Fic Request/Bunny Farm

[Black Aeronaut]

Pretty much what the thread title says.

Here we can drop off random ideas, or even just ask, "Hey, has anyone done this yet?"

Not quite crossovers that must/shouldn't be since this isn't limited to crossovers, and not quite "looking for fic" thread, since that implies that you know it exists, just not where.

I'll start this off.

So, there's a metric fuck-ton of "Jaune Arc is Time Looping" fics or "Jean Arc Does Something Else"....

But why the hell should that be limited to just Jaune?  I mean, sure, he's in a position to cause a LOT of butterflies...  But he's not the only one.

FFS, let's see what happens when frickin' PYRRHA is the one time-looping!  It hits the Groundhog Day plot perfectly, except there's no time limit, and her win condition is simply the permanent elimination or neutralization of Salem... and somehow not dying in the process.

So has this one been done yet?

[Bob Schroeck]

Great idea for a thread, BA. I'm stickying it so it doesn't get lost.

We're gonna see a lot of overlap with "Crossovers That Must Be", though, I'll betcha.

[Matrix Dragon]

FFS, let's see what happens when frickin' PYRRHA is the one time-looping!  It hits the Groundhog Day plot perfectly, except there's no time limit, and her win condition is simply the permanent elimination or neutralization of Salem... and somehow not dying in the process.

So has this one been done yet?

I remember seeing a fic on SB that went with that, but it's pretty dead.

For another RWBY idea, some time after the Breach, someone in the Atlas military IT department notices there's something odd going on with their systems. Alerted to the fact his advanced technology has been compromised by parties unknown, what does James Ironwood do...?

[Black Aeronaut]

Eh, we can save the crossovers for the crossover thread while this can be for the more vanilla AUs, SIs, and Peggy Sues.

Matrix, if you can provide a link, I'd like to have a look at it regardless. I'm hoping that it'll put me in the right frame of mind for when in There's Nothing Better we have a suddenly alive Pyrrha whose last memories are of Cinder turning her to ash. Ouch.

As for the compromised systems? That's easy - they revert back to pre-war doctrine because, IIRC, they didn't have a lot of the tech they have now.

[Niteflier]

Matrix, if you can provide a link, I'd like to have a look at it regardless.  I'm hoping that it'll put me in the right frame of mind for when in There's Nothing Better we have a suddenly alive Pyrrha whose last memories are of Cinder turning her to ash.  Ouch.

 The looping Pyrrha story that I know of is Hello Again.

[Matrix Dragon]

That's not the one I was thinking of. It wasn't a Quest. Hmm.

But yeah, with the compromised systems, I was thinking more in regards to Ironwood with his military might philosophy and all the paranoia, combined with his need to Do More To Fix Things.

[classicdrogn]

Struck by a runaway ox-cart, ordinary Mage Academy student Insert Name finds (him|her)self before a strangely easy-going god, who wants (him|her) to act on his behalf in another world to save it from impending disaster. To help in this task, Name is given the ability to understand all languages and a cheat-like enchantment that will link (his|her) student spell tome with any book named from either world. What strange adventures will Name discover in a world where magic is only now awakening after thousands of years without it?

Stuck In Another World With My Spell Tome

it's your standard issekai scenario... but in reverse, with a high fantasy character placed in the modern day, the only human mage in a world where hostile mythical creatures and beings all but invulnerable without magic have already begun to appear. Can (he|she) uplift a whole new magical Adventurer's Guild from scratch in time to turn the tide?

[Star Ranger4]

I dunno... I kinda like this one from the CTSNB more:
http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/s...#pid185680

[Jinx999]

I'd like to see a story about a previously ordinary class of schoolchildren who've returned from an Isekai adventure back to only a couple of hours after their departure. From the point of view of the parents, teachers and other adults who have to deal with a group of armed (having an item box ability would make the story MORE interesting, as you could never be sure they were unarmed) and mildly superhuman people who've spent a subjective couple of years in a war zone in a different culture.

They've picked up odd habits like only being able to sleep if they have a dagger underneath the pillow, odd religions and one's brought his succubus girlfriend and baby daughter home . . .

