Follow TV Tropes

Following

Fanfic / Distance Learning for Fun and Profit...

Go To

Distance Learning for Fun and Profit... is a Worm fanfiction where Taylor is a Gadgeteer Genius that, after a few accidental discoveries, ends up kickstarting a new scientific revolution.


This is a list of Tropes:

  • Accidental Truth: Void Cowboy, who is infamous in PHO over his penchant for coming up with weird conspiracy theories, is more right than anyone thinks when he states he believes aliens are behind the flying boat incident.
  • Achievements in Ignorance: Taylor, while fiddling around with one of her inventions, ends up connecting to an extraterrestrial transmission.
    • Taylor, not knowing the alien she's in communication with is the source of all powers and the Endbringers, manages to subvert both of them simply by talking to it and giving it the new data it wants without the need for conflict.
  • Aliens Speaking English: Averted - the transmission Taylor detects speaks in a completely foreign language. She manages to get by because she can still understand the mathematical part of what she sees, and even that requires some effort to "translate".
  • Aliens Steal Cable: Inverted: Taylor detects the alien transmission and hooks it up to a TV.
  • Anti-Gravity: When Taylor manages to catch the first video of the alien transmission, it shows her the theory behind a device that can be used to ignore gravity. She soon manages to understand that theory, write down a thorough, comprehensive document on how it works, and creates a device that can do the same.
  • Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: After the US Military learns of Taylor's invention and how (relatively) easy it is to replicate, she's given a budget such that it's stated multiple times that "expense is literally no object". Or as stated in an omake, her benefactor's budget is the USA's GDP.
  • Boring, but Practical: When Taylor proves capable of understanding tinkertech and creating improved versions, the government gains more by simply buying Leet's old devices, most of which either never worked or don't work any more.
  • Bullying a Dragon: Several villains who were thinking of messing with Gravtec, such as Kaiser and Coil, get a reminder that there is a vast difference between the largely hands-off Parahuman Response Team and the United States Armed Forces, who do not follow the Unwritten Rules and tend not to mess around with threats.
  • Conflict Ball: Alexandria grabs the damn thing and never lets go. Due to Taylor's discovery and subversion of the Shard Network, Legend and Eidolon (and pretty much every other cape in the world) are slowly letting go of theirs, though.
  • Control Freak: Alexandria becomes this as she keeps getting blockaded by the government in her attempts to learn more about who is creating the new advanced technology, because she is adamant that only a Tinker could be behind it, and therefore they and all their Tinkertech should be under PRT and her control. It gets to the point that Legend thinks she really needs to get laid.
  • Cool Old Guy:
    • Professor Angus Drekin, a Brockton Bay University professor of physics who is an old friend of the Heberts and becomes the first person (outside Taylor and her father) to learn about the gravitational reference frame. He puts the Heberts in contact with DARPA and becomes the first to join Taylor's research team.
    • General Brendan Calhoun, the DARPA member who leads the projects spearheaded by Taylor from the Department of Defense side. He soon becomes a friend of the Heberts as well, and delights in every discovery Taylor makes.
  • Death from Above: How the Slaughterhouse Nine finally die. When they are seen entering a (previously evacuated) small town, the military drops a device that creates a short-lived black hole on top of them, insta-killing the entire group.
  • Exact Words: The PRT has jurisdiction over parahumans and almost everything regarding them. As Taylor's technology has nothing to do with parahumans (besides a couple of her inventions being inspired by tinkertech), Alexandria is denied constantly when trying to get control over Gravtec.
  • For Want Of A Nail: Apart from Taylor being a Gadgeteer Genius, Emma is in a deep coma, presumably because of the attack she suffered. This is one of Taylor's motivations to keep developing technology - so she can make something that will wake her up.
  • The Gadfly: Contessa, no less, becomes this as Alexandria slips further into her Control Freak state. She even begins to use a Magic 8-Ball to get answers for Alexandria when she asks for a Path to learn more about Gravtec.
    • A Magic 8-Ball given to her by Eidolon, of all people.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Taylor has had a deep love for technology and science since she was a child, and loves to create her own devices out of anything she can find.
  • Improperly Paranoid: Alexandria, due to her Control Freak tendencies, keeps thinking that whatever secret is behind Gravtec is (a) of Parahuman origin, and (b) a potential threat.
  • Instantly Proven Wrong: When Brendan presents Taylor's theory about quantum computers to a NSA doctor, the latter claims that it is brilliant, but the technology is at least two decades away and would cost tens of billions of dollars to make it work – and that's if it can actually be made to work. Brendan promptly shows him the quantum computer Taylor gave him and immediately asks how many he wants.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: Taylor becomes good friends with Angus and Brendan, as well as many of the research team members, all of whom are older than her.
  • Is That a Threat?: When a government spook approaches Kaiser (in his civilian identity) to give him some pointed advice he should listen to, he asks if she is threatening him. She replies that he would know if she was actually threatening him. At the end, she makes an actual threat and informs him about that.
