Fic Request/Bunny Farm

[Shepherd]

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.

The belief that Snape's classes amount to no more than brewing from written instructions, being harassed, and getting homework assignments could easily be the result of the incredibly small sample size we have to go by.

Canon has it that classes start the first week of September, with final exams held the first week of June. There are two week breaks for Christmas and Easter. That means there are about 42 weeks worth of classes each year.

According to a Potter fansite, Harry's yearly Potions schedule under Snape looked like this:

1st- 2 single periods and 1 double period.
2nd- 3 single periods.
3rd- 4 single periods.
4th- 2 single periods and 1 double period.
5th- 2 single periods.

15 weekly class periods over 5 years x 42 weeks/year = 630 class periods. Exactly how many of these classes were covered from Harry's PoV? 5? Maybe 10? We've only seen glimpses into maybe 1 or 2% of Harry's Potions classes, and the scenes we do see normally only cover fragments of those individual classes. A sample size like that would get you laughed out of any credible scientific journal.

Anything they learn of potions is from the books, on their own time, in spite of him, as far as I can see.

Ron Weasley got an Exceeds Expectations (the second highest grade possible) in his most hated subject due to self study? I find that to be way less credible than Snape being vaguely competent at doing his job.

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.

The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern of argument:
Person 1 asserts proposition X.
Person 2 argues against a superficially similar proposition Y, falsely, as if an argument against Y were an argument against X.

Person 1 asserts "Snape is probably competent at his job".
Person 2 argues "bad fics make Snape seem awesome", as if "bad fics make Snape seem awesome" were an argument against "Snape is probably competent at his job".

If you want to go for that kind of argument, I can point to all the bad fics that have Snape purposefully sabotaging all non-Slytherins so nobody can meet the NEWT qualifications to become an Auror, thereby making it easier for Voldemort and his Death Eaters to take over. That is like the time someone on another site wrote a post about how much they hate Dumbledore for all the horrible things he's done to Harry in the fanfic he'd read. Bad fanon has no place in canon arguments.

[classicdrogn]

Ron is not stupid - he canonically gets good grades despite spending most of his time goofing off. I spent a year literally falling asleep in Algebra I in high school and still passed with a B despite it being my most hated subject, I can easily believe he managed the same feat with Potions.

I'll take the hit on having fallen for a strawman, but what I was trying to say is that it takes fanfic to turn Snape into the kind of character JKR seems to have intended him to be from his death scene and Harry's reactions, rather than what she actually put on the page. How that usually turns out is indeed irrelevant, the point is that all the in-classroom evidence we actually see (and most of the rest) is of him failing to engage as an educator and indulging in his personal biases against Harry specifically or struggling students and muggleborn in general, to the point that the few times when he does something actually helpful for anyone but his junior Death Eater Slytherins it's wildly out of character.

[Shepherd]

True, Ron is definitely not stupid. While we don't have specific grades for most of his OWL exams, he seems to have earned an EE in Potions, Transfiguration, and Defense, while failing Divination and History of Magic. He almost certainly passed the rest of his classes, but we don't know if those scores were EE or merely Acceptable.

My point is that his study habits and work ethic throughout the series seem terrible, yet his grade in Potions was the highest grade he got for any class. It was the equal of his grade in Defense, which he studied outside of class as part of Dumbledore's Army (he even got the same grade in that class as Hermione). It was the equal of his grade in Transfiguration, which was taught by his head of house. This would seem to indicate that his Potions grade is based on more than simply reading the textbook on his own time. After all, if an EE was simply the result of reading the textbook, he'd have passed History of Magic.

[classicdrogn]

I think the teal deer here is that HP canon is an interesting setting but full of contradictions and plot holes, which is a big part of why it's so attractive for fanfic.

[Shepherd]

I think most of the obvious plot holes are due to a combination of Rowling being bad with numbers and the PoV character having literally been raised in a closet, thereby making him an unreliable narrator. A lot of other supposed plot holes can easily be resolved using actual canon.

I'm reminded of another internet argument where the other poster basically claimed Dumbledore was a moron for not guzzling Liquid Luck at every opportunity and crushing the Death Eaters. I pointed out the multiple ways that canon proved his master 'plan' wouldn't work, but he was so fixated on his own headcanon that he refused to believe actual, verifiable facts.

In case anyone is interested in my take on the Liquid Luck argument:
Fact: Liquid Luck is highly toxic when you take too much.
Fact: Slughorn is so good at making it that he can give some away as a prize in his potions class.
Fact: Slughorn said he used it twice; at ages 24 and 47. He may have used it a third time at the Battle of Hogwarts.

Conclusion: If an expert like Slughorn waits over twenty years between doses, taking Liquid Luck more than once every several decades is probably a very bad idea.

