5.9 KiB
[Challenge Companion] Fantasy Grab-bag
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Author: u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6av06f/challenge_companion_fantasy_grabbag/
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Score: 4
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Created: 2017-05-13T00:19:11
Post:
This is the companion thread for the biweekly challenge. Post recommendations, ideas, or general chit-chat below.
Any recent books you've read, games you've played, or movies you've seen that are particularly ripe for getting the rational treatment?
Comments:
u/DCarrier [+3] (33 minutes later)
Why is the title here "Fantasy Grab-bag" when the challenge is "Fanfic Grab-bag"?
I've been wanting to see a rational No Game No Life, which looks like it was designed to be a rationalist fanfic if it weren't for the fact that the majority of it is bad advice.
Rational Touhou would be interesting. Especially if you manage it without making it grimdark, which is difficult considering that the majority of the cast is man-eating monsters.
u/alexanderwales [+4] Time flies like an arrow (35 minutes later)
Why is the title here "Fantasy Grab-bag" when the challenge is "Fanfic Grab-bag"?
Er ... because I screwed up.
u/Slapdash17 [+3] (a day later)
Sens8, for sure. A group of eight people, each with different skills who live in different locations around the world, all psychically linked in a way that is loosely defined. One's a scientist, one's a business executive, one's a hacker, etc. I enjoy the show, but it focuses much more on characters than the "magic system". I'd love to read a rationalist take on it. I'd be working on it myself, but I'm already working on a different project.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (3 days later)
That's definitely one that I've had my eye on. I'm not really a fan of the show, in part because I don't find their character work to be that compelling, but one of the good things about it is that if you wanted to you could just translate the magic system to a completely different cast of characters of your choosing.
(I'm actually curious whether anyone has done a multi-character fanfic crossover where eight people from different canons become linked with each other. I assume someone's working on that somewhere.)
u/Slapdash17 [+1] (3 days later)
I'd even take it a step further and say it would be a fun (if extremely impractical) idea to make it a collaborative effort among multiple rational fic authors, each one taking a single character. I've been thinking for a while about how that could be a fun concept for a rational fic in general, and it would fit exceptionally well for a fic about Sens8 in particular.
Like, what if you wrote for the German gangster, and another fic author did the Indian chemist, and someone else did the British DJ, and the African bus driver, etc... I think it would be extremely complicated and difficult, but also a lot of fun.
I'm also generally thinking along these paths because I started reading Animorphs: The Reckoning last week and caught up to the most recent post a few days ago, and I'm a bit obsessed with using multiple perspectives to their full potential.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (18 minutes later)
I've been playing Prey, which is a pretty classic "things go horribly wrong in an isolated environment" type of game, which makes a lot of sense given that it's a spiritual successor to System Shock. There's a definite undercurrent of "Science is Bad" and "Things Man was Not Meant to Know", which I'm not hugely fond of, but it's fun enough despite that, and some of it is more of the Jurassic Park variety coordination problems, planning fallacy, failure to be properly paranoid, etc.. (I have not finished the game, so can't yet speak to what it's actually trying to say, but I do think it's probably good fodder.)
u/ElizabethRobinThales [+1] Practically Perfect in Every Way (an hour later)
I've been watching Markiplier's let's plays of it. To me, it feels like the lovechild of Portal and the first BioShock. I like what I've seen so far, so I'll probably buy the game in a few months after I've given the plot a little bit of time to fall out of my brain.
u/ElizabethRobinThales [+1] Practically Perfect in Every Way (2 hours later)
There are only two rules: it must be fanfic, and it must be of something recent (within the last year or two).
Just for clarification, this is saying that the submission has to be a fanfic of a book/movie/show/game/whatever that was released recently, right? Because later in the thread:
If you want hard mode, write fan fic of the last thing you watched or read, whatever it is.
The last few books I've read are all older than I am, which is why I'm asking for clarification.
I'm not going to be participating (I'm too busy working on something else), but I figured I'd ask in case anyone else had the same question.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (5 hours later)
My intent is that it would be relatively newer stuff, but I'm not going to be policing it at all, so if the last book you read was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, then go right ahead. (I can't promise that people voting will be so laissez faire, so maybe include that it was the last thing you read, even if it's the opposite of recent.)
u/LazarusRises [+1] (2 days later)
Just watched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them this weekend. It was quite good I thought--lovely to watch, plus seeing magical 1920s New York was a blast. Of course we have The Founding Text, but it would be fun to see people munchkin all the creatures and dynamics we see in the movie!
u/lsparrish [+1] (5 days later)
If anyone is feeling DC, I'd love to read some rational Legends Of Tomorrow.