Jazerus posted:

obviously methods of rationality sucks. but many of the fics supposedly inspired by it are a lot better than it, and metropolitan man is one of them. you are missing the point entirely

the story is somewhat lifeless because that's lex luthor. a cold series of experimental destruction detached from human emotion is like the definition of his character. it's not out of place for him to act like a morally dubious randian ubermensch like it is for harry potter. but honestly the point of the fic isn't really lex luthor, it's the exploration of superman's morality that you mentioned. it's hardly aborted - the fic is really very effective at portraying the objective horror of a figure like superman, both for the humans around him and for himself, without overexplaining it. luthor killing superman through a lucky shot just after they've reached a reasonable agreement that will benefit both superman and everybody else is a really pretty unsubtle commentary on human nature and fear of the unknown leading us to violent solutions that simply maintain the status quo.

lex luthor's belief in himself as a brilliantly rational visionary has literally always been part of his character. but he isn't actually behaving entirely rationally from a sane point of view, and i don't think the story is trying to say that he is. it doesn't really try to sway you on whether superman or lex is correct, or neither. certainly i didn't walk away thinking that the story wanted me to feel that the good guy had won.

Gitro posted:

I didn't read their negotiations as anything other than luthor stalling/reaching the best compromise position he could without intending to drop his ultimate goal. I was skimming a bit by then though.

It was presented as an example of rationalists winning through rationalism and luthor's pov was the first two chapters iirc, so I assumed the story was presenting him as actually rational/an example of rationality to aspire to, and that his stuff was the main draw. I also thought it implicitly endorsed his goal, but that doesn't really matter.

I really dug the idea of superman as a sort of inverse utility monster and what his moral obligations and responsibilities were, but it was half a chapter of that then back to bland plotting and experimentation, or deadshot hanging out with Mrs Kent, then maybe another chapter. What was there was pretty well done, and I legitimately enjoyed it, but I never felt it was given enough focus.

Basically it was presented (correctly or not) as 'look at luthor be rationalist to kill superman' and the scenes with him as the focus were the worst parts of the story, so I came away with a negative impression.

Unrelated, but one dude on the sufficient velocity forums said something like it would be hard to have rationalist sci-fi, since it's harder to give the protagonist something that would give them a realistic edge against the bad dudes than in fantasy.

Rationalist methods are generally presented as problem solving steps, so that'll constrain the framing a bit, but you really can't think of any other source of interesting conflict it might apply to?

Milky Moor posted:

I'm not even sure what rationalfic is. Whenever someone tries to explain it to me it always seems to be a story where the protagonist just kind of coasts through things by thinking Rational Thoughts and there are maybe some very video-y game-y elements.

Milky Moor posted:

I'm not even sure what rationalfic is. Whenever someone tries to explain it to me it always seems to be a story where the protagonist just kind of coasts through things by thinking Rational Thoughts and there are maybe some very video-y game-y elements.

Tunicate posted:

fanfics that Rational People like, which are therefore Better than other fanfics

divabot posted:

in practice, this is pretty much it: fanfic of other stuff written by the fan club for the fan club. And it's mostly still better than HPMOR.

quote:

There were much worse places to be trapped, Harry supposed. In fact you probably couldn't think of anywhere better to be trapped than an ancient castle with a fractal ever-changing structure that meant you couldn't ever run out of places to explore, full of interesting people and interesting books and incredibly important knowledge unknown to Muggle science.

If Harry hadn't been told that he couldn't leave, he probably would've jumped at the chance to spend more time in Hogwarts, he would've plotted and connived to get it. Hogwarts was literally optimal, not in all the realms of possibility maybe, but certainly on the real planet Earth, it was the Maximum Fun Location.

How could the castle and its grounds seem so much smaller, so much more confining, how could the rest of the world become so much more interesting and important, the instant Harry had been told that he wasn't allowed to leave? He'd spent months here and hadn't felt claustrophobic then.

You know the research on this, observed some part of himself, it's just standard scarcity effects,
...
it was all in Cialdini's book Influence, everything you're feeling right now, the grass is always greener on the side that's not allowed.

quote:

And if there wasn't a Dark Lord, Harry couldn't defeat him, and he would be trapped in Hogwarts forever.

...maybe he would be legally allowed to escape after he graduated his seventh year, six years and four months and three weeks from now. It wasn't that long as lengths of time went, it only seemed like long enough for protons to decay.

Only it wasn't just that.

It wasn't just Harry's freedom that was at stake.

The Headmaster of Hogwarts, the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, was quietly sounding the alarm.

A false alarm.

A false alarm which Harry had triggered.

You know, said the part of him that refined his skills, didn't you sort of ponder, once, how every different profession has a different way to be excellent, how an excellent teacher isn't like an excellent plumber; but they all have in common certain methods of not being stupid; and that one of the most important such techniques is to face up to your little mistakes before they turn into BIG mistakes?

...although this already seemed to qualify as a BIG mistake, actually...

The point being, said his inner monitor, it's getting worse literally by the minute. The way spies turn people is, they get them to commit a little sin, and then they use the little sin to blackmail them into a bigger sin, and then they use THAT sin to make them do even bigger things and then the blackmailer owns their soul.

Didn't you once think about how the person being blackmailed, if they could foresee the whole path, would just decide to take the punch on the first step, take the hit of exposing that first sin? Didn't you decide that you would do that, if anyone ever tried to blackmail you into doing something major in order to conceal something little? Do you see the similarity here, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres?

Only it wasn't little, it already wasn't little, there would be a lot of very powerful people extremely angry at Harry, not just for the false alarm but for freeing Bellatrix from Azkaban, if the Dark Lord did exist and did come after him later, that war might already be lost -

You don't think they'll be impressed by your honesty and rationality and foresight in stopping this before it snowballs even further?

Harry did not, in fact, think this; and after a moment's reflection, whichever part of himself he was talking to, had to agree that this was absurdly optimistic.

quote:

Why had he done it...?

Not because of any cost-benefit calculation, that was for sure. He'd been too embarrassed to pull out a sheet of paper and start calculating expected utilities, he'd worried that Professor Quirrell would stop respecting him if he said no or even hesitated too much to help a maiden in distress.

He'd thought, somewhere deep inside him, that if your mysterious teacher offered you the first mission, the first chance, the call to adventure, and you said no, then your mysterious teacher walked away from you in disgust, and you never got another chance to be a hero...