Fact: Ron Weasley took some and managed to survive fighting Death Eaters.
Fact: Ginny Weasley took some and managed to survive fighting Death Eaters.
Fact: Hermione Granger took some and managed to survive fighting Death Eaters.
Fact: Albus Dumbledore claims to have taken it recreationally.

Conclusion: Liquid Luck does not turn you into an unstoppable combat machine.

[Florin]

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.

I find it's generally a bad idea to go by what's shown 'on screen' in most school based books/shows. For instance, if you watch the anime Food Wars class appears to consist entirely of the teacher setting a test, then expelling a random number of students. And, like Hogwarts, it's never even implied that they teach things like math and science and all the other things you'd expect a school to teach. 

The reason being of course that no one wants to read about a completely ordinary class when the characters could be doing something exciting like fighting trolls or baking pants exploding bread.

[Shepherd]

I just had the most extraordinary Plot Bunny idea. You know how RPGs like D&D and Exalted posit cosmologies with gods that are empowered by faith, where more worshippers equals more powerful gods? What if the opposite were true? What if, instead of being fonts of spiritual energy, humans from Earth (and only the ones from Earth) are spiritual vacuum cleaners? What if tales of magic and miracles which rational minds disregard as superstitious nonsense were once common, but the presence of nearly 8 billion such people has left the world a mana deprived spiritual desert?

Is human sacrifice so common in magical fiction because the body releases its stored magic on death, and a proper ritual has a chance to use that magic before it gets sucked into the nearest human?

Are Isekai where the protagonist reincarnates into a magical world after dying so common because it is only when their tiny pool of magic is released upon the moment of death that the gods can use that dribble of free spiritual energy to yoink them off of Earth? Are they so valued as protagonists because, being spiritual vacuum cleaners, these reincarnated souls inevitably wind up becoming ultra powerful when introduced to a magic rich environment that can finally fill their spiritual reserves?

[classicdrogn]

In that kind of situation, I'd expect the reincarnated characters being sterile to be the standard - one human is useful, but too many of them and you get a magic-depleted wasteland, after all. It also keeps them from having too much long term influence in the affairs of the magical world and disrupting it through dynastic legacies.

[Jinx999]

"Would you care to explain why these loonies and criminals aren't 4-F?"

"The office thinks they were trying to fake it. We've tried, but they just won't accept being wrong."

"One of them thinks he's God and refuses to salute, because nobody is superior to him."

"Surely the MPs can have a . . . word . . . with him."

"He's put them ALL in the hospital!"

It's 1941. America has drafted all available able bodied men to fight a war. Including the cast of Baccano. And some miserable sergeant is trying to instill military discipline into people who are, frankly, crazier than a barrel of rats.

[Bad Moon]

I might or might not decide to ever write this, but in the spirit of those Battletech CYOAs I had a couple twists on it to deviate from the norm that I kept toying with.

1: Instead of merging with the 20 year old schlub on New Years, it would have instead been closer to Drakenisis' Davion and Davion Deceased where you'd ghost ride around providing advice and snark
2: Instead of all these good intentions of kicking the Inner Sphere out of the Succession Wars and preparing for the Clans, you and your host are a bit shit and kinda selfish. You don't remember where all those Lostech stashes are, you kinda remember that Helm has a big one but like it's in a mountain? And there's like a river? You think? It was decades ago when you read that book and you stopped really paying attention to the universe right when the FedCom Civil War happened.
3: You don't have a big merc group to use. You gotta sell off most of your inheritance for debt and manage to scrape away with a merc battlemech company. Wolf's Dragoons you aint.
4: You get the phantom mech ability but you can only use it when your buddy loses consciousness and you "assume control"
5: You aint the only Insert that woke up in 2015. They are going to make changes and while you are cooling your heels in a dive bar on Solaris waiting for your Warhammer's knee to get rebuilt so you can take that garrison contract fighting bandits in the Periphery. They may or may not have the Inner Sphere's best interests at heart.

[Star Ranger4]

And with all this clear vision, you don't feel compelled to take a stab at it? Cant be any worse that what I face with Tales of the wanderer, to be honest.

[Bad Moon]

That's about all I've got for it, even if it has been kicking around my head for a year now.

[Black Aeronaut]

A time-looping Roman Torchwick. For when you really want to send RWBY careening off the rails ASAP.

[Rajvik]

i had an idea today, i bloody well don't know why, but i do know that i don't have the ability to pull it off because i've only watched about half of one of the base movies, and only one of the three of the other base movies

Downsizing/Honey I shrunk the kids/ Worm

Every person on earth bet wakes up one day to find they are one tenth the size they used to be. However, everything else, (and i do mean EVERYTHING) is it's normal size. How does the world react to being around six inches in height but having So Much Room

[classicdrogn]

Huh, that sounds kind of cool, actually, though I only saw the original Shrunk the Kids movie myself - I did like the Busou Shinki anime series though, which is about the daily life of robot waifus Battle Master action figures about that size dealing with things like household chores, cooking, and delivering a box lunch across town in a normal-size world. The humans are still normal size in that though, so it's not directly equivalent. Still, it could be another source to draw on.

