15 KiB
[RT][FF] Hermione Granger and the Perfectly Reasonable Explanation - Ch 14: Lavatorial Correspondence
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Author: u/RobinDrew Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE)*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4tz1ac/rtff_hermione_granger_and_the_perfectly/
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Score: 38
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Created: 2016-07-21T20:25:49
Post:
[AO3 Link] (http://archiveofourown.org/works/7441657/chapters/17166919)
Comments:
u/aldonius [+8] (5 hours later)
This started out as a very nice 'Hermione does Science' fic and it's since morphed into something that I've never seen done before! Bravo.
u/RobinDrew [+7] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (6 hours later)
Given the sheer volume of Harry Potter fan-fiction, that's rather heartening to hear. Thanks!
For what it's worth, she will get back to science eventually, it's just that it's only been five days... ;)
u/turbinicarpus [+4] (15 hours later)
What "Hermione does science" fics are there that are at all readable in the first place? There's The Arithmancer, I guess, but what else?
u/aldonius [+3] (16 hours later)
That's actually a good point. Now that I think about it I can't really think of any other Hermione does Science fics anyway. But her character trope is fairly clearly Badass Bookworm, so she's halfway there as it is.
u/turbinicarpus [+5] (17 hours later)
There's Patron, by Starfox5, that has Hermione cranking out spells and researching various branches of magic, but what she does is more "engineering" than science.
u/aldonius [+3] (19 hours later)
Thanks. It's on my list now. (Currently on Ch 34 of Arithmancer; thanks for that one too.)
u/None [+2] (22 hours later)
Did you read 34 chapters in 3 hours? I'm trying to work out whether I have time to read it now or next year.
u/aldonius [+1] (23 hours later)
Just finished Ch 84 now. It's 6AM local time.
I thinkI'm going to regret this later today.
u/daydev [+1] (a day later)
Is that because the fic is so good, or because that's just how you read things usually, a hundred thousand words per hour?
u/aldonius [+2] (a day later)
The fic is good enough that I've been reading it and its sequel for 8 hours now.
HP fanfic is usually pretty easy going. I imagine I can read it quite a bit faster than pretty much anything else. There's a lot of dialog markers and such, and I don't have to create much in the way of new mental imagery. To be honest it's almost a skim read and I certainly couldn't give a detailed plot outline.
u/Achille-Talon [+2] (2 days later)
She's not the main character, bu HPMOR does have her doing science with Harry, doesn't it?
u/turbinicarpus [+1] (4 days later)
Perhaps I am misremembering, it's Harry doing science with Hermione as a research assistant good at memorizing things. That was agreed upon after Harry wowed Hermione with Wason's Rule Discovery Test --- which Hermione failed, of course, despite it being an obvious "trick question" given the situation.
No shortage of fics like that. (There's one called Blindness, IIRC.)
u/Ardvarkeating101 [+3] Father of Learning (a day later)
There's one where she studies the most valuable of all the sciences, economics and eventually becomes owner of the wizarding world, sparks a new age of magical science, and becomes the god-empress of mankind at the head of a new fleet of conquering starships with Harry as Imperial Ambassador/Primarch and Ron as a consort.
Yes, it's a crack fic
u/turbinicarpus [+3] (a day later)
Sounds interesting. Got a link?
More generally, while I appreciate why people like HPMOR, I think that Hermione makes for a much better rational!protagonist than anyone in canon. Making Harry a rational!protagonist (in HPMOR and elsewhere) required rewriting his personality from scratch. Making Hermione one (in HGPRE) required a few minor tweaks.
u/Ardvarkeating101 [+3] Father of Learning (a day later)
[Found it!] (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10742358/1/)
Thanks tv tropes!
u/Ardvarkeating101 [+2] Father of Learning (a day later)
Well I just reread the the whole thing and I have got to say I really missed it. Great oneshot
u/turbinicarpus [+1] (a day later)
Nifty! Thanks!
u/torac [+1] (a day later)
Not "Hermione does science", but somewhat related: D.S.S. Requirement by esama. Some muggleborns ask the Room of Requirement for a spaceship. It complies, but everything is shut down and all labels are written in ancient runes. I think there were some sciencey bits about finding out where the space-ship is located and using the technology gained to find out what makes dragon hide so magic resistant.
