What are you reading?

[Yuthirin]

I have fond memories of laughing myself sick at 3 am.

[Arakawa]

Just too much everyone being pushovers to even provide the opportunity for the story to start to be told.  A kid whines enough and he gets their head scientist ordered to answer questions instead of being picked up by the many guards of the place and tossed in a holding pen?

Evidently, this is as silly as I though it might be; I'm glad I didn't bother to look at this. If Rationality is worth anything in the Eva verse, Gendo probably already has ten Bayesians locked in a room somewhere, anyways. :-/

I'm trying to think of a series that could possibly be dumber to put a 'rational' protagonist into, as a fic premise. Maybe Madoka?

[Dracos]

It very much is a universe where understanding how things work is less important than being shot if you aren't being a good pawn to the relevant chessmaster.

I can't see it working well in Madoka-verse either.  Too fatalistic a setting.  "This is ridiculous or doesn't make any sense." "It doesn't leave one any less dead, also there is explicitly a force out their working to make sure none of you have correct information and sending others to interfere in the case that you do start getting a hint."  Maybe Homura could?  But she's already playing the "I tried everything under the sun game and have been drilling down to actual rules through it."  No one else lives long enough for it to matter.

[Arakawa]

I can't see it working well in Madoka-verse either.  Too fatalistic a setting.  "This is ridiculous or doesn't make any sense." "It doesn't leave one any less dead, also there is explicitly a force out their working to make sure none of you have correct information and sending others to interfere in the case that you do start getting a hint."  Maybe Homura could?  But she's already playing the "I tried everything under the sun game and have been drilling down to actual rules through it."  No one else lives long enough for it to matter.

This. I was thinking also that having one of the girls be 'rational' would blatantly upend the implicit premise that Kyuubei seeks out primarily girls who think with their emotions to the extent that the effects of their wishes are unlikely to interfere with the grand plan....

i.e. if there was a super-rational schoolgirl out there, Kyuubei would probably try to keep her from being involved in the whole mess.

Or, if you like, Kyuubei is already the 'rational' entity in the setting.

[thepanda]

BREAKING NEWS!

Nostalgia strikes downtown Los Angeles! No survivors!

Arbyfish and Planetary Breaking Points are the only things I remember about that fic. >_>

[Brian]

Yeah, I never ... really got into it.  It was popular, and evidently amusing, but I couldn't get past the Mary Sue coupled with horrible accents being spelled out.

I'm reading this:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2889350/1/Bugle-in-the-Jungle

I'm not sure I can say it's good, but it's a pretty interesting fic ... possibly mostly just because it's second-person.  Which is really neat.  Been pondering writing my own second-person fic, but.

Anyway, it's a Harry Potter fic where Harry ends up in the jungle of South America with Bill Weasley, taking up Curse Breaking to get away from some ... problems ... after the end of the fifth year.

[Jason_Miao]

I'm trying to think of a series that could possibly be dumber to put a 'rational' protagonist into, as a fic premise. Maybe Madoka?

It's a RPG setting rather than a series, but I'd love to see a parody of these types of stories with the rationalist put into the Paranoia world.  This would, obviously, be an extremely short story.  To my understanding, most classic Paranoia games were that way too, so that's okay.

Been pondering writing my own second-person fic, but.

I've written a few stories like that, the earliest being a handwritten story for a fifth grade assignment. 

If you're saying that the story is even okay, and it's longer than just a scene, that's pretty impressive; I've found that many people are uncomfortable being told that they are performing the actions of the protagonist without any control.  So getting readers to stick with the story reflects well on the writer.

[Brian]

Finished reading it.  It's by the author of The Lie I've Lived, which is an interesting, if not perfect HP fic.  Its got the glaring flaw of bashing the twins (WTF?) and is also pretty much an unabashed posession-sue.  Despite that, it also was a surprisingly good fic, so ... I think I'm just a fan of that author.  He does pretty decent stuff.

[Ergoemos]

BREAKING NEWS!

Nostalgia strikes downtown Los Angeles! No survivors!

