You might enjoy this: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality
It's a Harry Potter fanfiction written as if Harry were deeply educated in the scientific method, with a firm grasp of physics, genetics, economics, philosophy and mathematics. It really highlights how incompetent wizards are.
I remember when the last book got leaked the weak before release everyone thought it was fake. Someone on 4chan posted scans of the epilogue and nobody believed it was real because it was terrible.
My favorite version of Harry Potter is "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality
It's a complete rewrite of the first book, but in this one Harry is actually a science minded geek and his step parents are scientists who are skeptical about magic.
>So not only is the wizarding economy almost completely decoupled from the Muggle economy, no one here has ever heard of arbitrage. The larger Muggle economy had a fluctuating trading range of gold to silver, so every time the Muggle gold-to-silver ratio got more than 5% away from the weight of seventeen Sickles to one Galleon, either gold or silver should have drained from the wizarding economy until it became impossible to maintain the exchange rate. Bring in a ton of silver, change to Sickles (and pay 5%), change the Sickles for Galleons, take the gold to the Muggle world, exchange it for more silver than you started with, and repeat. > >Wasn't the Muggle gold to silver ratio somewhere around fifty to one? Harry didn't think it was seventeen, anyway. And it looked like the silver coins were actually smaller than the gold coins. > >Then again, Harry was standing in a bank that literally stored your money in vaults full of gold coins guarded by dragons, where you had to go in and take out coins out of your vault whenever you wanted to spend money. The finer points of arbitraging away market inefficiencies might well be lost on them. He'd been tempted to make some sort of snide remark about the crudity of their financial system...
That's the best part. She lives in a world where ghosts exist and magic is real, but that doesn't mean she still doesn't require evidence and reason in order to accept new claims.
Obligatory link to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which probably many have read, but if not, do it. Harry and Hermione engage in scientific research as to magic and so much more. The debate between an atheistic Harry and religious Dumbledore in Chapter 39 is great and completely relevant to real world atheism.
One of my favorite parts was the dogs. Talking about how at first they just assigned people new dogs but after a while they learned that the bonding was so intense that they needed to address the human needs and allow them to retire. Or the psychological impact of the first night when they make their stand in the desert and waste ammo just plowing throw zombies.
That is what made the book special. It delved into how intimately human the zombie apocalypse would be. Turning the zombies into human tsunamis is not just missing the point, it is distorting the point into something else.
Also, someone once linked to this WWZ fanfic on reddit. I usually wouldn't read fan fiction, but so many people said it was awesome I gave it a try. They were right. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6115555/1/The_Way_Is_Shut
The ingredients from Snape's interrogation of Harry during his first potions class can be plausibly interpreted using Victorian flower language to mean "I bitterly regret Lily's death." Asphodel is a type of lily and means 'my regrets follow you to the grave.' Wormwood means absence, grief, bitter sorrow. It could be a coincidence, but it looks pretty plausible that it was intentional. Where I found this. Oh and Voldemort means 'flight of death' - pretty accurate character description.
As a point of context, this is a quote from the so-bad-it's-hilarious Harry Potter fanfic, My Immortal. The original submission has since been scoured from the internet, but various rehosts such as this one exist so that the text can be forever preserved for future generations.
Requisite link to the best Firefly/Doctor Who crossover fanfiction story in existence. The characterizations are so real, it's canon for me: this is really what happened when the Tenth Doctor, following the events of The Runaway Bride, happened to stumble across the crew of Serenity, around five months after the Big Damn Movie.
from less wrong
WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD
(thanks to dsummerstay for reminding me to post this one)
MORPHEUS: For the longest time, I wouldn't believe it. But then I saw the fields with my own eyes, watched them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living -
NEO (politely): Excuse me, please.
MORPHEUS: Yes, Neo?
NEO: I've kept quiet for as long as I could, but I feel a certain need to speak up at this point. The human body is the most inefficient source of energy you could possibly imagine. The efficiency of a power plant at converting thermal energy into electricity decreases as you run the turbines at lower temperatures. If you had any sort of food humans could eat, it would be more efficient to burn it in a furnace than feed it to humans. And now you're telling me that their food is the bodies of the dead, fed to the living? Haven't you ever heard of the laws of thermodynamics?
MORPHEUS: Where did you hear about the laws of thermodynamics, Neo?
NEO: Anyone who's made it past one science class in high school ought to know about the laws of thermodynamics!
MORPHEUS: Where did you go to high school, Neo?
(Pause.)
NEO: ...in the Matrix.
MORPHEUS: The machines tell elegant lies.
(Pause.)
NEO (in a small voice): Could I please have a real physics textbook?
MORPHEUS: There is no such thing, Neo. The universe doesn't run on math.
Because of the fundamental disconnect in the American public's perception of "criminals" as actual human beings. A section springs to mind from Eliezer Yudkowsky's ridiculously awesome Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:
>"Welcome, Mr. Potter, to your first encounter with the realities of politics. What do the wretched creatures in Azkaban have to offer any faction? Who would benefit from aiding them? A politician who openly sided with them would associate themselves with criminals, with weakness, with distasteful things that people would rather not think about. Alternatively, the politician could demonstrate their might and cruelty by calling for longer sentences; to make a display of strength requires a victim to crush beneath you, after all. And the populace applauds, for it is their instinct to back the winner."