...yeah, that had been it. In retrospect, that had been it. He'd gone and started thinking his life had a plot and here was a plot twist, as opposed to, oh, say, here was a proposal to break Bellatrix Black out of Azkaban. That had been the true and original reason for the decision in the split second where it had been made, his brain perceptually recognizing the narrative where he said 'no' as dissonant. And when you thought about it, that wasn't a rational way to make decisions. Professor Quirrell's ulterior motive to obtain the last remains of Slytherin's lost lore, before Bellatrix died and it was irrevocably forgotten, seemed impressively sane by comparison; a benefit commensurate with what had appeared at the time as a small risk.

It didn't seem fair, it didn't seem fair, that this was what happened if he lost his grip on his rationality for just a tiny fraction of a second, the tiny fraction of a second required for his brain to decide to be more comfortable with 'yes' arguments than 'no' arguments during the discussion that had followed.

quote:

Harry didn't want to confess and ruin his reputation forever and get everyone angry at him and maybe end up killed by the Dark Lord later. He'd rather be trapped in Hogwarts for six years than face that. That was how he felt. And so it was in fact helpful, a relief, to be able to cling to a single decisive factor, which was that if Harry confessed, Professor Quirrell would go to Azkaban and die there.

(A catch, a break, a stutter in Harry's breathing.)

If you phrased it that way... why, you could even pretend to be a hero, instead of a coward.

quote:

What was he going to do about Azkaban?

What was he going to do about magical Britain?

...which side was he on, now?

In the bright light of day, everything that Albus Dumbledore had said certainly sounded a lot wiser than Professor Quirrell. Better and brighter, more moral, more convenient, wouldn't it be nice if it were true. And the thing to remember was that Dumbledore believed things because they sounded nice, but Professor Quirrell was the one who was sane.

(Again the catch in his breathing, it happened each time he thought of Professor Quirrell.)

But just because something sounded nice, didn't make it wrong, either.

And if the Defense Professor did have a flaw in his sanity, it was that his outlook on life was too negative.

Really? inquired the part of Harry that had read eighteen million experimental results about people being too optimistic and overconfident. Professor Quirrell is too pessimistic? So pessimistic that his expectations routinely undershoot reality? Stuff him and put him in a museum, he's unique. Which one of you two planned the perfect crime, and then put in all the error margin and fallbacks that ended up saving your butt, just in case the perfect crime went wrong? Hint hint, his name wasn't Harry Potter.

But "pessimistic" wasn't the correct word to describe Professor Quirrell's problem - if a problem it truly was, and not the superior wisdom of experience. But to Harry it looked like Professor Quirrell was constantly interpreting everything in the worst possible light. If you handed Professor Quirrell a glass that was 90% full, he'd tell you that the 10% empty part proved that no one really cared about water.

That was a very good analogy, now that Harry thought about it. Not all of magical Britain was like Azkaban, that glass was well over half full...

Harry stared up at the bright blue sky.

...although, following the analogy, if Azkaban existed, then maybe it did prove that the 90% good part was there for other reasons, people trying to make a show of kindness as Professor Quirrell had put it. For if they were truly kind they would not have made Azkaban, they would storm the fortress to tear it down... wouldn't they?

quote:

Harry stared up at the bright blue sky, and thought of the Milgram experiment.

Stanley Milgram had done it to investigate the causes of World War II, to try to understand why the citizens of Germany had obeyed Hitler.

So he had designed an experiment to investigate obedience, to see if Germans were, for some reason, more liable to obey harmful orders from authority figures.

First he'd run a pilot version of his experiment on American subjects, as a control.

And afterward he hadn't bothered trying it in Germany.

quote:

But at the experimenter's prompting, they had, most of them, gone on administering what they believed to be painful, dangerous, possibly lethal electrical shocks.

quote:

Harry could hear Professor Quirrell laughing, in his mind; the Defense Professor's voice saying something along the lines of: Why, Mr. Potter, even I had not been so cynical; I knew men would betray their most cherished principles for money and power, but I did not realize that a stern look also sufficed.

It was dangerous, to try and guess at evolutionary psychology if you weren't a professional evolutionary psychologist; but when Harry had read about the Milgram experiment, the thought had occurred to him that situations like this had probably arisen many times in the ancestral environment, and that most potential ancestors who'd tried to disobey Authority were dead.

quote:

Harry blinked, then; because his brain had just made the connection between Milgram's experiment and what Hermione had done on her first day of Defense class, she'd refused to shoot a fellow student, even when Authority had told her that she must, she had trembled and been afraid but she had still refused. Harry had seen that happen right in front of his own eyes and he still hadn't made the connection until now...

...

They did exist, in the world, the people who wouldn't fire a Simple Strike Hex at a fellow student even if the Defense Professor ordered them to do it. The ones who had sheltered Gypsies and Jews and homosexuals in their attics during the Holocaust, and sometimes lost their lives for it.

And were those people from some other species than humanity? Did they have some extra gear in their heads, some additional chunk of neural circuitry, which lesser mortals did not possess? But that was not likely, given the logic of sexual reproduction which said that the genes for complex machinery would be scrambled beyond repair, if they were not universal.

Whatever parts Hermione was made from, everyone had those same parts inside them somewhere...

...well, that was a nice thought but it wasn't strictly true, there was such a thing as literal brain damage, people could lose genes and the complex machine could stop working, there were sociopaths and psychopaths, people who lacked the gear to care. Maybe Lord Voldemort had been born like that, or maybe he had known good and yet still chosen evil; at this point it didn't matter in the slightest. But a supermajority of the population ought to be capable of learning to do what Hermione and Holocaust resisters did.

The people who had been run through the Milgram experiment, who had trembled and sweated and nervously laughed as they went all the way to pressing the switches marked 'XXX', many of them had written to thank Milgram, afterward, for what they had learned about themselves. That, too, was part of the story, the legend of that legendary experiment.

quote:

So is Professor Quirrell right, then? asked Slytherin. Leaving out whether he's good or evil, is he right? Are you, to them, whether they know it or not, their next Lord? We'll just leave out the Dark part, that's him being cynical again. But is it your intention now to rule? I've got to say, that makes even me nervous.

Do you think you can be trusted with power? said Gryffindor. Isn't there some sort of rule that people who want power shouldn't have it? Maybe we should make Hermione the ruler instead.

Do you think you're fit to run a society and not have it collapse into total chaos inside of three weeks flat? said Hufflepuff. Imagine how loudly Mum would scream if she'd heard you'd been elected Prime Minister, now ask yourself, are you sure she's wrong about that?

Actually, said Ravenclaw, I have to point out that all this political stuff sounds overwhelmingly boring. How about if we leave all the electioneering to Draco and stick to science? It's what we're actually good at, and that's been known to improve the human condition too, y'know.

Slow down, thought Harry at his components, we don't have to decide everything right now. We're allowed to ponder the problem as fully as possible before coming to a solution.

quote:

Why was he so sad, now, whenever he thought of Professor Quirrell? Harry was used to knowing himself, and he didn't know why he felt so sad...