Word of warning: Like many of esama’s works it’s an interesting idea written in an interesting way, but it doesn’t go anywhere. They just play around with the spaceship for a while, make some plans, there’s some hints regarding the origin of magic on earth, then the fic ends before they actually do much with it. Might inspire someone to write a more thought-out fic, though.
u/Escapement [+3] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (17 hours later)
If you want more 'time travel memories sent back in time specifically by Hermione', this conceit was a major part of the now-defunct Harry Potter and the Temporal Beacon. However, that fic had tremendous pacing issues and is generally much, much worse than this fic.
u/RobinDrew [+3] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (9 minutes later)
- Official Typo/Britpick Thread, if you are so inclined, helps if they're all in one place
u/None [+3] (18 hours later)
I admit I'm I'm questioning that decision now even more than I used to
u/RobinDrew [+2] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (19 hours later)
Thanks, fixed!
u/nikic [+2] (2 days later)
The journal is called just "Physical Review D" (without the "Letters").
u/RobinDrew [+1] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (3 days later)
Argh, thanks! I specifically checked this, and somehow the Letters part snuck in. Probably Timescape's fault.
u/daydev [+4] (11 hours later)
One thing which has me wondering, at which point did Future Hermione arrive? The prologue may be taken to suggest that she arrived on October 31, 1981. That could be used to explain deviations from canon even before the story started. From the visions it seems that Future Hermione is exactly Canon!Hermione and this chapter even acknowledges that she was (would have been?) Gryffindor, but Present Hermione at the start of the story seems already different from Canon!Hermione in the first book. It could be postulated that even though the minds appear separated, some of Future Hermione "dripped through" and made Present Hermione "genuinely smart" and distinct from canon. But then Future Hermione seems to have only a short TTL (time to live), why would she be okay for ten years, but then suddenly it's time to go just as the plot arrives?
u/Noumero [+7] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (15 hours later)
WMG ahead, beware.
Suppose there's at least two types of time travel in this fic: stable time loops, with which we all are familiar from HPMOR, and 'straightforward' time travel which branches out a parallel universe.
So canon!Hermione was sent back by the second type, expecting to see herself in her past, in her timeline.
Let's analyse how that would influence stable time loops extending from before her time of arrival to after her time of arrival, including prophecies.
Say, a week before canon!Hermione's arrival a seer sees her accidentally dropping a book on the floor two weeks later. This information became known to the seer before canon!Hermione's arrival, back when there was no difference between worldstates, so the seer's vision should remain the same: this Hermione is going to drop the book. But it creates inconsistency: after Hermione from the future arrives, she will act differently and won't drop that book, so the seer shouldn't have had a vision, but why wouldn't she have had a vision if at the time of the vision it was going to happen?
So, I think what happened is that this act of time travel hurled canon!Hermione not in her timeline, but in a timeline consistent with her future actions in her' past. That means that all prophecies, all stable time loops extendnig past her point of arrival, were changed accordingly.
Imagine a millinium-old prophecy about the fate of the world ten millenniums later. Imagine someone, long ago, acting on that prophecy, creating ripples extending to the present day.
Now imagine this prophecy changing, creating slightly different ripples. Giving Ollivander a certain wand for safekeeping.
That's the cause of all differences from canon.
u/4t0m [+3] Chaos Legion (2 days later)
This idea is so cool.
u/Noumero [+2] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (3 days later)
Thank you? I like it too.
On second thought, I'm not sure how much sense it makes. If the timeline was allowed to be different from what canon!Hermione remembered, then how many differences were allowed? If there was no Earth and no prophecies, then time-traveler!Hermione's actions (quickly dissolve into vacuum as every good little Boltzmann Mind should) would still be consistent with them.