>A coldly amused laugh. "You see, Mr. Potter, no one ever quite believes that they will go to Azkaban, so they see no harm in it for themselves. As for what they inflict on others... I suppose you were once told that people care about that sort of thing? It is a lie, Mr. Potter, people don't care in the slightest, and if you had not led a vastly sheltered childhood you would have noticed that long ago. Console yourself with this: those now prisoner in Azkaban voted for the same Ministers of Magic who pledged to move their cells closer to the Dementors. I admit, Mr. Potter, that I see little hope for democracy as an effective form of government, but I admire the poetry of how it makes its victims complicit in their own destruction."
For me, Code Geass has a lot of strange/somewhat stupid lore:
-According to the Light Novels, apparently the guns in code geass aren't combustion weapons but railguns that have been in use since the Renaissance.
-In Akito the Exiled, Istanbul is labelled as Constantinople, so either the Ottomans never conquered the Byzantines (unlikely, as otherwise the Renaissance wouldn't have happened) or Imperial Russia at some point retook istanbul and renamed it constantinople.
-The Britannian government actually has a bicameral legislature of the House of Lords and Imperial Senate, as shown in Nightmare of Nunnally, and it actually has the power to overrule the Emperor. Senator Helmsley, who was killed by Rollo, was killed in front of the Tennessee state legislature, suggesting some level of state governance.
-According to the ATB system (which denotes 55 BC as 1 ATB), all of Code Geass takes place in 1962-1963.
Sometimes it seems like the Elevens got way too creative when they made this. It's a nightmare for a fan of historical fiction and fanfiction writer (combine it with Fate/Stay Night and it's a complete mess. King Arthur with Plate Armor in the 500s....).
Since you mention Voldemort... Methods of Rationality is a similar re-write of Harry Potter, but instead of switching good and evil, it switches Harry from being an average dumb 11 year old with heroic tendencies to a very scientific minded and dreadfully cynical child prodigy, who keeps trying to apply scientific method to the magic he sees, and ends up manipulating everyone around him (not for the sake of good or evil, just because it makes sense in a clinical way). The portrayal is pretty hard to swallow at times, but it makes for an awesome book if you liked things like Ender's Game.
I hope this doesn't get buried because more people need to read this:
Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness
^ Literally the best fanfiction I have ever read. It is longer than OOTP, completely canon (with the exception of adding information for characters we don't know much about such as Ernie Macmillan) and quite honestly if it was a real HP book it would be my favorite.
PLEASE READ.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is so much better than the original books it isn't even funny. I loved the original books too.
Also highly recommended is his take on Harry Potter.
Competently written and inspiring transhumanist propaganda,and a damn good story to boot.
Warning: Really, really long. And not yet finished.
Magic and Muggle technology does not get along. Harry says as much in Goblet of Fire when thinking of ways of breathing underwater and realising that accio'ing some scuba gear would not work because of the magic in Hogwarts. I would guess guns would not work either. But someone using a sniper rifle to get past this is one of the theories Harry puts forward in the awesome Fan Fin Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationaility: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality
Harry in a child genius so spends most of his time trying to explain to muggle haters that they could just bomb them and there would be nothing Protego could do to stop a nuke landing on their heads.
If you haven't yet, you need to read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It is literally the only fan-fic I have ever read. It takes JK Rowling's world and examines it through the lens of science, including examining using the time-turner in various ways. As established in that version of the universe, you can't go back more than a few hours (4 or 5, IIRC.)
Apparently there is actually a significant minority of people that write TF2 fanfiction that "ship" the characters together. Most of them are not avid players of the game, which would be apparent as they assume that the characters are all in love with each other. Despite all of them practically being sociopaths and crazy.
Journey in if you dare: http://www.fanfiction.net/game/Team-Fortress-2/14/0/0/1/0/0/0/0/0/1/0/
I mostly read porn as opposed to watch it (minor issues with nudity make working past the discomfort not worth it), and I personally love ridiculous, impossible shit that makes you kind of cringe in a good way. Not gore, just stuff that sounds like it was written by a virgin with one hand. Oh, and also, S&M written by people who've been in the scene for at least a decade or two.
When I do watch porn, I like seeing the ladies get oral. Nom nom nom, I want some.
NSFW, slash, fanfiction. You've been warned.
Not exactly what you're looking for, but I recommend Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
>Professor McGonagall turned into a cat.
>Harry scrambled back unthinkingly, backpedaling so fast that he tripped over a stray stack of books and landed hard on his bottom with a thwack. His hands came down to catch himself without quite reaching properly, and there was a warning twinge in his shoulder as the weight came down unbraced.
>At once the small tabby cat morphed back up into a robed woman. "I'm sorry, Mr. Potter," McGonagall said, sounding sincere, though her lips were twitching toward a smile. "I should have warned you."