It felt like he'd lost Professor Quirrell forever, lost him in Azkaban, that was how it felt. As surely as if the Defense Professor had been eaten by Dementors, consumed in the empty voids.

Lost him! Why did I lose him? Because he said Avada Kedavra and there was in fact a perfectly good reason even though I didn't see it for a couple of hours? Why can't things go back to the way they were?

...

You couldn't help but wonder...

...whether 'Professor Quirrell' was just one more name on the list, just one more person that had been turned into, made up in the service of some unguessable goal.

Harry would always be wondering now, every time he talked to Professor Quirrell, if it was a mask, and what motive was behind that mask. With every dry smile, Harry would be trying to see what was pulling the levers on the lips.

...

Surely there were other people, maybe better people, to trust and befriend? Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, Hermione, Draco, not to mention Mum and Dad, it wasn't like Harry was alone...

Only...

A choking sensation grew in Harry's throat as he understood.

Only Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, Hermione, Draco, they all of them sometimes knew things that Harry didn't, but...

They did not excel above Harry within his own sphere of power; such genius as they possessed was not like his genius, and his genius was not like theirs; he might look upon them as peers, but not look up to them as his superiors.

None of them had been, none of them could ever be...

Harry's mentor...

That was who Professor Quirrell had been.

That was who Harry had lost.

quote:

Why am I different from the other children my age?

If Professor Quirrell's answer to that had been an evasion, then it was a very well-calculated one. Deep enough and complex enough, sufficiently full of suggestions of hidden meaning, to serve as a trap for a Ravenclaw who couldn't be diverted by less. Or maybe Professor Quirrell had meant his answer honestly. Who knew what motive might have pulled that lever on those lips?

I will say this much, Mr. Potter: You are already an Occlumens, and I think you will become a perfect Occlumens before long. Identity does not mean, to such as us, what it means to other people. Anyone we can imagine, we can be; and the true difference about you, Mr. Potter, is that you have an unusually good imagination. A playwright must contain his characters, he must be larger than them in order to enact them within his mind. To an actor or spy or politician, the limit of his own diameter is the limit of who he can pretend to be, the limit of which face he may wear as a mask. But for such as you and I, anyone we can imagine, we can be, in reality and not pretense. While you imagined yourself a child, Mr. Potter, you were a child. Yet there are other existences you could support, larger existences, if you wished. Why are you so free, and so great in your circumference, when other children your age are small and constrained? Why can you imagine and become selves more adult than a mere child of a playwright should be able to compose? That I do not know, and I must not say what I guess. But what you have, Mr. Potter, is freedom.

quote:

There ought to always be one real person who you truly were, at the center of everything...

Harry stared out at the falling night, the gathering darkness.

...right?

quote:

Hermione nodded, she just nodded, she couldn't think of what to say. She'd missed Harry too, but she was realizing, with a guilty sort of feeling, that it might've been a lot worse for him. She had other friends, Harry... it didn't feel fair, sometimes, that Harry talked to only her like that, so that she had to talk to him; but Harry had a look about him like unfair things had been happening to him, too.

quote:

Did Professor Quirrell do something wrong?" she said at last.

"That's not why I can't go to lunch with him any more," Harry said, still in that bare whisper with his hands pressed over his eyes. "That was the Headmaster's decision. But yeah, Professor Quirrell said some things to me that made me trust him less, I guess..." Harry's voice sounded very shaky. "I'm feeling kind of alone right now."

...

"Don't know the rules and they spit at you. Those are boy games, Harry!"

There was a pause. Harry ground his hands against his face to wipe it, and then took his hands away; and then he was looking at her, looking a little helpless. "Well," Harry said, "what do wizards and witches our age do, when they play, you know, the kind of pointless silly games we're supposed to play at this age?"

"Hopscotch?" said Hermione. "Jump-rope? Unicorn attack? I don't know, I read books!'

quote:

Harry stared up at the canopy above his bed.

Hissed under his breath, "Oh, you've got to be kidding me..."

It took a few seconds before Harry could muster the heart to sit up in bed, pull the blanket over himself and his pillow to obscure the deed from the other boys, cast a low-intensity Lumos and see what was under his pillow.

There was a parchment, and a deck of playing cards.

The parchment read,

A little bird told me that Dumbledore has shut the door of your cage.

I must admit, on this occasion, that Dumbledore may have a point. Bellatrix Black is loosed upon the world once more, and that is not good news for any good person. If I stood in Dumbledore's place, I might well do the same.

But just in case... The Salem Witches' Institute in America accepts boys as well, despite the name. They are good people and would protect you even from Dumbledore, if you needed it. Britain holds that you need Dumbledore's permission to emigrate to magical America, but magical America disagrees. So in the final extremity, get outside the wards of Hogwarts and tear in half the King of Hearts from this deck of cards.

That you should resort to it only in the final extremity goes without saying.

Be well, Harry Potter.

- Santa Claus

Harry stared down at the pack of cards.

It couldn't take him anywhere else, not right now, portkeys didn't work here.

But he still felt unnerved about the prospect of picking it up, even to hide it inside his trunk...

Well, he'd already picked up the parchment, which could just as easily have been enchanted with a trap, if a trap was involved.

But still.

"Wingardium Leviosa," Harry whispered, and Hovered the packet of cards to lie next to where his alarm clock rested in a pocket of the headboard. He'd deal with it tomorrow.

quote:

She came awake with a gasp of horror, a disruption of her breathing that left her feeling deprived of air and yet her lungs didn't move, she woke up with an unvoiced scream on her lips and no words, no words came forth, for she could not understand what she had seen, she could not understand what she had seen, it was too large for her to encompass and still taking shape, she could not put words to that formless shape and so she could not discharge it, could not discharge it and become innocent and unknowing once more.

LOTR posted:

The Shadow had foreseen every move they could make. Had almost - Frodo still could not imagine how it had been done, how the Shadow had arranged such a thing - had almost maneuvered the Council into sending the Ring straight into Mordor with only a tiny guard set on it, as they would have done if Frodo and Bilbo had not been there.

...

