8.5 KiB
Rational fiction that starts with a non-rational character who becomes more rational as the story goes on?
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Author: u/NotAThrowawayOkay123 *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/9f8neh/rational_fiction_that_starts_with_a_nonrational/
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Score: 49
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Created: 2018-09-12T15:16:56
Post:
It seems to me that most rational fiction begins with a character that is already rational to some degree, but is there any that starts with a character who is not, but learns rationality as a sort of character arc?
Comments:
u/LazarusRises [+32] (43 minutes later)
Now I'm imagining r!My Fair Lady.
"The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, given typical weather patterns and the fact that much of the country's geography is flat."
u/ketura [+30] Organizer (46 minutes later)
"The rain in Spain falls mainly on the Spaniards."
u/lolbifrons [+44] Fifteenth Legion of Terror (an hour later)
That would be some pretty crazy population density.
u/Rouninscholar [+31] (2 hours later)
The population is low, but the density of said population is so high that raindrops rarely if ever escape their gravity.
u/arenavanera [+25] (3 hours later)
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12149957/1/The-Mind-Tailed-Fox tries to do this -- I attempted to start with Naruto roughly the same as he is in canon, and diverge from there -- but I'm updating it very sporadically.
u/None [+8] (5 hours later)
[deleted]
u/arenavanera [+11] (6 hours later)
Yes, but just when I feel like writing a chapter, not on any sort of schedule.
u/Sonderjye [+2] (22 hours later)
In that case I hope you feel like writing a chapter soon. I really enjoy where it's heading.
u/kaukamieli [+2] (18 hours later)
Read it all. Liked it. Write more.
u/MultipartiteMind [+2] (a day later)
(Looking into this now--the existence and personality of inner!Hinata bewilders me.)
u/legendofdrag [+15] (4 hours later)
I can't remember the name of the comic, but there's one where the MC starts as a below average individual and has surgery where a timeline splits every few minutes with him being aware of each split.
u/_brightwing [+3] Feathered menace (4 hours later)
Intriguing.. Do let me know if you remember!
u/legendofdrag [+33] (4 hours later)
Found it! http://brainchip.webcomic.ws/comics/first/
Edit: Art is wayyy worse than I remember it being
u/Roxolan [+13] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (5 hours later)
Yeah, you have to power through that but it's well worth it.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+5] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (a day later)
Thirding that yes this is sub ms paint adventures art, but the blunt force math and understanding of it's horrific implications makes the storey absolutely beautiful/horrifying.
u/arimoshinai [+1] (11 days later)
I've just finished reading this, thanks for the recommendation! Somehow I didn't think the bad art was that bad - it was enough to transmit the ideas and even more than that at points.
u/xachariah [+14] (10 hours later)
The closest I have seen is "Everbody loves large chests." It's a story about a mimic that slowly gains sapience. I'm not sure if it fully qualifies as a rational story, though it does feel fairly rational adjacent.
Note: It starts out with a lot of erotic stuff, but that generally falls away in the later chapters. I think it was originally intended to be a one off smut story that gained a life of its own, which is all sorts of meta.
u/everything-narrative [+8] Coral, Abide with Rubicon! (19 hours later)
It is certainly an exploration of reasoned self-interest.
u/water125 [+22] (5 hours later)
If you don't mind some erotic stuff, including some non-con and brainwashing, then I'd reccomend https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5193644/1/Time-Braid
A naruto fic in which Sakura suddenly finds herself in a time-loop right before the forest of death chunin exam. She starts off as pretty close to show Sakura, depending on naruto and sasuke, blah blah blah, but that quickly doesn't work anymore for her and she grows from there. I don't know if she gets more rational per say, as she starts off smart even in the show, but she Acts more rationally as time goes on.
u/DinosauriousReckt [+9] (10 hours later)
I liked it an would go past chapter 3 if not for it practically being porn. Its a lot like MoL.
u/water125 [+7] (10 hours later)
Yeah. In the early and mid points of reading MoL I was honestly like "This... this is just reskinned time-braid, what?" a lot of the time.
u/kaukamieli [+1] (3 days later)
Eh. Time loop is not a new innovation. MoL has a whole new world, a whole new magic system, completely different characters, races, creatures... It's definitely not just reskinned narutofic. :D But intelligent use of time loop obviously contains training to get strong if you have such time.
MoL is written way better and it's not porn.
I read Time Braid ages ago, but I've now been reading a bit again because of this thread. I don't really like it too much anymore. I do love time loops in general, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_featuring_time_loops
u/lak16 [+2] (16 hours later)
What does MoL stand for?
u/causalchain [+3] (16 hours later)
Mother of Learning
u/NotAThrowawayOkay123 [+3] (11 hours later)
Oh yeah! I actually started Time Braid awhile back but just got busy and didn't go back. I don't remember it ever getting erotic though, so I don't think I had gotten very far.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (a day later)
It's fairly tame if you ask; me lime not lemon (I might have those two mixed up whichever used to be the fanfiction for softcore/R), some extreme power exchange elements, which is often a hard stop for people, but at least one very well reasoned rational argument for poly between working professionals that I honestly admire and need to spend the time capital to make a rent paying part of my psyche.
TLDR: there are godlike character re-enacting bulfinch's mythology, but they do a better job of being good people than Zeus and Hera, also there are some power exchange elements people find squicky, but make sense for the characters; I personally want to implement something in here into my psyche, its more mature and rational than what I was raised with (an old protestant upbringing, 1st career military, 2nd carrer software male) , but It's counter to my inculcation and hard.
u/eroticas [+5] (a day later)
Honestly, I think HPMOR is supposed to be this.
Harry basically goes from talking the talk but utterly failing at the walk, to walking the walk.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+4] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (a day later)
um. . . Doesnt harry go from talking the talk to trying to walk the walk against a sufficiently prepared antagonist, who as a Diabolis ex machina forces him to really honestly try to walk the walk, but win's anyways because of creative use of a technological/magical advantage that's basically a 4-5 sigma event even being on his tech tree?
The "solution" was a fair cop for a solvable mystery, but we could argue for months about if it was a realistic solution to various outside context problems, as well as who the actual actors are in the conflict considering the presence of oracles and long dead actors.
TLDR: I think I didn't spoil anything: If you haven't read HPMOR I'm either: arguing or being a pendant, about who is rational in HPMOR: go read it, then come back to this discussion. If you do so, please "@" me because otherwise I'll never see it: it's a long book, but worth it.
u/FordEngineerman [+1] (2 hours later)
I think one of the Naruto ones tries to be that but it kind of ends abruptly before any of the characters learn very much.
u/MilesSand [+1] (3 days later)
Many authors' first stories, if they stick with it long enough. At first the characters might do anything but eventually they start having justifications and eventually even reasons.
u/sparr [-4] (3 hours later)
If the protagonist's rationality is the key factor, you're looking for rationalist fiction, which may or may not be rational fiction.