>Harry was breathing in short pants. His voice came out choked. "You can't DO that!"
>"It's only a Transfiguration," said McGonagall. "An Animagus transformation, to be exact."
>"You turned into a cat! A SMALL cat! You violated Conservation of Energy! That's not just an arbitrary rule, it's implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian! Rejecting it destroys unitarity and then you get FTL signaling! And cats are COMPLICATED! A human mind can't just visualize a whole cat's anatomy and, and all the cat biochemistry, and what about the neurology? How can you go on thinking using a cat-sized brain?"
>McGonagall's lips were twitching harder now. "Magic."
I've got your answer!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
Learned it from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
Okay, seriously. If you guys thought that was funny, how about a whole fan fiction?
Its called Halo: Halos in space.
Heres part 1:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2977058/1/Halo-Halos-in-Space
Part 2: Halos in space: Alien Attack
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3717460/1/Halo-Halos-in-Space-2-Aliens-attack
It's the same author of Halflife Fulllife Consequences, if any of you know what that is (look it up on youtube, will not disappoint). I tried to make a post on r/Halo about these fanfics a while back, but nobody saw the post....
P.S. part 2 ends in a cliff hanger, and he never made a part 3....
You should read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. If you haven't already.
The best piece of fanfic I ever read.
If you liked that picture, you'll love this fanfic. It's set immediately after The Runaway Bride in the the Whoniverse (so it involves the Tenth Doctor), and six months after the Big Damn Movie in the Firefly 'Verse. Everyone is perfectly in character; there are some great speeches, some amazing character interactions, and a plot that feels completely canon for both universes. In my mind, this story Did Happen.
As a result of being in the midst of "The Man with No Name":
> The Doctor figured that if he could just bottle and distribute the aggressive cheerfulness that was Kaylee Frye, he might just have a shot at solving all the universe's problems. Or, at the very least, making an ginormous fortune on the intergalactic drug market. Great stars, but she was a happy person. Rose would have absolutely loved her. The Doctor was rapidly developing an affection for her himself.
I'd love to hear what Rowling (or King) think of Harry Potter and the methods of rationality: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality
But I guess a real author mentioned fan-fiction is like the pope saying God might not be real.
/u/alexanderwales could write a spinoff better than the original. He did a sad, thinky oneshot already. He's pretty busy, though.
Since you mentioned Harry Potter. I recommend this http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7937889/1/A_Difference_in_the_Family_The_Snape_Chronicles It's Severus Snapes' life story from the day he was born until the day he died. It was awesome
TLDR: Dying sucks. Being flabby, weak, and stupid sucks. Those are fixable problems, so lets fix them.
"Transhumanism is a movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities." From Wikipedia
Yudkowsky has a wonderful summary of the logic behind transhumanism. http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified
If you want to truly appreciate the transhumanist point of view, I recommend reading through chapter 50ish of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
This was so stupid. So a sizable portion of two schools come to Hogwarts for almost the entire school year, for a competition in which only one of the twenty-odd students gets to participate, there are only three tasks, and only one of them has any spectator value of any sort. Man, the Tournament just had so much potential, thinking back on it now (well, I guess there's always fanfiction).
MORPHEUS: For the longest time, I wouldn't believe it. But then I saw the fields with my own eyes, watched them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living -
NEO (politely): Excuse me, please.
MORPHEUS: Yes, Neo?
NEO: I've kept quiet for as long as I could, but I feel a certain need to speak up at this point. The human body is the most inefficient source of energy you could possibly imagine. The efficiency of a power plant at converting thermal energy into electricity decreases as you run the turbines at lower temperatures. If you had any sort of food humans could eat, it would be more efficient to burn it in a furnace than feed it to humans. And now you're telling me that their food is the bodies of the dead, fed to the living? Haven't you ever heard of the laws of thermodynamics?
MORPHEUS: Where did you hear about the laws of thermodynamics, Neo?
NEO: Anyone who's made it past one science class in high school ought to know about the laws of thermodynamics!
MORPHEUS: Where did you go to high school, Neo?
(Pause.)
NEO: ...in the Matrix.
MORPHEUS: The machines tell elegant lies.
(Pause.)
NEO (in a small voice): Could I please have a real physics textbook?
MORPHEUS: There is no such thing, Neo. The universe doesn't run on math
If you're interested check out Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, it's fan-fiction but done very well. It's basically Harry Potter if everyone was competent; it's also already longer then the first couple of books put together.
Yes and no. There will be some people who turn away just because it is Fan Fiction. But keep in mind that people do read fanfiction, and there is quite a bit of good stuff out there.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_bMethods_b_of_bRationality_b is an example of an amazing fanfic, lots of time and lots of effort have been put into it, genuinely good writing, quite possibly could be considered better than the original.
Will it ever do anything more than sit on the internet? Probably not.
Did I have fun reading it? Did it bring hours of entertainment to thousands? Did it teach me something important about the world and the way I think? Did it introduce me to a unique perspective about life? Did the author have a good time writing it? Hells yes. Was the effort wasted? I would go with a no.