"The Enemy is very wise," said Gandalf, "and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it -"

"He will think of it!" cried Frodo. He struggled for words, trying to convey things that had once seemed perfect in his comprehension, and then faded like melting snow. "If the Enemy thought that all his foes were moved by desire for power alone - he would guess wrongly, over and over, and the Maker of this Ring would see that, he would know that somewhere he had made a mistake!" Frodo's hands stretched forth pleadingly.

quote:

Frodo gazed at them all, feeling a wildness come over him, a despair; and as his heart weakened a shadow came over his vision, a darkness and a wavering. From within the shadow Frodo saw Gandalf, and the wizard's strength was revealed as weakness, and his wisdom folly. For Frodo knew, as the Ring seemed to drag and weigh on his breast, that Gandalf had not thought at all of history and lore, when the wizard spoke of how the Enemy would not understand any desire save power; that Gandalf had not remembered how Sauron had cast down and corrupted the Men of Númenor in the days of their glory. Just as it had not occurred to Gandalf that the Enemy might learn to comprehend foes of goodwill by looking...

Frodo's gaze swung to Elrond, but there was no hope there, no answer and no rescue in the shadowy vision; for Elrond had let Isildur go, carrying the Ring from the Cracks of Doom where it should have been destroyed, to the cost of all this war. Not for Isildur's own sake, not for friendship had it been done, for the Ring had killed Isildur in the end, and far worse fates could have followed him. But the Doom that had stemmed from Isildur's deed would have seemed unsure to Elrond then, unsure and distant in time; and yet the cost to Elrond himself of taking his sword's pommel to the back of Isildur's head would have been surer, and nearer...

As though in desperation, Frodo turned to look at Aragorn, the weathered man who had donned his travel-worn clothes for this council, the heir of kings who spoke softly to hobbits. But Frodo's vision seemed to double, and in the shadowy second image Frodo saw a Man who had spent too much of his youth among Elves, who had learned to wear humble and stained clothes amid the gold and jewels, knowing he could not match them wisdom for wisdom, and hoping to outplay them in a fashion they would not emulate...

In the sight of the Ring, which was the sight of the Ring's own Maker, all noble things faded into stratagems and lies, a world of grey and darkness without any light. They had not made their choices knowingly, Gandalf or Elrond or Aragorn; the impulses had come from the dark hidden parts of themselves, the black secret depths which the Ring had rendered plain in Frodo's vision. Would they outthink the Shadow, when they could not comprehend even their own selves, or the forces that moved them?

...

How did you bear this thing?" Frodo whispered to Bilbo, as if the two of them were the only souls in the room, though all the Council watched them. "For years? I cannot imagine it."

"I kept it locked in a room to which only Gandalf had the key," said his uncle, "and when I began to imagine ways to open it, I remembered Gollum."

A shudder went through Frodo, remembering the tales. The horror of the Misty Mountains, thinking, always thinking in the dark; ruling the goblins from the shadows and filling the tunnels with traps; but for Bilbo wearing the ring that first time not a single dwarf would have lived.

quote:

All he had to do was put on the Ring.

Just that, and all would become clear to him, once more the slowness and mud would leave his thoughts, all possibilities and futures transparent to him, he would see through the Shadow's plans and devise an irresistible counterstroke -

- and he would never be able to take off the Ring, not again, not by any will that would be left to him. All Frodo had of those moments were fading memories, but he knew that it had felt like dying, to let all his towers of thought collapse and become only Frodo once more. It had felt like dying, he remembered that much of Weathertop even if he remembered little else. And if he did wear the Ring again, it would be better to die with it on his finger, to end his life while he was still himself; for Frodo knew that he could not withstand the effects of wearing the Ring a second time, not afterward when the limitless clarity was lost to him...

Frodo looked around the Council, at the poor lost leaderless Wise, and he knew they could not defeat the Shadow by their own strength.

"I will wear it one last time," Frodo said, his voice broken and failing, as he had known from the beginning that he would say in the end, "one last time to find the answer for this Council, and then there will be other hobbits."

"No! " screamed the voice of Sam, as the other hobbit began to rush forward from where he had hidden; even as Frodo, with movement as swift and precise as a Nazgûl, took out the Ring from beneath his shirt; and somehow Bilbo was already standing there and had already thrust his finger through.

It all happened before even Gandalf's staff could point, before Aragorn could level the hilt-shard of his sword; the Dwarves shouted in shock, and the Elves were dismayed.

"Of course," said Bilbo's voice, as Frodo began to weep, "I see it now, I understand everything at last. Listen, listen and swiftly, here is what you must do -"

THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE posted:

"I had the strangest dream," Lucy said, her voice even quieter, "where we didn't have to organize any creatures or convince them to fight, we just walked into this place and the lion was already here, with all the armies already mustered, and he went and rescued Edmund, and then we rode alongside him into this tremendous battle where he killed the White Witch..."

"Did the dream have a moral?" said Peter.

"I don't know," said Lucy, blinking and looking a little puzzled. "In the dream it all seemed pointless somehow."

"I think maybe the land of Narnia was trying to tell you," said Susan, "or maybe it was just your own dreams trying to tell you, that if there was really such a person as that lion, there'd be no use for us."

MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS SCIENCE posted:

Naruto posted:

(This has now inspired an extended fanfiction, _Lighting Up the Dark_ by Velorien.)

Anita Blake posted:

ERDŐS IN CHAINS

"How could you do it, Anita?" said Richard, his voice very tight. "How could you coauthor a paper with Jean-Claude? You study the undead, you don't collaborate with them on papers!"

"And what about you?" I spat. "You coauthored a paper with Sylvie! It's all right for you to be prolific but not me? "

"I'm the head of her institute," Richard growled. I could feel the waves of science radiating off him; he was angry. "I have to work with Sylvie, it doesn't mean anything! I thought our own research was special, Anita!"

"It is," I said, feeling helpless about my inability to explain things to Richard. He didn't understand the thrill of being a polymath, the new worlds that were opening up to me. "I didn't share our research with anyone -"

"But you wanted to," said Richard.

I didn't say anything, but I knew that the look on my face said it all.

"God, Anita, you've changed," said Richard. He seemed to slump in on himself. "Do you realize that the monsters are joking about Blake numbers, now? I used to be your partner in everything, and now - I'm just another werewolf with a Blake number of 1."

quote:

THUNDERSMARTS

"I am sick of this!" shouted Liono. "Sick of doing this every single week! Our species was capable of interstellar travel, Panthro, I know the quantities of energy involved! There is no way you can't build a nuke or steer an asteroid or somehow blow up that ever-living idiot's pyramid!"

HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF RATIONALITY

"Fabulous secret knowledge was revealed to me on the day I held aloft my magic book and said: By the power of Bayes's Theorem! "

quote:

UTILITARIAN TWILIGHT

...

"Immortality. Perfect health. Awakening psychic powers. Easy enough to survive on animal blood once you do it. Even the beauty, Edward, there are people who would give their lives to be pretty, and don't you dare call them shallow until you've tried being ugly. Do you think I'm scared of the word 'vampire'? I'm tired of your arbitrary deontological constraints, Edward. The whole human species ought to be in on your fun, and people are dying by the thousands even as you hesitate."

