not usually strong enough to move heavy or anchored objects, but can send light objects flying.
- Taylor can see through her own eyes when in the ghost world. Anything not directly observed by a sapient being appears to be perfectly evenly lit, regardless of real-world lighting conditions. Any area which is directly observed appears as absolute blackness when in this state, this blackness does not block Taylor's ghost-world vision.
- Remaining in the ghost world rapidly causes Taylor to feel fatigued, becoming exhausted after only a few minutes. However, this exhaustion is not felt in the real world, and remaining in the real world allows her to recover at roughly a ten-to-one ratio (for every ten seconds in the ghost world, she needs one in the real world to recover).
- Taylor's cluster-mates also have related "grab-bag" powers.
- Creepy Good: Taylor's power set and costume come off as unsettling — read "pants-wettingly terrifying unknowingly and by accident" — to most, but she tries her hardest to be a hero. The rules of her ghost state teleportation mean that she can disappear any time you're not looking at her, then appear when you open a door, or pop up behind you to tap you on the shoulder and vanish before you can turn around... Doctor Pearson watches just a video of Taylor's activities, and ends up wearing her lunch, hitting her head, getting chills up her spine, and then shrieking when someone knocks on her door in the real world.
- This gets even worse when Taylor figures out that the strength of her powers is affected by how scared those around her are, and starts deliberately trying to inspire terror to boost her abilities.
- Cursed with Awesome: Taylor has mixed feelings about her powers, but she's actually quite pleased with the results of going blind. It has done wonders for her relationship with her dad, who now has a problem he can focus on and help with, and the school has been forced to take steps to help her out, including assigning her a full time assistant who proceeds to catch and shut down most of the bullying.I never would have thought that nearly all of my problems could have been solved by suddenly going blind, but here we are.
- Good Is Not Soft: Taylor tries to be a good guy... but has no problem causing serious bodily harm to Nazis and other villains, and once she realizes her powers get stronger the greater the number of people who fear her and the deeper fear they feel she leans into scaring the hell out of bad guys and playfully scaring civilians.
- Loophole Abuse: While Taylor's power in some sense counts clothing as part of her for purposes of determining whether she's observed, as long as no part of her actual body is visible she can still go into the ghost realm and leave the clothing (which is technically what's being observed) behind. She takes advantage of this by putting together a costume which is effectively several full-body cloaks layered over each other, allowing her to repeatedly escape by sacrificing the outermost layer of her costume. She can even enter her ghost state and leave a layer behind, fly around for reconnaissance or telekinetically "smearing" objects, then return to her clothing before exiting ghost state, as if she never went anywhere.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Though the actual mechanics are a lot more complicated (as seen above), this is functionally what Taylor's power works out to. As soon as she's not observed, she can stop time and fly at high speed for up to several minutes to another unobserved location.
- Orifice Evacuation: Taylor accidentally performs an example of this when she lets her ghost world session run out while inside Krieg. Challenger, a hero who sees Glimpse come out of Krieg's mouth, calls it the most terrifying experience of her entire life, and that's including participating in a fight against Leviathan.
- Politically Incorrect Hero: The items Exorcist empowers block out anything he classifies as an "adverse mental effect". This includes debilitating fear, many mental disorders, and all mind-affecting powers, but it also includes things like homosexual feelings and transgender identification.
- Power Of Hate: One of Sowilo's subpowers is that her powers get stronger when nearby parahumans feel hate, anger, disgust, and loathing.
- Pragmatic Hero: Nikkommo's personal philosophy, which she tries to pass on to Taylor, is essentially pragmatic heroism. She believes that it's OK to break some laws in the service of doing good, and indeed feels that the advantage of being an independent hero is that while she has less support and resources than the Protectorate, Wards, or corporate teams, there's also many fewer rules and regulations to get in the way of doing the right thing, when it needs to be done.
- Prophet Eyes: Taylor's power makes her blind in the real world, as a side effect of letting her see through the eyes of others. It also gave her surprisingly pretty cosmetic cataracts.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Sowilo is trying to get her hands on one of Exorcist's cross pendants, which in addition to protecting against mind-affecting powers also suppress things like homosexual attraction and transgender identification, to get rid of her unwanted feelings towards Taylor. What she almost certainly doesn't know is that those feelings are genuinely unnatural, imposed by her Shard as part of the Kiss/Kill dynamic.
- Terror Hero: After the livestream of Taylor's fight against Uber and Leet is uploaded to the internet, the similarities between her abilities and mannerisms and those of various horror-movie antagonistsnote combined with her rather unorthodox choice of weaponrynote quickly lead to her being declared a literal ghost who is addressed as "SHE" or "HER". Taylor is not happy when she finds out, but eventually comes to accept it and continues playing the part. Becomes justified when she finds out that her powers get stronger when her enemies are more afraid of her.
- Unwanted Assistance: As mentioned above, Taylor's blindness is actually an artifact of her power to see through the eyes of others. This becomes a potential issue when a doctor offers to bring in Panacea to heal her eyes: If Panacea touches Taylor, she'll know there's nothing wrong with her eyes, potentially unmasking Taylor as a cape.
- What Were You Thinking?: Lianne, as the only responsible adult Taylor knows who knows her secret identity, calls Taylor out for thinking that infiltrating the Undersiders (as she did in Canon Worm) was a good idea, particularly considering that Tattletale flat out told Taylor that her power is a superpowered Sherlock Scan, implying that she already knows about Taylor's plan and is manipulating her into joining. Taylor eventually admits that she Didn't Think This Through, and agrees not to go through with it, but stops short of realizing the reason she was so easy to manipulate—her desperate loneliness.
