14 KiB
Mother of Learning-style PMMM fics starring Homura? I was wondering why they don't exist.
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Author: u/somnolentSlumber *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5wfyea/mother_of_learningstyle_pmmm_fics_starring_homura/
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Score: 26
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Created: 2017-02-27T10:03:38
Post:
I'm wondering why there isn't a proper timeloop fic of Madoka, along the lines of Mother of Learning. I mean, there's already a canon character that explicitly used time loops, but I've never heard of a timeloop fic starring Homura, except she actually, you know, tries. It would be amazing to see a fic where Homura uses her self-induced loops to minmax and learn magic. Of course, there wouldn't be an "escaping the time loop" plot point, but it'd be interesting to see nonetheless.
Comments:
u/Flashbunny [+11] (5 hours later)
There's a few Homura-based Quests out there, but none of them really take advantage of the time loop. I actually had some vague thoughts about a quest that did, with the "meat" of the quest being based around Homura being perfectly able to recreate the events of any past loop attempt (so long as she doesn't lose any equipment required, which would require her to go and get it again). So it would be a weird open-world puzzle-based quest, where in one "route" she runs into a problem, and then explores alternative "routes" to gain information to solve the problem, or altering earlier stages of that route to do the same. It would be a bit like Radiant Historia, except it wouldn't be weird alternate timelines interacting with each other, but actually changing the timeline in a way that doesn't violate the law of causality.
Given the open world nature of such a quest, I'd have to plan out puzzles and obstacles for the players to overcome, and then adjust them so they could be applied to whatever scenarios the players move towards. And there would have to be a way to "win" by beating Walpurgisnacht (or several ways, that the players would have to think of and then achieve).
I've never run a quest before and have done very little writing so I don't know if I'll ever do it, but I'm pretty enamoured with the idea.
u/edwardkmett [+7] (20 hours later)
The only real experience I've had with time-loop based resource management outside of spawn camping in Quake, (that counts, right?) is the text adventure Hadean Lands by Andrew Plotkin, where you're learning better ways to solve the same puzzles with fewer resources as you become a better and better alchemist.
Having a diegetic reset mechanism in the world, dying-restores-the-loop, works well for handling such long term resource consumption puzzles.
But the thing I rather enjoyed about the game was the ability to quickly redo long chains of actions and have it solve the dependencies the same way as last time. It fit nicely with the literary convention of the time loop fics, just skipping back to where they were and tweaking, and tweaking, and tweaking...
This is obviously a lot easier to express in a quest than a video game, but I thought it was nice to actually see at least one game explore it extensively.
u/Flashbunny [+3] (a day later)
Oh, that sounds really interesting - I'll have to check it out.
u/edwardkmett [+2] (a day later)
It is definitely the best engineered text adventure that I've played.
u/munchkiner [+2] (a day later)
Do you have others game recommendations by chance? This is really intriguing
u/edwardkmett [+5] (a day later)
If you want to branch outside of interactive fiction, per se:
Meanwhile is an interactive comic book, with a (minor spoiler) time loop theme. It is a collaboration between Andrew Plotkin (the author of Hadean Lands) and Jason Shiga. Basically, Plotkin banged out an iOS app for the existing comic, and Shiga reformatted the comic to fit one gigantic virtual page.
Shiga's Demon is a non-interactive comic that is probably popular around here given its rather rational take on an immortality power, so you may be familiar with the art style and sort of story Shiga likes to tell. Meanwhile is somewhat less obsessed with bodily fluids.
Sticking, stricly to the text adventure space?
If you just want to get your feet wet in the space and haven't really played any interactive fiction games, Lost Pig is decent 'on ramp' for folks into interactive fiction. Orc looking for pig. Nuff said. It is fun, lighter fare.
For feels, Photopia by Adam Cadre is excellent, but really sort of stretches the definition of 'is this a game?'. It definitely touches feelings that aren't the usual for IF. Varicella, also by Cadre is also oddly brilliant with some excellent puzzles and humor. Just the inventory of the main character is enough to put a smile on my face. He does oddly amazing work for a man whose first foray into the genre, I-0, was er.. of a rather more adult nature.
Stuff written by Emily Short tends to be a bit more exploratory. Her Galatea is probably one of the best realized characters in all of interactive fiction. Counterfeit Monkey is pretty popular.
The father of 'modern' interactive fiction is probably Graham Nelson, who wrote Jigsaw back in 1995 and started the Inform project. Jigsaw is interesting in that it manages to pull off a completely ungendered romance without being obvious about. (Plus it has time travel, which is always fun, even if the destinations are a bit trite.) It is a bit hard to get the maximally "good end" without a guide, though. The start can be a bit frustrating for players as well, but it did pretty much reinstate interactive fiction as a thing. I tend to think of it as the first real "complete package" of interactive fiction since the Infocom era. It is a game I think almost all fans of interactive fiction should play at some point.
If you've played some of these sorts of games before, but you've sort of tuned them out since the Zork era, I'd say, take a look at the other stuff Plotkin has done as a starting point, particularly Spider and Web from1997, which is probably what he was best known for before Hadean Lands. The protagonist acts as an unreliable narrator of past events while being interrogated.