The gun in his lover's hand was cold against his forehead. It wouldn't kill him, but it would disable him for long enough -

Disney' Aladdin posted:

"Excuse me," said Jasmine. "Aladdin, my darling, you're cute but you're an idiot, do you know that? Did you not notice how once Jafar got his hands on this lamp, he got his own three wishes - oh, never mind. Genie, I wish for everyone to always be young and healthy, I wish nobody ever had to die if they didn't want to, and I wish for everyone's intelligence to gradually increase at a rate of 1 IQ point per year." She tossed the lamp back to Aladdin. "Go back to what you were doing."

Hamlet posted:

...

HAMLET
I seek to deny Hell to everyone!
and Heaven too, for I suspect the Heaven of our mad God
might be a paltry thing, next to the Heaven I will make of Earth,
when I am its immortal king.

Ghost
I care not for these things.
Death and hell have stripp'd away all of my desires,
save for revenge upon my murderer.

HAMLET
Thou shalt not be avenged, save that thou swear:
an I slay thine killer, so wilt thou vouchsafe to me the means
by which I might slay death.

He who killed you will join you in the Pit,
and then that's it. No further swelling of Hell's ranks will I permit.

Ghost
Done. When my brother is slain, he who poured the poison in my ear,
then will I pour in yours the precious truth:
the making of the Philosopher's Stone. With this Stone, thou may'st procure
a philter to render any man immune to death, and more transmute
base metal to gold, to fund the provision of this philter to all mankind.

...

(HonoreDB has now extended this to a complete ebook)
(entitled _A Will Most Incorrect to Heaven: The Tragedy of Prince Hamlet and the Philosopher's Stone_)
(available for $3 at makefoil dot com)
(yes, really)

MOBY DICK AND THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY posted:

(as related by Eneasz on LessWrong)

"Revenge?" said the peg-legged man. "On a whale? No, I decided I'd just get on with my life."

The Matrix posted:

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.

Epicurius posted:

So why does the author hate on McGonnigall so much? Is it just that she's a woman? Because canonical McGonnigall is pretty fierce. She's one of the best Transfiguration wizards out there, she's a skilled animagus, she's smart, she's logical, she's self-disciplined, she doesn't out up with foolishness from others, she knows how to read people, she's pretty much the only teacher at Hogwarts who is impartial when it comes to rewards and punishments, and she's one of the few adults in the series (along with the Weaselys, maybe), who doesn't have any agenda beyond fighting Voldemort and keeping the kids safe. You'd think Yud would love her.

Xander77 posted:

Never read the original, but yeah, sure - the point of a Christ allegory is that mortals are unnecessary.

Xander77 posted:

Umm.

Xander77 posted:

Still a better love story than Twilight.

Xander77 posted:

My personal version of the three wishes does in fact include "just make everyone gradually smarter, and that should work out better for solving the worlds problems than individual wishes".

Xander77 posted:

Different authors will have different things to say regarding on the question of why everyone wish for "me" "myself" and "I". Better topic for discussion than "what would you wish for" as such, actually.

Xander77 posted:

Uuuuuuuuuuuuugh.

Xander77 posted:

Best (and most bearable) saved for last.

Tiggum posted:

I'm not sure what increasing everyone's IQ by 1 point a year would actually do though.

Tiggum posted:

It's a funny idea, but he hasn't bothered to even try to make Neo sound like the original character.

Tiggum posted:

I'm not sure what increasing everyone's IQ by 1 point a year would actually do though.

Tiggum posted:

No worse than the actual Anita Blake books.

Tunicate posted:

Not much - IQ already grows at about a third a point per year - it's the Flynn effect.

Cavelcade posted:

Ugh. The lord of the rings one is annoying, because of how much it misses the point but oh my god the Hamlet one is so infuriatingly smug while being the absolute worst 13 year old's impression of Shakespeare. That's not he wrote! All of this is wrong!

MikeJF posted:

Mmm. The truth is, it's an increase in empathy that would do more to save us than IQ.

Junkozeyne posted:

It "grows" when you compare new tests to old tests. The median test result is always IQ 100, with deviations from that median, so that wish is pretty meaningless. What the author tried to say is "make everyone gradually smarter" and failed, just like rationalfic

Tiggum posted:

I'm not sure what increasing everyone's IQ by 1 point a year would actually do though.

Victorkm posted:

Boy is this true. She pretty much fucks her way through a list of wereanimals and vampires 30-some books long.

quote:

Hermione Granger had read somewhere once, that one of the keys to staying thin was to pay attention to the food you ate, to notice yourself eating it, so that you were satisfied with the meal. This morning she'd made herself toast, and put butter on the toast, and cinnamon on the butter, and it really should've been enough to get her to notice, this time, the goodness that was in front of her...

quote:

"Every good thing in the world brings its own opposition into existence. Phoenixes are no exception."

...

"Lies propagate, that's what I'm saying. You've got to tell more lies to cover them up, lie about every fact that's connected to the first lie. And if you kept on lying, and you kept on trying to cover it up, sooner or later you'd even have to start lying about the general laws of thought. Like, someone is selling you some kind of alternative medicine that doesn't work, and any double-blind experimental study will confirm that it doesn't work. So if someone wants to go on defending the lie, they've got to get you to disbelieve in the experimental method. Like, the experimental method is just for merely scientific kinds of medicine, not amazing alternative medicine like theirs. Or a good and virtuous person should believe as strongly as they can, no matter what the evidence says. Or truth doesn't exist and there's no such thing as objective reality. A lot of common wisdom like that isn't just mistaken, it's anti-epistemology, it's systematically wrong. Every rule of rationality that tells you how to find the truth, there's someone out there who needs you to believe the opposite. If you once tell a lie, the truth is ever after your enemy; and there's a lot of people out there telling lies -" Harry's voice stopped.

"What does that have to do with Fawkes?" she said.

Harry withdrew his spoon from his cereal, and pointed in the direction of the Head Table. "The Headmaster has a phoenix, right? And he's Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot? So he's got political opponents, like Lucius. Now, d'you think that opposition is going to just roll over and surrender, because Dumbledore has a phoenix and they don't? Do you think they'll admit that Fawkes is even evidence that Dumbledore's a good person? Of course not. They've got to invent something to say that makes Fawkes... not important. Like, phoenixes only follow people who charge straight at anyone they think is evil, so having a phoenix just means you're an idiot or a dangerous fanatic. Or, phoenixes just follow people who are pure Gryffindor, so Gryffindor they don't have the virtues of other Houses. Or it just shows how much courage a magical animal thinks you have, nothing else, and it wouldn't be fair to judge politicians based on that. They have to say something to deny the phoenix. I bet Lucius didn't even have to make up anything new. I bet it had all been said before, centuries ago, since the first time someone had a phoenix riding on his shoulder, and someone else wanted people not to take that into account as evidence. I bet by the time Fawkes came along it was already common wisdom, it would have just seemed strange to take into account who a phoenix liked or disliked. It would be like a Muggle newspaper testing political candidates to rate their level of scientific literacy. Every force for Good that exists in this universe, there's someone else who benefits from people discounting it, or fencing it into a narrow box where it can't get to them."