  • Know When to Fold 'Em: After Kaiser is threatened by a government spook directly, he deletes all data he has on Gravtec and cancels any missions involving it, realizing she was very serious about him dying if anything happens to anyone involved with Gravtech or the Dockworkers Union.
  • Magic 8-Ball: Eidolon gives one to Contessa. She uses it to troll Alexandria.
  • More Expendable Than You: Taylor's importance is such that the President of the United States has given explicit, standing orders that Taylor takes absolute precedence over everyone, including himself.
  • Mugging the Monster: Three thugs (possibly Merchants) try to mug a dockworker who may or may not be a secret agent. Either way the man beats the hell out of one of the thugs while the other two (both incredibly high) laugh at him. When Glory Girl and Panacea intervene, the dockworker states that "pain's a good teacher" and his would-be mugger has learned a valuable lesson, something the mugger quickly agrees with.
  • Not in My Contract: Once it's proven to her that Gravtec doesn't use anything related to parahumans, Piggot washes her hands of the whole thing, citing that she's got enough trouble to deal with without looking for more.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: When the Endbringers begin tapering their attacks before stopping altogether, Parahumans all over the world begin to fear they may be gearing up for something worse. Of course, it's actually Taylor's accidental discovery of the Shard Network and her communicating with it that has put a stop to the Endbringers' actions.
  • One-Man Industrial Revolution: Downplayed. While Taylor is the undisputed source of all the scientific advancements produced (even if part of them come from her understanding of an outside source) and she's smart enough to actually turn them into products that can be easily created with current technology, she still needs third party support to turn it into an actually feasible project.
  • Over-the-Top Secret: A more mundane example. Alexandria, in her civilian identity as PRT Director Rebecca Costa-Brown, tries to get access to classified information about Gravtec, citing she was Top Secret Clearance, only to be shutdown and told her clearance doesn't pertain to Gravtec and is irrelevant.note 
  • Pet the Dog: Amy gets the recognition (and pay) for her (many hours of) hospital work, thanks to Taylor's intervention.
  • Recruiting the Criminal: Several villains, including the Undersiders and Coil, are recruited to work for the United States government. While some like the Undersiders are largely willing when they realize how much better things would be for them, others like Coil are given the option of Join or Die.
  • Rhetorical Question Blunder: Alexandria lists off several "oddities" relating to Gravtec and demands to know what about that isn't a suspicious enough reason for them to investigate further. Legend retorts that none of it is suspicious, citing that all of it boils down to "The military is very heavily invested in Gravtec and is doing everything in their power to make sure things run smoothly", whether that's repairing roads or scaring off gangs.
  • Running Gag: Taylor breaks physics over her knee, resulting in Angus calling Brendan and casually asking if the military would be interested in her newest invention, and Brendan then shouting over the whole thing. Brendan is rather glad to be on the other end of the equation when he presents a computer scientist with quantum computers.
  • Simple, yet Awesome: The first large scale usage of Taylor's antigravity technology is to move a large scuttled cargo ship out of the bay, which finally opens up the bay for shipping again. What makes it awesome is that Gravtec deliberately floats the ship fifty feet in the air and very blatantly moves it over to the docks for salvaging.
  • Teen Genius: Taylor, full stop. Using a homemade electronic device, she detects an alien transmission, transforms it into data she can transform into video and audio and then manages to understand science the likes of which no one on Earth has ever seen - taught in a language she doesn't know at all. She then turns that knowledge into practical applications, expands on it on her own, and documents everything in such a way that anyone with enough how-to can replicate her inventions. In the meantime, she studies the alien language, picks apart Tinker devices to remake them in more efficient forms (while also documenting how they work) and even manages to subvert the Shard Network and stop the Endbringers. Everyone in the know is certain that Taylor will be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics sooner rather than later.
    • In the omakes, she goes even further:
      • When she accidentally finds herself in Stargate Command, she manages to develop a Stargate-lite of her own, builds a device to recharge Zero Point Modules, studies several alien artifacts and creates the documentation on how they work – and that's while avoiding getting caught by SGC's security, everything in less than eighteen hours. Samantha Carter, no slouch herself, states that the notebook Taylor left behind may be the most important scientific document in history. When she returns home, she later rebuilds the Stargate-lite in a more efficient form capable of connecting with the actual Stargate – all because she was bored while waiting for some results.
      • When she catches on the emergency beacon Tali creates after her ship is attacked by Batarian pirates, Taylor first creates the means to answer, then a way to actually communicate with her (and learning Tali's language in the meantime), and after that she builds a trans-universal teleporter to bring her to Earth and a device to allow Tali to instantly learn English.
  • Wham Shot:
    • For Taylor, finding out that the signal she's detected is actually a science class – on antigravity.
    • For Brockton Bay, when the ship blockading the bay flies out of the way.
  • You Need to Get Laid: In one of the omakes, the Simurgh tells Alexandria to tell Eidolon that he needs "therapy, a blowjob, a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a nap" before sending her the address of a place where he can get all four.

Top