[Black Aeronaut]

I'd like to see a story about a previously ordinary class of schoolchildren who've returned from an Isekai adventure back to only a couple of hours after their departure. From the point of view of the parents, teachers and other adults who have to deal with a group of armed (having an item box ability would make the story MORE interesting, as you could never be sure they were unarmed) and mildly superhuman people who've spent a subjective couple of years in a war zone in a different culture.

They've picked up odd habits like only being able to sleep if they have a dagger underneath the pillow, odd religions and one's brought his succubus girlfriend and baby daughter home . . .

Ah-HAH!  And now we fulfill the goal of this thread!

This comes VERY close.  And it's a manga rather than a fic, but I figure that just makes it all the better.  Rather than an entire class, it's just one guy, but he's going to wind up teaching "skills" to other people because apparently he still has access to his magic abilities and stat screen/menu.

The Hero Who Returned Remains the Strongest in the Modern World
https://mangadex.org/title/35794/the-her...dern-world

Be advised: this manga has the "ecchi" and "harem" tags.

[Florin]

I'd like to see a story about a previously ordinary class of schoolchildren who've returned from an Isekai adventure back to only a couple of hours after their departure. From the point of view of the parents, teachers and other adults who have to deal with a group of armed (having an item box ability would make the story MORE interesting, as you could never be sure they were unarmed) and mildly superhuman people who've spent a subjective couple of years in a war zone in a different culture.

They've picked up odd habits like only being able to sleep if they have a dagger underneath the pillow, odd religions and one's brought his succubus girlfriend and baby daughter home . . .

There's also an Anime (and presumably LN) called Hagure Yuusha no Estetica, or Estetica of a Rogue Hero, which is about a whole school full of returnees from fantasy lands, and the main character has brought the daughter of the Demon Lord from the world he visited back posing as his sister. Unfortunately I can't really recommend it: the main character is an overpowered asshole pervert, the other characters (despite supposedly being successful Isekai heroes) are all useless so the main character looks better and the anime wastes all it's time on fanservice and sexual assault so it doesn't really go anywhere. It made me very sad, because the concept could have been so cool!

There's also the Re:Creators anime from a few years back, in which a bunch of Anime Characters break into the real world and would like to have a little 'chat' with the authors who created their stories about all the suffering they've been put through.

[Bob Schroeck]

...Apparently the Revenge Wars from the 1990s FFML made it all the way to Japan.

[Black Aeronaut]

I'd like to see a story about a previously ordinary class of schoolchildren who've returned from an Isekai adventure back to only a couple of hours after their departure. From the point of view of the parents, teachers and other adults who have to deal with a group of armed (having an item box ability would make the story MORE interesting, as you could never be sure they were unarmed) and mildly superhuman people who've spent a subjective couple of years in a war zone in a different culture.

They've picked up odd habits like only being able to sleep if they have a dagger underneath the pillow, odd religions and one's brought his succubus girlfriend and baby daughter home . . .

There's also an Anime (and presumably LN) called Hagure Yuusha no Estetica, or Estetica of a Rogue Hero, which is about a whole school full of returnees from fantasy lands, and the main character has brought the daughter of the Demon Lord from the world he visited back posing as his sister. Unfortunately I can't really recommend it: the main character is an overpowered asshole pervert, the other characters (despite supposedly being successful Isekai heroes) are all useless so the main character looks better and the anime wastes all it's time on fanservice and sexual assault so it doesn't really go anywhere. It made me very sad, because the concept could have been so cool!

There's also the Re:Creators anime from a few years back, in which a bunch of Anime Characters break into the real world and would like to have a little 'chat' with the authors who created their stories about all the suffering they've been put through.

I just checked - there is a manga adaptation.... but it isn't much better.  All the sexism and fanservice is present, but the only difference is that it's just the one guy and not a whole class...  INSTEAD people are getting sent to other worlds all the time and coming back with their full power, so a school called "Babel" has been set up... not so much to teach these kids, but to keep them contained until they stop being a bunch of hot heads.  It's not much better from what I can tell, but at least he's not making EVERYONE look like idiots...  Just most of everyone.

The Hero Who Returned, on the other hand, has a main character who, by all accounts, seems like a damn decent guy.  Meanwhile he seems to be encountering girls at his school who seem to be Chuni as fuck because one comes from a strong family of exorcists and the other is from a Catholic order of exorcists.