It's up to you to decide. Yes, some people will run away because of the bad name that Fanfiction has, but, some people won't :)
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2330230/1/Sins_of_the_Past http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2492582/1/Not_With_a_Whimper
This is my favorite rendition of "fleshing out" in FF6. The author writes everything from Celes's view, making her story of how she came to be in the empire, how she met Terra and everyone else very plausible. All of which is exactly how I envisioned my characters to be.
Sins of the Past is the story of Celes from her birth to her downfall in the empire. Not With a Whimper details her story from when she is tortured in South Figaro to the end of the game, with an arguably better ending than in the real story (very slight twist, very beautifully written).
Don't discount the stories because they're on fanfiction, these were the gems of my childhood. If I can get just one person to read these I'd be extremely happy, because they are just so well written.
Including an epic rationalist reimagining of Harry Potter by everyone's favourite transhumanist and AI philosopher Elizier Yudkowsky, which really is too bizarrely awesome for words.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality
Reading Hogwarts Battle School - an awesome story in both action and characterization that I'd deferred reading until recently because it was over-hyped. I have a defiance-of-expectations thing. It's a real problem for me in many ways.
Writing Holly Polter - yet another opportunity for me to write about sex, opinions on canon, insights into life and the occasional attempt at an emotionally-charged scene. Almost has a working plot now, which is good since I'm over a third of the way through the alphabet.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8833981/1/Naruto-Master-of-the-Seven-Paths
Regarding my Madara story, writing out the ENTIRE kages vs Madara battle has become a 48 page long endeavour, probably going to end at around 70 or so pages. The current draft is 10k words longer than all of the rest of The Breaker of the Cycle combined! Sweet jesus that really was an epic battle. If you send your e-mail address, you can read over the current draft and point out any inconsistencies or errors of mine.
The link is to a new story that I'm starting, which in truth will probably be much, much better.
Also, the author of that fanfiction has also written a pony fanfiction. It can be found here.
Just the other day, someone posted a link to a fic named Brutal Harry. Brutal!Harry is almost as logical as Rational!Harry, but it's a darker story. Much shorter, and the end is a bit fan-ficy, but not bad. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7093738/1/Brutal_Harry
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Probably not an unusual choice, but it deserves its fame.
(Edited to point to first chapter instead of latest)
I had the same problem. Then I read Deathly Hallows from Neville's perspective and it rocked! really well written and totally believable. It never clashes with the real thing.
linky seriously try it!
edit: for correct link.
You mean there's another well written Harry Potter fanfic with thousands of pages!? Dear sweet Dobby, I'm going to be busy.
Also, yes, I recommend Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, though I don't think it's actually finished yet. (If you dig around that site a little, you can find a pdf version.)
For maximum difficulty, try hiding Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It's atheistic, and it involves witchcraft. It's probably offensive to heavily religious parents for countless other reasons, but those are just the ones right there in the title.
(Also, it's hilarious, and a good deal more epic than the original series. Highly recommended.)
Ignore u/HollowBetrayer, who deserves no cookies and possibly a time-out.
The obvious next stories for your cousin are the Alexandra Quick series by Inverarity, who also wrote Hogwarts Houses Divided.
No, there's not really a way to get an estimate - the internet is fraught with ways to get different estimates of these things, but none of them are particularly good, and all have flaws. If you asked nicely, /u/EliezerYudkowsky might post a snapshot of the traffic stats as given by fanfiction.net, but you'd also want traffic stats from hpmor.com as well. (For whatever it's worth to you, the subreddit traffic stats are here.)
>"There was a Muggle once named Mohandas Gandhi," Harry said to the floor. "He thought the government of Muggle Britain shouldn't rule over his country. And he refused to fight. He convinced his whole country not to fight. Instead he told his people to walk up to the British soldiers and let themselves be struck down, without resisting, and when Britain couldn't stand doing that any more, we freed his country. I thought it was a very beautiful thing, when I read about it, I thought it was something higher than all the wars that anyone had ever fought with guns or swords. That they'd really done that, and that it had actually worked." Harry drew another breath. "Only then I found out that Gandhi told his people, during World War II, that if the Nazis invaded they should use nonviolent resistance against them, too. But the Nazis would've just shot everyone in sight. And maybe Winston Churchill always felt that there should've been a better way, some clever way to win without having to hurt anyone; but he never found it, and so he had to fight." ...."the point is, saying violence is evil isn't an answer. It doesn't say when to fight and when not to fight. It's a hard question and Gandhi refused to deal with it, and that's why I lost some of my respect for him." hpmor
I'm not a very big fan fiction fan - but someone linked to this one on Reddit a while back and.... it. is. AH-MUH-ZING.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7937889/61/A_Difference_in_the_Family_The_Snape_Chronicles
It's quite long but it's very well written, to the point and very believable in my opinion. I've been putting it off finishing the last four chapter because I really really really don't want it to end.
It's basically Snape's life from birth to death. It's wonderful.
See the collected works (77 so far) of Northumbrian.
The author only does canon-compatible stories, and they are well worth a look. As it says in his profile, "I appear to be writing several stories. In fact, I’m only writing one."
