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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Started by Cain, June 21, 2010, 12:51:49 PM

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Juana

Quote from: Sigmatic on June 27, 2010, 07:10:26 PM
I just read the entire thing so far, and plan to keep reading more as it updates.

Damn, first fanfic I've read that's better than the book it's based off of.
This.
"I dispose of obsolete meat machines.  Not because I hate them (I do) and not because they deserve it (they do), but because they are in the way and those older ones don't meet emissions codes.  They emit too much.  You don't like them and I don't like them, so spare me the hysteria."

Kai

The most recent chapter came out yesterday.

I wish all fanfiction was as good as this.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

The Wizard

Thanks for finding this Cain. I'm enjoying the hell out of it.
Insanity we trust.

Cain

QuoteAlissa Cornfoot's eyes were slightly glazed as she gazed upon the Potions Master giving her class a stern lecture, holding up a tiny bronze bean and saying something about screaming puddles of human flesh. Ever since the start of this year she'd been having trouble listening in Potions. She kept staring at their awful, mean, greasy professor and fantasizing about special detentions. There was probably something really wrong with her but she just couldn't seem to stop doing it -

"Ow!" Alissa said then.

Snape had just flicked the bronze bean unerringly at Alissa's forehead.

"Miss Cornfoot," said the Potions Master, his voice cutting, "this is a delicate potion and if you cannot pay attention you will hurt your classmates, not just yourself. See me after class."

The last four words didn't help her any, but she tried harder, and managed to get through the day without melting anyone.

After class, Alissa approached the desk. Part of her wanted to stand there meekly with her face abashed and her hands clasped penitently behind her back, just in case, but some quiet instinct told her this might be a bad idea. So instead she just stood there with her face neutral, in a posture that was very proper for a young lady, and said, "Professor?"

"Miss Cornfoot," Snape said without looking up from the sheets he was grading, "I do not return your affections, I begin to find your stares disturbing, and you will restrain your eyes henceforth. Is that quite clear?"

"Yes," said Alissa in a strangled squeak, and Snape dismissed her, and she fled the classroom with her cheeks flaming like molten lava.

:lulz:

Jasper

:lol: What was with that, anyway?  Was that part of a side plot I'd forgotten about?

Cain

I think it had something to do with reviews of the previous chapter Snape featured heavily in, and Snape's general status among the fandom as a leather pant wearing god.

Jasper

Hah.

I thought it might have been related to Harry's mention that Snape had been a bit different lately, but probably you're right.

Kai

Quote...the Transfiguration still wasn't happening.

Harry was breathing heavily, failed Transfiguration was almost as tiring as successful Transfiguration, but damned if he'd give up now.

All right, screw this nineteenth-century garbage.

Reality wasn't atoms, it wasn't a set of tiny billiard balls bopping around. That was just another lie. The notion of atoms as little dots was just another convenient hallucination that people clung to because they didn't want to confront the inhumanly alien shape of the underlying reality. No wonder, then, that his attempts to Transfigure based on that hadn't worked. If he wanted power, he had to abandon his humanity, and force his thoughts to conform to the true math of quantum mechanics.

There were no particles, there were just clouds of amplitude in a multiparticle configuration space and what his brain fondly imagined to be an eraser was nothing except a gigantic factor in a wavefunction that happened to factorize, it didn't have a separate existence any more than there was a particular solid factor of 3 hidden inside the number 6, if his wand was capable of altering factors in an approximately factorizable wavefunction then it should damn well be able to alter the slightly smaller factor that Harry's brain visualized as a patch of material on the eraser -

Goddamn this author is incredible. BIP disassembly.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

#23
Also, I thought I would mention that THIS story is badass.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4068153/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Wastelands_of_Time

What if Harry Potter was a time traveling magnificent bastard who has lived many lifetimes fighting and dying to Voldemort only to be sent back to a morning during his fifteenth summer every time to try to get things right?

It's one thing to have a hero be overpowered, but it's not overpowered when the big bad is even more powerful and wins every time. It reminds me of the scenes from the Wheel of Time where Rand is seeing through many possible lifetimes and how the Dark One says "I win again." at the end of every single one.

The world is Just Before The End and nearly Crackspace, and it's Groundhogs Day over and over and over again for Harry, except instead of reporting on the weather predictions of a rodent in a quaint pennsylvania town, Harry Potter is cheating goblins, killing horrors from the abyss, raiding 3000 year old libraries, fighting with gods, discovering lost cities (over and over), and breaking physics while at the same time wearing armani suits and getting both Fleur AND Tonks. It's overloaded with Crowning Moments of Awesome.

ETA: The epitome of Groundhog Peggy Sue.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Cain

I saw Yudowsky had favourited that particular story and was going to check it out, but on your recommendation I'm already up to chapter 2.

LMNO

Fuck.  I really have to remember to check these out at home.

Kai

Quote from: Cain on July 05, 2010, 10:00:27 PM
I saw Yudowsky had favourited that particular story and was going to check it out, but on your recommendation I'm already up to chapter 2.

Yeah. The link to the Less Wrong 'Sequences', also on his page, is a goldmine that I have not yet exploited.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Cain

I have about half of the sequences saved to a word file, to make into a PDF.  It's already over 250 pages long.

Cain

So read to the end of the Wastelands of Time.  Well, the latest chapter, anyway.  Not bad, but felt a little rushed towards the end.  He can write insanity, I'll give him that.

Also, is it bad that I think Quirinius Quirrell is not only the most badass teacher ever, but a pretty good role model, the whole "having a genocidal wizard in the back of your head" thing aside?

Juana

That's the thing I'm not sure about. He's definitely possessed, but I don't think it's Voldemort who's taken up residence on the back of his head, based on the discussion around Harry learning to loose.
"I dispose of obsolete meat machines.  Not because I hate them (I do) and not because they deserve it (they do), but because they are in the way and those older ones don't meet emissions codes.  They emit too much.  You don't like them and I don't like them, so spare me the hysteria."