[Rajvik]

well did the math, (based on what i think they used in "Downsizing") and i would go from 171 centimeters to 17.1 centimeters which goes from 5ft 7in down to not quite six and three-quarters inches. which would make the swamp rats near where i live about the size of a steer or horse.

[Shepherd]

i had an idea today, i bloody well don't know why, but i do know that i don't have the ability to pull it off because i've only watched about half of one of the base movies, and only one of the three of the other base movies

Downsizing/Honey I shrunk the kids/ Worm

Every person on earth bet wakes up one day to find they are one tenth the size they used to be. However, everything else, (and i do mean EVERYTHING) is it's normal size. How does the world react to being around six inches in height but having So Much Room

That's basically the idea of GURPS Infinite Worlds, page 140, the 1/2 page Mircroworld entry. In 1892 all humans and most domestic animals shrank by a factor of about 70, with people winding up about 1 inch tall.

[Bob Schroeck]

There's also an upcoming game called Grounded which plays with the same idea.

[ECSNorway]

A time-looping Roman Torchwick. For when you really want to send RWBY careening off the rails ASAP.

Not a time traveler, but still a Roman who is uninterested in Cinder's twaddle. Because, you see, it's Bad For Business.

[Black Aeronaut]

Yeah, that's a good one, and pretty much what inspired the idea.


Though I think a story where he doesn't just suspect bad omens, but actually knows what's coming down the pipeline, will lead to something that...  well...

There's that one bit from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children where Reno remarks on an improvised explosive Rude has, and Rude says, "You'll like it.  It's...  Flashy."  (My brothers tell me that, according to FFVII lore, the construction and use of such devices is something that Rude learned from The Legendary Turk.)

Yeah.  Pretty much that.  Because dying just once by getting snarfed up by a Grimm is plenty enough for Roman Torchwick and he will likely do everything in his power to avoid that.

[Dartz]

An idea that's been spinning in my head for a while

What does 40K look like when your peer under the stuff designed to sell the setting?

---

Teeming trillions toiled about their days in peace - in hives, on farms, in cities and forges and starships. For every world which died screaming in the pyres of exterminatus, a hundred thousand more spun peacefully around warm suns scarcely aware of the horrors beyond. For every heretic or apostate, a million faithful held the line against the night. For every craven coward hding from their duty, a hundred stepped forth on far foreign worlds certain that the home they would never see again and those they still loved would be next if they didn't.

The bonds of brother and sister, of common humanity still remained. Parents wished for a better future for their children. Where there were wars against heresy and xenos, there were those who waged their wars of Faith against the ravages of disease and famine. The pen of the mundane adept which condemned thousands also saved millions.

The Emperor's divine hand touched the living souls of those in need, bestowing upon them the strength to endure even where they could not hope succeed.

Even against the Grim Darkness of the far Future, the best angels of humanity still shone.

---

[Black Aeronaut]

HOLY. SHIT.

Someone needs to expand these drabbles into proper fics. Like yesterday, even.

TL;DR?

Azula is a lying, treacherous little sociopath...

... And she loves her brother, Zuko, more than anything else in the world.

https://heavenly-dusk.tumblr.com/post/18...covery-the

[Rajvik]

had an idea in the shower this morning, where strangely i get most of my better ideas, probably something about the heat relaxing me, anyway

Sunnydale has fallen into a pit never to be found, Giles managed to escape with Dawn, Faith and all the baby slayers, but Buffy Xander and Willow are still missing.

Buffy, Xander and Willow wake up in an alley to a roaring noise they don't recognize. Stumbling out they find that the noise is being caused by a landing spaceship, a spaceship landing on this dusty dirty world where no one knows about the supernatural, especially not the crew of the Firefly class transport ship Serenity.

[classicdrogn]

I think I've read something like that in one of the omnibus fics, Dogbertcarrol's or otherwise... Xander had gotten his brain a little borked in the process of getting there, implied to be a result of a self-sacrifice moment. He got shipped with River (enthusiastically on both their parts) and Willow conjured strawberries and an (otherwise known lost with the World That Was) pomegranate to prove the boniness of their fids.

[Kilroy]

I think I've read something like that in one of the omnibus fics, Dogbertcarrol's or otherwise... Xander had gotten his brain a little borked in the process of getting there, implied to be a result of a self-sacrifice moment. He got shipped with River (enthusiastically on both their parts) and Willow conjured strawberries and an (otherwise known lost with the World That Was) pomegranate to prove the boniness of their fids.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6175010/1/W...the-bridge Hasn't been updated since 2014.