If you want a darker tone, Slouching Towards Bedlam provides a fairly creepy dark horror steampunk adventure game feel.
None of these capture the whole diegetic reset/time-loop thing, but that's probably a pretty good "who's who" of interactive fiction for the last 10 years. If you want more, Nick Montfort's book Twisty Little Passages provides a good overview of the genre.
u/DRMacIver [+2] (3 days later)
The only real experience I've had with time-loop based resource management outside of spawn camping in Quake, (that counts, right?) is the text adventure Hadean Lands by Andrew Plotkin, where you're learning better ways to solve the same puzzles with fewer resources as you become a better and better alchemist.
I ended up playing this on your recommendation (and only just realised it was you who recommended it! Hi!). It's really good so far, thanks.
But the thing I rather enjoyed about the game was the ability to quickly redo long chains of actions and have it solve the dependencies the same way as last time. It fit nicely with the literary convention of the time loop fics, just skipping back to where they were and tweaking, and tweaking, and tweaking...
The major problem with this feature for me is that it's so good it might have ruined all other IF for me.
u/edwardkmett [+1] (3 days later)
The major problem with this feature for me is that it's so good it might have ruined all other IF for me.
Sadly, same here!
u/derefr [+2] (3 days later)
the text adventure Hadean Lands by Andrew Plotkin, where you're learning better ways to solve the same puzzles with fewer resources as you become a better and better alchemist.
Reminds me: I've been thinking lately about interpreting successive playthroughs of the game Factorio as The Martian set in a time loop.
Presume that you have no food on Mars, nor means of making/growing any. Every time you build something by hand, you spend a little bit of your own metabolic energy, which you have no way of recovering. Thus, you can only "get home" if you manage to do everything as lazily as possible.
Sort of the opposite of a speedrun—you'd be frequently going to sleep for long periods waiting for things to get built up. (But the resources on the planet would also be finite, so when you woke up you might find out your assembly line became input-starved after the first hour, and now the one starving to death will be you.)
u/CitrusJ [+4] (16 hours later)
I am enamored with your idea as well! If that pushes you ever so slightly more towards doing it!
u/Flashbunny [+3] (17 hours later)
Aww, thanks. I have notes on the idea now, so it's gone from probably-never to maybe-someday. Or maybe even a step above that! I don't even have notes for my university course!
u/Bellaby [+5] (an hour later)
As obvious as it seems, I just think that the rational fic author population it too small for someone to have got round to it. I'm not sure how much rationalists and anime fans cross over.
That said, you should if you can write! I know I'd love to read something like that.
u/None [+12] (2 hours later)
I'm not sure how much rationalists and anime fans cross over.
There may be more crossover than you think, between those two groups of gigantic nerds.
u/Rouninscholar [+13] (4 hours later)
Based on what I've seen I would say a large percent of the people here enjoy anime. I feel the bigger issue is that there is a lot of anime and not as many writers.
u/DTravers [+4] (5 hours later)
Discontinued, but you might find A Hero interesting.
First of all, I am not from this timeline.
I was naïve back then, a shy little girl just out of the hospital. I was nervous, alone.
There was this girl, her name was Madoka Kaname.
She was nice to me.
Anyways, I was attacked by a witch. I almost died. I should have died.
But Madoka saved me. She was…amazing, glorious.
And then Walpurgis Nacht, queen of all witches, came.
Mami didn't stand a chance. She died almost instantly. We were…broken over her.
So she died and Madoka… she killed Walpurgis by herself, but she died to do so.
So I told the incubator, that I wanted have a chance to do it all over again. To protect Madoka instead of being protected by her.
So he made me a Puella Magi, and I returned to the past to try again.
I have done so many times since, more than I could care to count. I will not give up. Never. Even if it takes a million years.
You can help me, but I will succeed, one way or the other.
u/caverts [+3] (a day later)
The closest thing I know of to what you're describing is Puella Ludio Homura Magica, which is basically a Gamer/PMMM/Scribblenauts crossover quest. Unfortunately, it seems to be abandoned, and the players only get through a few loops. Most of the munchkinry is about the players exploiting Homura's Scribblenauts-like power rather than the time loop.
I was also thinking of writing a PMMM fic in which Homura tries to use the time loop in a somewhat more rational way. For example, she could offer various governments future information and let them use her loop for accelerated weapons research in exchange for supplies, support and some of the products of that research.
u/Evilness42 [+3] And even myth is long forgotten... (a day later)
The QM revamped the mechanics and recently rebooted that quest, actually. I don't have the link, but it is currently active and you can search for it if you like.
u/caverts [+5] (a day later)
Thanks for letting me know. I found it here
u/torac [+1] (2 days later)
Not real rational, though, nor was it meant to be a crossover with The Gamer. It’s supposed to a crossover with rogue-likes (nethack etc), which meant that random enemies could one-shot the MC if they got lucky, for example. The most powerful exploit found in the first iteration of the quest was about how to best to grind potion-making.
Don’t misunderstand me. I like the quest.
u/ilzolende [+1] (6 days later)
Alicorn has written some glowfic that gives her Bell template the role of Homura. There's some on the old Dreamwidth site, and the content on the new site can be found through her character page. (Note that she doesn't seem to start with the first loop, and the Silmaril pieces want to be read in a specific order.)