FanFicRecs A Story About Work
Most fics that feature Taylor and Amy tend towards femslash, or at least feature Taylor being the white knight to Amy's many personal problems. Heredity differs in two respects: Taylor and Amy's relationship is so far one of work colleagues, and Taylor is helping Amy with her professional problems.
It's a fascinating riff on the typical relationship between the girls, as Amy hasn't spilled about her family problems to Taylor at all, and shows no inclination to. That sort of intimate dialogue is reserved for her sister Victoria. Instead, Amy is viewing Taylor as a way to toy with certain ideas about being a cape that she would otherwise find taboo, especially after this fic's iteration of the bank robbery.
The characterization of the three girls — Amy, Taylor, and Victoria — is a draw here. Taylor's unintentional creepiness is on full display from Amy's POV, and there's shades of the class difference between the girls present in the narration. Victoria isn't the brutish jock that she's sometimes written as, but instead has a nice balance between being unwittingly a bit full of herself with also having some hidden depths, as well as hesitantly navigating the treacherous waters of Dallon family drama. Amy herself has a strong voice, and maintains her canon tendency to focus on living up to her own standards. It's just here, thanks to the divergence from canon, she's given cause to explore those standards without the trauma of her life self-destructing all around her.
FanficRecs What happened to Taylor?
Taylor's characterization in this story is completely alien. I don't know what happened to the Taylor Hebert of canon, who acted like a normal human being in several difficult situations, but she isn't present in this fanfic.
For some bizarre reason, BeaconHill has decided to show Taylor as a person who likes bugs and spiders: by which I mean that in her very first scene, she is shown as an incredibly creepy loner sitting by herself and staring at a nearby spider. Later on, Taylor decides to pester Amy in creating a hand-sized spider and immediately decides cuddles with it.
While Taylor certainly didn't have any arachnophobia or other disgust for creepy crawlies in canon, she NEVER had an unhealthy fascination with bugs. Taylor's cunning and cold intelligence is almost completely absent in this story, and since that is what makes her such a strong character, it cripples this story in it's infancy. Taylor has no idea what a 'limit' or 'restriction' is in this story; Amy has to corral and cajole her into not accidentally horrifying their allies, and this combines to make a horrible picture of Taylor as a bumbling Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds type character. Taylor is much more socially stunted and seems almost childlike in comparison to Amy, whereas one of her strongest features in canon was her maturity and ability to cope with hardship.
All in all, this 'fic is an example of the obsession with teaming Taylor up with Amy due to their powers being very beneficial together. The one strong point in favor of this story is that it doesn't turn Amy or Taylor into lesbians just for Shipping.
Nonetheless, Taylor in this story is a much less intelligent, bumbling cheerful hero who just happens to horrify everyone accidentally. Other than crimefighting, Taylor doesn't show any real initiative, and that is very OOC for her. Taylor, as a character, never really shows up other than for the heartwarming sections. Amy, meanwhile, shoulders almost all of the load without any trouble in addition to her healing duties, despite Amy's characterization in canon being primarily concerned with how overworked she is.