Definitely a joke. One of the episodes is a fanfiction.
Also, I don't think Fox would surprise-renew Fringe after weak ratings.
Brutal Harry is pretty good. Tries to account for the emotional damage being raised by the dursleys would have caused Harry, though the abuse received by Harry is a lot worse.
If this sort of logical discussion of the intensely illogical world of Harry Potter appeals to you, check out Eliezer Yudokowsky's incredibly rationalist fan fic, (which is pretty famous in certain portions of the internet), called <em>Methods of Rationality</em>. It examines how the stories would have gone if Harry grew up as a well-adjusted, scientifically trained skeptic.
The Snape Chronicles is an excellent story. I highly recommend it.
From the author's summary - "This is a biography of Severus Snape from his birth until his death. It is canon-compatible, and it is Snape's point of view."
Although, I don't feel that summary does the work justice. This fanfic is a beautifully vivid look into what Snape's life must have been like. It is extremely canon-compatible, a fact of which I'm dearly fond. Essentially, it is Snape's life from birth until death, like the books were written from Snape's point of view - except that it starts far before Harry is born. Naturally, the author took some liberties with his childhood, since we don't know much from JKR about his childhood, but it is well written. I would go as far to say that this story becomes Snape's canon childhood for me. This is a wonderful, wonderful piece of literature. I laughed and cried, and learned more than I ever knew there was to know about Snape.
It is completed.
[Spoilers in case anyone is planning on reading HPMOR]
I have to say that you're badly misrepresenting that part of the story. It's not 'later' shown to be an illustration of how magical britain is a completely fucked up society, it's immediately shown as such. Draco explains his plan, and the very next line is:
> A cold chill was coming over Harry, a chill that came with instructions to keep his voice and face normal. Note to self: Overthrow government of magical Britain at earliest convenience.
On learning how Magical Britain is well and truly a rape culture, he immediately resolves to overthrow it entirely. He then ensures that Draco will not carry out the plan by saying he wants to marry Luna one day, which is just about the only way to stop Draco without losing his trust, which is something he needs to get things done, since Draco is potentially so powerful. But he thinks "all I've just bought is time, and not too much of it... For one girl. Not for others.". He doesn't make friends with Draco, he works to reform him, eventually breaking his belief in 'blood purism', hence stopping him from growing into a racist rapist demagogue like the Heir of Slytherin is expected to be.
Harry, the hero of the story, responds not with your "What the fuck..", but with "I am going to tear apart your pathetic little magical remnant of the Dark Ages into pieces smaller than its constituent atoms.". And then he sets about actually doing it. His position is exactly like SRS, except concerned not with pointing out the problem but with actually fixing it.
I suggest people read the chapter itself before passing judgement.
Nice!
Not necessarily that relevant, but I bet you'll love this. Harry potter and the methods of rationality. Read it now, thank me later.
You should check out Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness. It's a good read, although kind of spoiled as you know how it will end, and I get continually annoyed at how much sh*t they give Snape throughout the year, he's one of the good guys, idiots!
Here's something both interesting and relevant.. It's the only fanfic I've ever read, and honestly, it barely qualifies as it. Besides the characters and a vague resemblance in the plotline in the beginning of the book, this is completely and utterly different. It's well worth reading, not just for the awesome criticisms and plot holes of Harry Potter, but for an illustration of rationality in general. I'd also suggest Less Wrong's site.
Sounds like you might enjoy the Ravenclaw flavor Potter.
Also, let's not forget that Wizards rely on magic for anything Muggles do with technology. Let the implications of that rattle around in your pervy little mind a bit.
Sure. Try Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality or Inviolate (DC comics). Biblical Monsters (ponies) is, like, almost literature.
A Long Journey Home- explained the importance/relevance of Merlin as the wizard that united half the magical world by his teachings in the 5th-6th century.
>Summer before third year Harry has a life changing experience, and a close encounter with a dementor ends with him absorbing the horcrux within him. Features Harry with a backbone.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4240771/1/Partially-Kissed-Hero
>The car was full of eye-witnesses, so news spread across the train very fast that Harry Potter had been at least partially kissed by a dementor. The news was treated very soberly by most, and when Draco chose to gloat about it, an irate seventh year threw him off the moving train as they just happened to be crossing a bridge.
>Crabbe and Goyle got thrown off moments later.
In addition to the story I recommend below, there's a brief one-shot based on the simple question of "What if Captain Jack Harkness booked passage on Serenity?" This contains one of my all-time favorite Captain Jack lines ever, from inside or outside canon.
Back of Quirrell's head shown to be uninteresting (Chapter 12):
>Harry caught a glimpse of the back of his head, and it looked like Professor Quirrell might already be going bald, despite his seeming youth.
The Omake (Chapter 11):
> OMAKE FILES #1: 72 Hours to Victory
> (A.k.a. "What Happens If You Change Harry But Leave All Other Characters Constant")
> Dumbledore peered over his desk at young Harry, twinkling in a kindly sort of way. The boy had come to him with a terribly intense look on his childish face - Dumbledore hoped that whatever this matter was, it wasn't too serious. Harry was far too young for his life trials to be starting already. "What was it you wished to speak to me about, Harry?"
> Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres leaned forward in his chair, smiling grimly. "Headmaster, I got a sharp pain in my scar during the Sorting Feast. Considering how and where I got this scar, it didn't seem like the sort of thing I should just ignore. I thought at first it was because of Professor Snape, but I followed the Baconian experimental method which is to find the conditions for both the presence and the absence of the phenomenon, and I've determined that my scar hurts if and only if I'm facing the back of Professor Quirrell's head, whatever's under his turban. While it could be something more innocuous, I think we should provisionally assume the worst, that it's You-Know-Who - wait, don't look so horrified, this is actually a priceless opportunity -"
Firefly could've been something amazing given a few more seasons. That it's so popular given only 14 eps says something about it. Though I'll always have Forward to comfort me on what should have been.
There's a fanfic of this very thing that I was led to by someone here. Let me find it real quick.
Edit: This is the fanfic. Credit to wcatie for showing it to me. It's really good. It's extensive and tells all about that last year. We even get some good backstory going on for other characters (Parvati, Seamus, etc).
Was the terrible fanfic My Immortal written by a semi-literate "goffik" teenager, or was it intentionally written badly by a troll author? I MUST KNOW!
A Difference in the Family: The Snape Chronicles
By: Rannaro
We have the testimony of Harry, but witnesses can be notoriously unreliable, especially when they have only part of the story. This is a biography of Severus Snape from his birth until his death. It is canon-compatible, and it is Snape's point of view.
Rated: Fiction M - English - Drama - Severus S. - Chapters: 64 - Words: 648,043 - Reviews: 174 - Favs: 272 - Follows: 103 - Updated: Apr 29, 2012 - Published: Mar 18, 2012 - Status: Complete - id: 7937889
Hogwarts Battle School by KwanLi
Summary: AU. Voldemort kills Dumbledore but is defeated by a child. In the aftermath, Snape becomes the Headmaster and radically changes Hogwarts. Harry Potter of House Slytherin begins his Third Year at Hogwarts Battle School and realizes that friend and foe are too similar for his liking. Competing with allies and enemies, Harry finds there is a cost to winning.
Rated: Fiction M - English - Adventure/Romance - Harry P., Hermione G., Severus S. - Chapters: 45 - Words: 313,031 - Reviews: 1,688 - Favs: 1,914 - Follows: 2,285 - Updated: Mar 2 - Published: Jul 31, 2012 - id: 8379655
Contains many and detailed fights between teams of opponents- you couldn't ask for anything more fitting to the request
HP and the Summer of Change by lorddwar
Summary: COMPLETE Edit in process. PostOOTP, Very Little of HBP. Harry returns to Privet Drive and Tonks helps him become the man and hero he must be to survive. HONKS. Action, Violence, Language and Sexual Situations
Rated: Fiction M - English - Adventure/Romance - Harry P., N. Tonks - Chapters: 19 - Words: 332,503 - Reviews: 2,491 - Favs: 6,091 - Follows: 2,334 - Updated: May 14, 2006 - Published: Sep 5, 2005 - Status: Complete - id: 2567419
Harry is trained by the Ministry's best- the Unspeakables, Field division. Plenty of well-tempered fights both in training and in practice. Suffers from its age a little (e.g.: references to magical cores and power ratings), but this is one of the fics that made the concepts meme-worthy.
I've only read a few fan fics but the one I would recommend to start with as it's extremely well written and fits with the canon is Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness.
It's essentially the year that is Deathly Hallows but told from Neville's perspective. So what happens at Hogwarts while the trio is gone. It's absolutely fantastic and a great place to start in terms of fan fic. The author's description: "A novel following Neville and the D.A. through the 7th year at Hogwarts under the reign of Snape and the Carrows."
You might be interested in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which also seems to me to have the characters dragging a heavy load of idiocy, but a more interesting one since plot holes are part of the theme of the work.
This recalls Yudkowsky's epic HP Fanfic:
> Broomsticks had been invented during what a Muggle would have called the Dark Ages, supposedly by a legendary witch named Celestria Relevo, allegedly the great-great-granddaughter of Merlin. > > Celestria Relevo, or whichever person or group had really invented those enchantments, hadn't known a darned thing about Newtonian mechanics. > > Broomsticks, therefore, worked by Aristotelian physics. > > They went where you pointed them. > > If you wanted to move straight forward, you pointed them straight forward; you didn't worry about keeping some of the thrust going downward to cancel out the effect of gravity. > > If you turned a broomstick, all of its new velocity was in the new direction of pointing, it didn't go sideways based on its old momentum. > > Broomsticks had maximum speeds, not maximum accelerations. Not because of anything to do with air resistance, but because a broomstick had some maximum Aristotelian impetus its enchantments could exert. > > Harry had never explicitly noticed that before, despite being dextrous enough to get the best grades in flying class. Broomsticks worked so much like the human mind instinctively expected them to work that his brain had managed to entirely overlook their physical absurdity. Harry, on his first Thursday of broomstick lessons, had been distracted by more interesting-seeming phenomena, words written on paper and a glowing red ball. So his brain had simply suspended its disbelief, marked the reality of broomsticks as accepted, and proceeded to have its fun, without ever once thinking of the question whose answer would have been obvious. For it is a sad fact that we only ever think about a tiny fraction of all the phenomena we encounter...