To be strict, the timeline needed to be such that all events before FutureCanon!Hermione's arrival were the same, with the differences only starting to show up after her arrival. Except prophecies are events, too, so they all needed to be the same, word-for-word, and we're back to square one? Or only reactions to them needed not to differ? But then I bet someone would need to have a fit of madness for this to work. Oh well.
Brr. Now I don't see a way to integrate this mechanic back in the story, at least without metaphysics (e.g., timelines should have a metaphysical property of 'similarness' relative to the time traveler). Have any ideas?
u/turbinicarpus [+2] (15 hours later)
I was thinking along similar lines: that FutureCanon!Hermione didn't get projected into her own past, but into the past of an AU where Hermione is a rational!protagonist, possibly a rational!Potterverse as well, where wizards are a bit less whimsical and bumbling than canon...
u/RobinDrew [+2] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (4 days later)
My general intent is to avoid non-diegetic changes to Canon, other than the basic premise. That said, where there are gaps in Canon, I'm usually attempting to find sensible ways to patch them, rather than deconstructing the gaps - the latter can be fun, but it's not as constructive (literally), story-wise. :)
u/daydev [+2] (15 hours later)
Yes, that was my next hypothesis too. If Present Hermione's differences from canon are not explained by "leakage" from adult Canon!Hermione, then Canon!Hermione must've stumbled into an alternative timeline altogether.
u/RobinDrew [+6] Ravenclaw - (Author: HGPRE) (19 hours later)
I wish you all luck in figuring this out - I will try to restrain myself from substantive responses unless I discover I've fouled up some logic somewhere. I will say (for sanity's sake) that the complexity level you're aiming for is beyond the Back to the Future trilogy, but much closer to that than, say, Primer. Without suggesting that any particular element of either of those systems is or isn't included in HGPRE, mind you. :)
u/None [+2] (4 days later)
What is "WMG"?
u/Noumero [+2] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (4 days later)
u/ZeCatox [+1] (4 days later)
WMG
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=WMG
Apparently "whoa my god" :)
u/autourbanbot [+1] (4 days later)
Here's the Urban Dictionary definition of WMG :
A bunch of douchebags that copyright videos on Youtube thinking they stole the audio/video. Yet,the person who made the video did not. They bought the CD and made the video with a game and yet still got copyrighted.
Stands for Warners Music Group.
Person 1:Hey,did you see Counter Clockwise Strike: Lighting? It was funny!
Person 2:No,it got copyright for the audio.
Person 1: WTF?! They are using their own voices and they got copyright? Fuck off WMG!
Person 3:If you want to boycott them look at the first defintion and follow their link to the real name of them.
^(about) ^| ^(flag for glitch) ^| ^(Summon: urbanbot, what is something?)
u/None [+1] (4 days later)
Yeah, I did check Urban Dictionary first, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't that.
u/tbroch [+3] (2 days later)
Is this any good? I've been seeing it upvoted pretty consistently.
u/Chevron [+2] there is no antimemetics division (5 days later)
I just finished catching up after being introduced to it by this post and think it's fantastic, so there's an opinion.
u/PlacidPlatypus [+3] (a day later)
Is this story anywhere near as good as its title? If so I might have to give it a try.
u/Ardvarkeating101 [+7] Father of Learning (a day later)
It is, but it has a lot of emotional twists and turns that change really quick, so the focus of the story might shift significantly between chapters. If you're looking for a 100% science!hermione fic then look elsewhere, otherwise this is great
u/ZeroNihilist [+3] (a day later)
I started reading it because the title was the most perfect thing I could have imagined for a Hermione fic and I've been very happy with it so far. Lots of little mysteries, an altogether sensible protagonist, and enough dangling hooks for the future that you know it's going somewhere.
u/Achille-Talon [+2] (2 days later)
Excellent!