"But -" Hermione said. "Okay, I see why Lucius Malfoy doesn't want anyone to think that Fawkes matters, but why does anyone who isn't a bad guy believe it?"

Harry Potter gave a little shrug. His spoon dropped back into his cereal, and went on stirring without a pause. "Why does any kind of cynicism appeal to people? Because it seems like a mark of maturity, of sophistication, like you've seen everything and know better. Or because putting something down feels like pushing yourself up. Or they don't have a phoenix themselves, so their political instinct tells them there's no advantage to be gained from saying nice things about phoenixes. Or because being cynical feels like knowing a secret truth that common people don't know..." Harry Potter looked in the direction of the Head Table, and his voice dropped until it was almost a whisper. "I think maybe that's what he's getting wrong - that he's cynical about everything else, but not about cynicism itself."

quote:

She was getting the sense that Harry...

...was pulling away from her...

"He seems a lot older all of a sudden," said Anthony. "Not like a real grownup, I can't imagine Harry as a grownup, but it's like he suddenly turned into a fourth-year version of... of whatever he is."

quote:

"I have two pieces of good news for you, Mr. Potter. First - have you met Mr. Rubeus Hagrid, at all? The groundskeeper? He was an old friend of your parents."

Harry hesitated. Then, "Mr. Hagrid spoke to me a bit after I got here," Harry said. "I think it was on Tuesday of my first week of school. He didn't say he knew my parents, though. At the time I thought he just wanted to introduce himself to the Boy-Who-Lived... did he have some kind of hidden agenda? He didn't seem like the type..."

"Ah..." she said. It took her a moment to pull her thoughts together. "It's a long story, Mr. Potter, but Mr. Hagrid was falsely accused of murdering a student, five decades ago. Mr. Hagrid's wand was snapped, and he was expelled. Later, when Professor Dumbledore became Headmaster, he gave Mr. Hagrid a place here as Keeper of Grounds and Keys."

Harry's eyes watched her intently. "You said that five decades ago was the last time a student died in Hogwarts, and you were certain that five decades ago was the last time someone heard the Sorting Hat's secret message."

She felt a slight chill - even the Headmaster or Severus might not have made that connection that quickly - and said, "Yes, Mr. Potter. Someone opened the Chamber of Secrets, but this was not believed, and Mr. Hagrid was blamed for the resulting death. However, the Headmaster has located the additional enchantment on the Sorting Hat, and he has shown it to a special panel of the Wizengamot. As a result, Mr. Hagrid's sentence has been revoked - just this morning, in fact - and he will be allowed to acquire a new wand." She hesitated. "We... have not yet told Mr. Hagrid of this, Mr. Potter. We were waiting until the deed was done, so as not to give him false hope after so long. Mr. Potter... we were wondering if we could tell Mr. Hagrid that it was you who helped him...?"

She saw the weighing look in his eyes -

"I remember Mr. Hagrid holding you when you were a baby," she said. "I think he would be very happy to know."

She could see it, though, on Harry's face, the moment when he decided that Rubeus wouldn't be any use to him.

Harry shook his head. "Bad enough that someone might deduce there was a Parselmouth in this year's crop of students," Harry said. "I think it'd be more prudent to just keep it all as secret as possible."

She remembered James and Lily, who'd never hesitated to return the friendship the huge, bluff man had offered them, for all that James was the scion of a wealthy House or Lily a budding Charms Mistress, and Rubeus a mere half-giant whose wand had been snapped...

"Because you don't expect him to prove useful, Mr. Potter?"

There was silence. She hadn't intended to say that out loud.

Sadness crossed Harry's face. "Probably," Harry said quietly. "But I don't think he and I would get along, do you?"

Something seemed to be stuck in her throat.

"Speaking of making use of people," Harry said. "It seems I'm going to be thrown into a war with a Dark Lord sometime soon. So while I'm in your office, I'd like to ask that my sleep cycle be extended to thirty hours per day. Neville Longbottom wants to start practicing dueling, there's an older Hufflepuff who offered to teach him, and they invited me to join. Plus there's other things I want to learn too - and if you or the Headmaster think I should study anything in particular, in order to become a powerful wizard when I grow up, let me know. Please direct Madam Pomfrey to administer the appropriate potion, or whatever it is that she needs to do -"

"Mr. Potter! "

Harry's eyes gazed directly into her own. "Yes, Minerva? I know it wasn't your idea, but I'd like to survive the use the Headmaster's making of me. Please don't be an obstacle to that."

It almost broke her. "Harry," she whispered in a bare voice, "children shouldn't have to think like that!"

quote:

Harry's eyes narrowed for a moment. "I see. Then please remind the Headmaster that Godric Gryffindor, in his last words, said that if it had been the right thing for him to do, then he wouldn't tell anyone else to choose wrongly, not even the youngest student in Hogwarts."

And she knew with a hollow feeling that any chance of Albus stopping this, stopping any of this, had just Vanished into nothingness. That was what Albus had told her when she'd objected that Cameron Edward was too young, and then when she'd objected that Peter Pevensie was too young, and finally she'd given up objecting.

quote:

The stern old healer had then turned, and started to say to Professor Quirrell that he was absolutely not to overexert himself or... upset himself...

Madam Pomfrey had trailed off, hurriedly turned around, and fled the room.

"Not bad," Harry observed, after the door had shut behind the escaping medical matron. "I've got to learn how to do that, sometime."

Professor Quirrell smiled a smile with absolutely no humor content, and said, his voice sounding a good deal dryer than its usual dryness, "Thank you for your artistic critique, Mr. Potter."

quote:

Six incantations the Defense Professor spoke then; six of the thirty that he had used to safeguard their important conversations in Mary's Room.

Harry raised his eyebrows, silently quizzical.

"That is all I can manage for now," said the Defense Professor. "I expect it shall prove sufficient. Still, there is a proverb: If you do not wish a thing heard, do not say it. Consider it to apply in full measure."

...

In the light of the single torch, shaded toward the reddish end of the optical spectrum, the snake's green scales were not very reflective, and the blue-and-white banding hardly more so. Dark seemed the snake, in that light. The eyes, which had seemed like gray pits before, now reflected the torchlight, and seemed brighter than the rest of the snake.