And both of them want to know how the hell he's able to do things like easily defeat demons that would have had them on the ropes or dodge bullets.

As for Re:Creators...  Shades of Excel Saga much?  :V

[Cobalt Greywalker]

One of the "what If's" that I've had floating in my brain is a Fairy Tail variant where Lucy, being perpetually short of cash, takes a job by herself just before the S-Class exam arc and as such doesn't get caught in the time displacement the others do.

Would that make her either the most qualified mage in the Guild or let her live up to the reputation of Fairy Tail as it's sole 'S-class' representative?

What happens when the others get back 7 years later?

[Jinx999]

Does anyone know of any fic that brings up or discusses that Hogwarts is NOTHING like a 10th century building and in any description has features that have only existed for a few centuries. I'm not talking about the bathrooms, but things like large windows (before glass window panes, it would have been freezing) and corridors. Not to mention the size.

It must have either been rebuilt perhaps a century before the books, or for much of its history would have been futuristic wildly modern architecture.

[classicdrogn]

The large corridors can probably be explained by magic, just like the Weasley home's lack of structural integrity by conventional standards. Large windows could have been retrofitted in much the same way, and it would be shocking if the huge and sprawling modern facility had not been a product of repeated expansions and additions. THe only rooms I recall being definitely mentioned as products of the founders are the Great Hall and Chamber of Secrets - and the Chamber is a similarly large and open space (and part of it notably collapses at one point when Gilderoy fires off a malfunctioning spell with Ron's damaged wand) and the Great Hall is never described as having windows at all, only being lit by floating candles and the enchanted ceiling.

What is the history of the actual castle used for filming the movies? JKR sketched her own map well before they were made (I can't find the image, but I know I saved a copy somewhere when I found it) but many such fortifications were built and expanded and rebuilt in the same location for a very long time since the factors that make a p[articular place a good one for a fort didn't significant;y change until very recently in historical terms.

[Bob Schroeck]

Not to flog my own work, but I touch a little on this in DW8, where Doug looks at Hogwarts and decides that it had been a traditional keep-and-surrounding wall castle at one point, and that someone had roofed over the bailey and added extra towers to turn it into a single large building.

EDIT: Oh, and we have a copy of Rowling's original map of Hogwarts on the forum, here.

[Dartz]

That's basically how castles go. That' bits a thousand years old, this bit's 800, that wall got blown apart by Cromwell, then the new hall was added to extend it and the visitor's centre was built last year. Working Castles accrete the same way planets do.

The only thousand year old castle is the castle that stopped being lived in a thousand years ago.

[Shepherd]

If I were much, much better at writing things that don't come across as boring and impersonal as a textbook, I'd want to write a Harry Potter fic that explores Divination as something less like a "wooly subject" and more like the GURPS magical school, but without turning Divination into some secret super magic that solves everyone's problems. After all, if Divination really is mostly useless, why did they even start teaching it in the first place? Maybe because it was one considered the equal of the other subjects.

We know that the Potterverse has a spell that can determine which direction is north (Point Me), which certainly sounds like a completely reliable and non-wooly divination to me. GURPS has all sorts of reliable spells in the Knowledge school, an advanced understanding of which is a prerequisite for the numerous variants of the Divination spell.

What if, centuries ago, some enterprising Divination Professor revamped many of the Knowledge spells he taught to include physical manifestations so it'd be more obvious when his students' spellcasting was correct or incorrect (ie. how do you know if they've correctly cast the Tell Time spell [canon to GURPS but apparently fanon to the Potterverse] and aren't simply reciting the same time as a classmate? Change the spell so the correct time appears over your wand.). That makes it much easier for them to progress to the advanced forms of Divination seen in Trelawney's classroom.