Indeed, I love this stuff. To exaggerate it further, I have decided to take the inspiration I got from /a/, and start a fanfic based on her story, because that's how I roll.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7048778/1/Dear_Mother_in_Heaven
inb4 shameless self-plugging.
From the same author, there's a shorter, massive crossover fanfic which is many times more mind-blowing than this. Behold:
The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover.
The characters include Spock, Kyon and Haruhi, Squirrel Girl, Lazarus Long, Yahweh (currently deceased, thanks to Squirrel Girl), The Doctor, Captain Vimes, and a ridiculous number of others. The plot involves computer simulations within computer simulations (and so on, ad infinitum), and takes this concept a lot further than I've ever seen anybody take it. The whole thing is pure genius.
It's probably my favorite short story, ever.
At first my mind translated this as 'Looking for fics where Harry is a frightening, fire-breathing monster... or a girl, whichever.'
For the former:
Enter the Dragon by Doghead Thirteen
Summary: It began with a quirk of timing. It continued because dragons, such as what 8-year-old Harry Potter just turned into, are large and difficult to control. Fortunate for everyone he's a nice kid, eh? Shadowrun and Rifts crossover. You have now been warned.
Crossover - Harry Potter & Shadowrun - Rated: T - English - Humor/Adventure - Chapters: 1 - Words: 41,653 - Reviews: 453 - Favs: 1,926 - Follows: 1,773 - Published: Dec 16, 2009 - Harry P.
No. This is not a theory, this is fanfiction, and this is not the place to do this.
I'm all up for debating about what's inside the lock, the true nature of Marika's illness, or what the picture book is all about. But I'm not going to discuss a 'theory' that's not a theory at all.
I'm not trying to be a jerk or something, but I've seen a lot of 'theories' like these floating around and that's not what this subreddit is for. There's a whole site for stuff like this. I won't delete this thread so that others can see our (the mods') opinion on this, but from now on stuff like this will get deleted.
Quick search yields:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6958843/1/Kyuubi
"A demon walks a fine line between human and monster, trying to save both worlds from each other. There are only three things that stand in his way: Namikaze Minato, his father, and a little thing called Fate. /AU, yaoi, eventual KakaKyuu"
Short, over a year old already.
I really enjoyed Harry Potter and the Wastelands of Time, though I'm not as big of a fan of its sequel, Harry Potter and the Heartlands of Time.
Are you thinking about Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality? http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Methods-of-Rationality
That's the link, but my RES isn't doing it's fancy smancy linky text thing at the moment.
The picture is a commision for the fic The Huntress and the Wolf, if anybody is interested. It's an Alternate Universe fiction about Ty Lee and Azula, and while it's kind of odd, it's amazing. It's in the early stages though.
My personel favourite is Adamo. For a Talimancer this one is pure gold.
but Interregum is amazing if you like Garrus.
I like both of these a great deal, and cant decide.
You need to visit Teaspoon and an Open Mind or fanfiction.net. There are tons of stories written about those very questions. My favorite stories are Eight/Rose.
This one is fucking beautiful. Aftermath oneshot.
Summary: "Of course it's missing something vital. That's the point." Dennis Creevey takes up his brother's camera after the war.
It's an inconsistency only in the sense that, like a million other things, you wonder why people don't think to use it to solve problems more often. The epic Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is primarily based on a retellling of the first book with a rationalist/atheist Harry, and no characters holding the Idiot Ball for plot convenience.
Characters that actually have good reasons for not using time-turners to win all conflicts or using bombs, guns or conventional weapons, for being atheists in the face of ghosts, for a secret society of bad guys visibly tattooing themselves as such, and the Order not doing as Harry suggests, "owling hand-grenades to all known Death Eaters".
Each chapter is usually based around illustrating a principle of rationality and Baeysian logic, yet is far funnier and more interesting than the books, particularly once past the slow beginning.
I'm assuming it means 18 to 'slither in', 21 to 'rave and claw'. So 18 for sex, 21 for drinking and sex.
Also, googling for slither in produces a Harry and Malfoy fanfic. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6784450/1/Slither_In Not cool
The idea that a lot of people have that anything observably inside reality could be beyond science and study baffles me. This has came up a few times in discussion of different fictional worlds: "It's magic, science doesn't apply to it!" Huh? You mean the scientific method of making a hypothesis and testing it doesn't work? Just because it's called magic doesn't mean I can't study what conditions it works under, figure out what the bare minimum it takes to make it work is, see if it works in related but different conditions, or try to figure out an underlying mechanism.
Also, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality deserves a shout-out while on this topic. Awesome deconstruction of the story written by an AI researcher, and is really funny and entertaining.