"Sso," hissed the venomous creature. "What did you wissh to ssay? "

And Harry hissed, "Sschoolmasster thinkss that woman'ss former Lord iss the one who sstole her from prisson."

Harry had thought about it this time, and carefully, before he had decided that he would reveal to Professor Quirrell only that the Headmaster believed that; and not say anything about the prophecy which had set Voldemort on Harry's parents, nor that the Headmaster was reconstituting the Order of the Phoenix... it was a risk, a significant risk, but Harry needed an ally in this.

"He believess that one iss alive? " the snake finally said. The divided, two-pronged tongue flickered rapidly from side to side, sardonic snakish laughter. "Ssomehow I am not ssurprissed."

"Yess," Harry hissed dryly, "very amussing, I am ssure. Except now am sstuck in Hogwartss for next ssix years, for ssafety! I have decided that I will, indeed, sseek power; and confinement iss not helpful for that. Musst convince sschoolmasster that Dark Lord iss not yet awakened, that esscape was work of ssome other power -"

Again the rapid flickering of the snake's tongue; the snakish laughter was stronger, dryer, this time. "Amateur foolisshnesss."

"Pardon? " hissed Harry.

"You ssee misstake, think of undoing, ssetting time back to sstart. Yet not even with hourglasss can time be undone. Musst move forward insstead. You think of convincing otherss they are misstaken. Far eassier to convince them they are right. Sso conssider, boy: what new happensstance would make schoolmasster decide you were ssafe once more, ssimultaneoussly advance your other agendass?"

Harry stared at the snake, puzzled. His mind tried to comprehend and unravel the riddle -

"Iss it not obviouss? " hissed the snake. Again the tongue flickered sardonic laughter. "To free yoursself, to gain power in Britain, you musst again be sseen to defeat the Dark Lord."

In reddish-orange flickering torchlight, a green snake swayed above a white hospital bed, as the boy stared into the embers of its eyes.

"Sso," Harry said finally. "Let uss be clear on what iss propossed. You ssuggesst that we sset up imposstor to imperssonate Dark Lord."

"Ssomething like that. Woman we resscued will cooperate, sshould be mosst convincing when sshe iss sseen at hiss sside." More sardonic tongue-flickering. "You are kidnapped from Hogwartss to public location, many witnesssess, wardss keep out protectorss. Dark Lord announcess that he hass at long lasst regained physical form, after wandering as sspirit for yearss; ssayss that he hass gained sstill greater power, not even you can sstop him now. Offerss to let you duel. You casst guardian Charm, Dark Lord laughss at you, ssayss he iss not life-eater. Casstss Killing Cursse at you, you block, watcherss ssee Dark Lord explode -"

"Casst Killing Cursse? " Harry hissed in incredulity. "At me? Again? Ssecond time? Nobody will believe Dark Lord could posssibly be that sstupid -"

"You and I are only two people in country who would notice that," hissed the snake. "Trusst me on thiss, boy."

...

"Will think about it," hissed Harry. "Will not ansswer right away, thiss time, will enumerate risskss and benefitss firsst -"

"Undersstood," hissed the snake. "But remember thiss, boy, other eventss proceed without you. Hessitation iss alwayss eassy, rarely usseful."

Epicurius posted:

So why does the author hate on McGonnigall so much? Is it just that she's a woman? Because canonical McGonnigall is pretty fierce. She's one of the best Transfiguration wizards out there, she's a skilled animagus, she's smart, she's logical, she's self-disciplined, she doesn't out up with foolishness from others, she knows how to read people, she's pretty much the only teacher at Hogwarts who is impartial when it comes to rewards and punishments, and she's one of the few adults in the series (along with the Weaselys, maybe), who doesn't have any agenda beyond fighting Voldemort and keeping the kids safe. You'd think Yud would love her.

EvilTaytoMan posted:

So I finally got around to reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It reads like a bad fanfic, not MoR bad but still pretty bad.

quote:

Harry understood the weaknesses of Ravenclaws well enough to know that you had to try answering your own quibbles. Did some plans call for waiting? Yes, many plans called for delayed action; but that was not the same as hesitating to choose. Not delaying because you knew the right moment to do what was necessary, but delaying because you couldn't make up your mind - there was no cunning plan which called for that.

Did you sometimes need more information to choose? Yes, but that could also turn into an excuse for delaying; and it would be tempting to delay, when you were faced with a choice between two painful alternatives, and not choosing would avoid the mental pain for a time.

...

If you weren't just hesitating, you ought to be able to choose in advance what you would do, once you had the extra information you claimed you needed.

If the Dark Lord were really out there, would it be smart to go along with Professor Quirrell's plan to have someone impersonate the Dark Lord?

No. Definitely no. Absolutely not.

And if Harry knew for a fact that the Dark Lord wasn't really out there... in that case...

quote:

"No," hissed Harry.

The green snake cocked its head, tilting it slightly; no emotion was conveyed by the gesture, not that Harry's Parselmouth talent conveyed to him. "Reasson not? " said the green snake.

"Too rissky," Harry said simply. That was true whether or not the Dark Lord was out there. Forcing himself to decide in advance had made him realize that he'd just been using the unanswered question as an excuse to hesitate; the sane decision was the same, either way.

For a moment the dark pitted eyes seemed to gleam blackly, for a moment the scaled mouth gaped to expose the fangs. "Think you have learned wrong lessson, boy, from previouss failure. My planss are not in habit of failing, and lasst one would have gone flawlesssly, but for your own foolisshnesss. Correct lessson iss to follow ssteps laid down for you by older and wisser Sslytherin, tame your wild impulssess."

"Lessson I learned is not to try plotss that would make girl-child friend think I am evil or boy-child friend think I am sstupid," Harry snapped back. He'd been planning a more temporizing response than that, but somehow the words had just slipped out.

...

"You sserioussly care what thosse two think? " came the snake's final hiss. "True younglingss thosse two are, not like you. Could not weigh adult matterss."

"Might have done better than me," Harry hissed. "Boy-child friend would have assked after ssecret motivess before asssenting to resscue woman -"

"Glad you undersstand that now," the snake hissed coldly. "Alwayss assk after other'ss advantage. Next learn to alwayss assk after your own. If my plan iss not to your tasste, what iss yours? "

"If necesssary - sstay at sschool ssix yearss and sstudy. Hogwartss sseemss fine place to dwell. Bookss, friendss, sstrange but tassty food." Harry wanted to chuckle, but there wasn't any gesture in Parseltongue for the kind of laughter he wanted to express.