Interdepartmental politics could wind up stripping those spells from that Professor's non-tenured successor and adding them to the curriculums of the other courses (ie. spells to identify plants/animals go to Herbology/Care of Magical Creatures, spells to measure ingredients go to Potions, other spells that create visible phenomenon go to Charms, etc.). With the basic spells all stripped from the department, Divination is reduced to a third year elective. Over time, many reclassified spells cease being taught as they're unnecessary for an advanced understanding of the other subjects, while others are no longer taught because the administration really don't want students using spells like Glass Wall, Invisible Wizard Eye, and Seeker to spy on each other in the showers. Using the GURPS Spell College variant, missing prerequisites only gives you negative modifiers to spellcasting rather than making it outright impossible.

Added to the problem of lacking the proper knowledge base to properly perform full on divinations, the GURPS Divination spell generally requires a full hour to cast. I'm fairly sure the canon Divination class lasts an hour or less. So unless students start casting the instant class starts and continue until the instant class ends (all without the benefit of knowing many of the prerequisite Knowledge spells), they can't perform a proper Divination as anything other than a random fluke.

I would dearly love it if some student researching how the school curriculum has changed over the centuries (old textbooks? interviewing portraits and ghosts?) were to link the unreliability of modern divinations with the fact that most of the spells learned over the first several years of the class are no longer being actively taught. Wouldn't Transfiguration be considered a 'wooly subject' if you were expected to jump right into self transfiguration without first turning matchsticks into needles and rodents into teacups?

[itsune9tl]

It could be said that at some point Hogwarts started building and modifying itself (hence the constantly moving stairways) and will continue to do so as long as population of "Magicals" reside within its walls.

[classicdrogn]

I think the best part about that Divination related idea is that it makes Trelawney's closet peer on staff be Snape - a natural genius who can do, but can't teach. And just the thought of his face when it's pointed out is hilarious.

Potions is after all a rather wooly subject, wouldn't you say? All those little bits of stirring or preparation that can be finessed for a different result, and judging progress by colors of all things. Even setting aside people with various forms of color blindness, just differences in lighting from a seat that's closer or further from whatever is used in the classroom (I don't think it's ever said, but being underground and wizards it must be torches or candles of some sort) makes that extremely subjective.

[Shepherd]

I think the best part about that Divination related idea is that it makes Trelawney's closet peer on staff be Snape - a natural genius who can do, but can't teach. And just the thought of his face when it's pointed out is hilarious.

The idea that Snape can't teach actually appears to be fanon, based on the actual available evidence. Harry received the same Exceeds Expectation score on his OWL exam in Potions as he did in Transfiguration, Charms, Herbology, and Care of Magical Creatures. The only class where he did better was Defense, in which he was a prodigy. Ron got an Exceeds Expectations in Potions as well (necessary to get into Slughorn's class), and we know from the books that none of his scores exceeded an EE. This strongly implies Snape was just as effective at teaching his subject as the other professors, since his students did equally well despite hating his class.

[classicdrogn]

At no point in the books is there any suggestion that Snape does anything but put a recipe on the board, stalk around spooking the non-Slytherin students while they try to follow it, and set essays between classes. Anything they learn of potions is from the books, on their own time, in spite of him, as far as I can see. Fics that try to make him better usually take it too far the other way, as the mountains of horrible Alan-Rickman-husbando-squee trash will attest.

[Jinx999]

At no point in the books is there any suggestion that Snape does anything but put a recipe on the board, stalk around spooking the non-Slytherin students while they try to follow it, and set essays between classes. Anything they learn of potions is from the books, on their own time, in spite of him, as far as I can see. Fics that try to make him better usually take it too far the other way, as the mountains of horrible Alan-Rickman-husbando-squee trash will attest.

By the standards of Hogwarts teachers we see, Snape is probably around average. He is better than Binns, Sybill, and Hagrid (although Hagrid does improve significantly as he gets some experience). And half the DADA teachers. He is explicitly good at his subject and can maintain class discipline.

That does not say good things about the standards of the "best school of magic in the world".

[hazard]

Also to be fair, class discipline is important in a class like potions. Potions that go wrong can go very dangerously wrong, even the first year potions which should be chosen on the basis of simplicity of the brewing process itself, and tolerant of poor ingredient preparation.

And I don't think we ever really saw a potions class dedicated to the theory of potions under Snape either, which would add a time pressure to at least some of the potions that a less skilled or prepared brewer (like, say, most of a class of children with little interest in the subject) would find difficult to cope with. Especially when they also have to integrate new theory.