(WARNING: SPOILERS)
Eh, yes and no. While that did make it hard for Voldy to attack Harry, it was awfully convenient that his plans would never come to fruition until the end of the year. It took him that long to realize he could lure Harry with a false scar-dream, it took Draco that long to fix the Vanishing Cabinet, etc.
That said, I see no reason his plan during Book 4 couldn't have been executed earlier: why not get Crouch (disguised as Moody) to Portkey Harry away at any other time? Not to mention it seems like this plan could've been reused in Book 6. I mean, just make anything into a Portkey and have Crouch or Malfoy shout "Heads up, Potter!" and throw it at him. Bam, instant trap.
But I was never that happy with that aspect of 4's ending. It wasn't even consistent with how Portkeys were used at the start of the book: for the Quidditch World Cup, they were apparently on a schedule, not touch-activated.
(END SPOILERS)
But /shrug. I feel like none of the Harry Potter books really holds up to rational thought. But that's why we have Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
Firefly was cancelled.
I went looking to see if more stuff was available in book form and stumbled onto a Jayne/River fic on literotica. Searching for more brought me to Browncoat, Green eyes which is a crossover to HP. This story was much better than most of the Firefly fanfic, and I reasoned out that ~300,000 fics for the fandom would give better odds of finding good stories than ~2,300.
A Different Fate by lordhellebore >JKR portrays Harry as completely unaffected by the Avada Kedavra cast at him. But how would things have gone if it had been different?
I'd suggest starting with these. They're canon-compatible and are some of the best writing I've seen in fanfiction.
Two Weeks in the Alley by BajaB
Summary: 13 years old, a vault full of gold, and two unsupervised weeks in Diagon Alley – What’s a boy to do? Summer before PoA AU, some adult themes.
Harry Potter - Rated: K+ - English - Humor - Chapters: 1 - Words: 12,075 - Reviews: 292 - Favs: 2,060 - Follows: 430 - Published: Jan 26, 2008 - Harry P. - Complete
Cauterize by Lady Altair
Summary: "Of course it's missing something vital. That's the point." Dennis Creevey takes up his brother's camera after the war.
Harry Potter - Rated: K+ - English - Tragedy - Chapters: 1 - Words: 1,648 - Reviews: 1228 - Favs: 4,572 - Follows: 344 - Published: Mar 24, 2008 - Dennis C. - Complete
Hogwarts Houses Divided by Inverarity
Summary: The war is over, and all is well, they say, but the wounds remain unhealed. Bitterness divides the Houses of Hogwarts. Can the first children born since the war's end begin a new era, or will the enmities of their parents be their permanent legacy?
Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Fantasy/Adventure - Chapters: 32 - Words: 205,083 - Reviews: 762 - Favs: 922 - Follows: 215 - Updated: Apr 22, 2008 - Published: Dec 30, 2007 - Teddy L., OC - Complete
"In a more realistic version of the Potter world, if Harry was a girl and she ended up in the Little Hangleton graveyard... they'd rape her. So, how do I make a version of Girl!Harry that won't be emotionally destroyed by that?"
... which became something much weirder.
When you decide to take a break from the drama and angst and yearn for some kink, check out just about anything by Ms-Figg - for her it's all about the consummation.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It's a Harry Potter fanfiction where Harry comes up with exactly these kinds of exploits.
Check out this. It is well written fan fiction where people in the Harry Potter universe generally behave rationally, including the Dark Lord. It's pretty interesting.
To quote from A Black Comedy:
>"I know," Harry admitted. "I should have been a bit clearer in that fearing a made-up name is silly, but fearing an extremely powerful ruthless dark wizard is just common sense."
>"Ahh," Sirius nodded. "Wizards aren't too good with that stuff."
>Harry looked at Sirius in confusion.
>"Common sense, I mean," Sirius added. "Your mother always told me that instead of common sense, wizards got magic. Which actually explained quite a bit," Sirius said thinking of the people that got the most magic including various Dark Lords and Albus Dumbledore.
It's from this, which is about as far from a sadfic as you can get without finding something personally authored by Pinkie Pie. It was written before Luna had lines, so we had to make her character up from scratch; this one ended up making her an anachronistic nerd and shipping her with an abacus.
No.
While depression may reduce your body's ability to fight off infections, and while thinking about particular symptoms may cause your body to produce those symptoms via the placebo effect, that is as far as the association goes. Thinking about a particular disease will not give you that disease. The universe does not pay any attention to minds, only to fundamental particles
The site you linked is contagiously insane. If you need something to flush the insanity out of your brain, here are some suggestions:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~andwhay/postlist.html
The second link in particular will allow you to understand exactly why the article you linked is bunk. Minds are not ontologically fundamental entities.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality
We try to confine MoR to specific discussion pages because otherwise it'd get all over the place and annoy people who either don't like Harry Potter in general or don't like Eliezer's didacticism in it.
Considering she uses the same name here as she does on FF, I'm going to be so bold as to assume it would be okay if I link you to her profile there. You can find On&on at the bottom of the page. http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2730564/y8ay8a