Haha, cute, but a little manic for my tastes in fanfiction. I've always preferred more somberly written fanfiction cause I am always super srs. I was rereading Dungeon Keeper Ami recently, for instance. I'd link it here but surely it has already seen its run on this thread. Looks like I got fairly far behind since I last read it. Ima have to keep reading this one though, seems to have potential.

I'm trying to think of a series that could possibly be dumber to put a 'rational' protagonist into, as a fic premise. Maybe Madoka?

While I never actually finished the show, doesn't the whole Spiral Energy stuff run off of, well, willpower and shouting? Seems like Gurren Lagaan would lose much of its supposed appeal (I never got into it) if there was some supreme rationalist that broke down the physics of the show.

[thepanda]

If they were actual rationalists wouldn't they have to incorporate the quirks of the world into their world view? I mean, if a rational person gets placed into FiM or Sailor Moon wouldn't they have to accept that friendship and love are actual forces in the universe with tangible effects?

It doesn't seem particularly rational to deny magic exists in a high magic setting, or that the square-cube law applies to giant robots which are clearly running around not collapsing on themselves.

[Arakawa]

It doesn't seem particularly rational to deny magic exists in a high magic setting, or that the square-cube law applies to giant robots which are clearly running around not collapsing on themselves.

Yudkowsky kind of addresses this in MoR, if I remember correctly. Namely, Yudkowsky doesn't believe that the notion of nonreducible large-scale phenomena is coherent, so his character would never accept 'magic' or 'friendship' as the bottom line explanation of what is going on.

I haven't been following MoR, but until the point it was updated to when I looked at it, part of the joke seemed to be that magic was at least sufficiently complicated that portions of it may as well be nonreducible given Harry's resources to try to understand it. e.g. he screws around with time travel as an experiment, and gets a closed timelike curve (or something) that consists of a note saying "Do not screw around with time travel."

So at least MoR is clever in a way that so many of these imitators aren't....

[Dracos]

Read some of bungle in the jungle.

I...like the writing style but...it rubs me the wrong way on the content.  Looney Luna is awesome.  Bill is fun.  But a lot of the OCs make me wonder what the heck is going on.  Isn't Harry like sixteen here?  He's certainly spending a lot of the fic screwing an older brazillian woman and getting involved with her family problems.  Very weird?  The curse breaking is neat, and some of the character interplay is neat, but a lot of it just seems weird.  When it's Harry and the kooky cursebreaker crew it runs well, when it's harry and the love shack it feels really weird.

[Yuthirin]

For Dracos:

Spoiler: ShowHide

Love shack time doesn't last forever.

[Dracos]

More bungle discussion

Spoiler: ShowHide

I'm 14 chapters in and it hasn't stopped, but I get that it has some dramatic end later and I won't reflexively call it stupid, just something I'm sighing at.  I'd feel more comfortable if the author hadn't just confirmed that Harry is 15 in a recent chapter, but even then, it wouldn't be usual reading.  It's constant that there's just focus on casual sex and it really detracts from the rest of it.  Bill's getting it, Harry's getting it repeatedly, we even get told how Hack is getting it.  it'd be funny or fitting as a single conversation...

But seriously, do not get how a 15 year old is at all being an important element in little town crime family politics, alongside screwing some mother character while flirting terribly with his scorching hot blonde friend across the world.

So far it all detracts from the fun part of the story: Harry being a kooky cursebreaker apprentice to a kooky eccentric crew of professionals.

[Yuthirin]

Bungling

Spoiler: ShowHide

A large amount of the sex I just sort of rolled my eyes over and waited for the rest of the story to continue being awesome. It could have easily been handwaived, but if the guy likes soapish drama, what can I say?

The curse-breaking and the combat, especially later, really is quite enjoyable. The situation with the goblins and Luna complicates further as time goes on.

Overall, I really enjoyed jbern's work on this. I think I liked The Lie I've Lived more, but Bungle in the Jungle wasn't by any stretch a bad fic.