The pits of the snake's eyes seemed almost black. "Eassy to ssay that now. Ssuch as you and I, we do not tolerate imprissonment. You will losse patience long before sseventh year, perhapss before end of thiss one. I sshall plan accordingly."

quote:

"Neville and Harry Potter are learning dueling from Mr. Diggory!" Hannah blurted as soon as they were a few steps away from the table.

"Who?" said Hermione.

"Cedric Diggory! " said Hannah. "He's the Captain of our Quidditch Team, and general of an army, and he's taking all the electives and getting better grades than anyone, and I hear he learns dueling from professional tutors during the summers, and he once beat two seventh-year students, and even some teachers call him the Super Hufflepuff

...

"Don't you see? " Hannah shrieked, raising her voice a lot louder than it should've been, if they were trying to keep the conversation private from all the Ravenclaws looking at them. "Neville isn't studying to beat us! He's practicing so he can fight Bellatrix Black! They're going to go through us like a Bludger through a stack of pancakes!"

...

A few moments later, Hermione was walking back to her place at the table with a sweet smile plastered onto her young face, it wasn't the terrible cold glare of Harry's dark side but it was the scariest face she knew how to make.

Harry Potter was going down.

"This is loony," gasped Neville, with what tiny amount of breath he could spare from being completely out of breath.

"This is brilliant! " said Cedric Diggory. The eyes of the Super Hufflepuff gleamed with manic enthusiasm, shining like the sweat on his forehead as he stamped his feet through the dance of one of his dueling postures. His usually-light steps had changed to heavier stomps, which might have had something to do with the Transfigured metal weights they'd all attached to their arms and legs and strapped over their chests. "Where do you get these ideas, Mr. Potter?"

"A strange old shop... in Oxford... and I'm never... shopping there... again." Thud.

HPatMoR posted:

Harry wanted to chuckle, but there wasn't any gesture in Parseltongue for the kind of laughter he wanted to express.

Dabir posted:

Are the weights a Dragonball thing? I think they're some kind of anime thing.

Dabir posted:

Are the weights a Dragonball thing? I think they're some kind of anime thing.

Dabir posted:

Are the weights a Dragonball thing? I think they're some kind of anime thing.

Pvt.Scott posted:

Yeah, it's an anime thing, though lord knows it may hail from an older tradition, legend, myth or something.

I have no idea what the bit with the store was going on about.

quote:

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Malfoy had maintained their influence over Britain for centuries by understanding that you couldn't always be the most powerful. Sometimes another Lord was just stronger, and you had to settle for merely being his foremost lieutenant. You could build up quite a position of wealth and power over a dozen generations of being second in command. You just had to be careful, each time, not to let your House be dragged down with the fall of the Lord you served. That was the Malfoy tradition which centuries of experience had honed...

quote:

Daphne's wand swung to point to her left, and she shouted "Tonare! "

The wand went over her head, and she spoke the incantation "Ravum Calvaria! "

And finally she grasped her wand in both hands and shrieked, "Lucis Gladius! "

The huge magical drain almost sent her to her knees, but she bore it, and when the blazing shape had fully formed and stabilized the drain was a little less.

Still, she had a feeling she'd better not try to fight with this for long.

That everyone was staring at her went quite without saying, and she should have leaped forward to confront Neville with her hair billowing around her, but it was all she could do to walk forward steadily to level her Most Ancient Blade at Neville Longbottom. That everyone moved aside and made way for her also went without saying.

"I hight Daphne, of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Greengrass! " she cried. "Greengrass of Sunshine! " The dueling forms had gone completely out of her mind, she'd seen enough plays to remember death challenges and blood challenges but she couldn't remember at all what was appropriate for this, so she just pointed the incandescent sword toward the object of her crush and yelled, "Let's see what you got, Nevvy! "

Once again Harry's voice shrieked "Stupefy! ", and later on, when she was remembering this, she could never quite believe she'd managed to do it, but she slashed out with her blade of light like it was a Beater's bat, and hit the stunbolt back at Harry who just barely managed to twist out of the way.

"Tonare! " shouted Neville, of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Longbottom. "Ravum Calvaria, Lucis Gladius! "

For a few seconds, no one did anything but stare at Neville and Daphne as they started whacking at each other. They were both moving slowly, and Hermione guessed that the spell was taking a lot of strength out of them. It wasn't very impressive by comparison, if you were a Muggleborn and you'd watched certain movies.

But you still had to give them extra credit for using lightsabers at all.

quote:

"You know," said Hermione Granger, "I understand that it's not really your fault, but I'm getting tired of hearing people talk about the Boy-Who-Lived like you're - like you're some kind of god or something."

"Same here, I must say," said Harry Potter. "It's sad how people keep underestimating me."

Her wand kept rehearsing the diamond within the circle, over and over. Harry would be recharging his own strength, she knew, even as she practiced as much as she could before her attack. "I'm starting to think you need taking down a peg, General Chaos."

"You could be right," Harry said equably. His feet began to shuffle through what she recognized as a duelist's dance. "Unfortunately there's nothing left that can defeat me now except another Harry Potter."

"Let me be specific, Mr. Potter. I'm taking you down a peg."

"You and what other army?"

"You think you're pretty cool, don't you," said Hermione.

"Why, yes," said Harry. "Yes, I do. Some might call that arrogant, but am I supposed to be the last person in Hogwarts to notice how awesome I am?"

Hermione raised her left hand into the air, and made a fist.

It was a signal. Eight designated soldiers in her army would be pointing their wands at her, and quietly casting Wingardium Leviosa.

They'd practiced this, too, once Hermione had given up on lecturing her soldiers, and at Anthony's suggestion, tried giving them a Sunshine General who looked like she could defeat invincible enemies.

"You pretend you're Superman," said Hermione. She raised her left fist higher in the air, and the eight soldiers supporting her Hovered her off the ground. "Well here's Super Hermione! " Her hand pushed forward, and as she shot rapidly through the air toward Harry, regretting only that she couldn't see the look on his face, her wand made a diamond within a circle and she summoned up all the magic she could, it felt like she imagined touching a live wire would feel as the too-powerful spell poured through her when her voice screamed "Stupefy! "

The red bolt burst from her wand, perfectly formed.

Harry dodged it.

And then, because they hadn't practiced doing this part inside of hallways, she crashed into a wall.

Lurks Morington posted:

Does this fan fiction do anything with sirus black? He was my favorite character when I read the books as a kid and it'd be cool to have more about him

Doctor Spaceman posted:

There is some stuff with Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew but it's minor and more about metafictional commentary and response to other fanfics than a plot point in its own right.

Xander77 posted:

We already went over that bit. Unless there's another one.