History Fanfic / HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality

* IncorruptiblePurePureness: [[spoiler:Hermione]] has an aura to the effect of extreme purity after [[spoiler:she is resurrected]], [[MakesSenseInContext due to being made part-unicorn.]] She's a little embarrassed about it, although she quickly sees several upsides to having "Sparkling Unicorn Princess powers", as she puts it. [[spoiler:Harry finds it rather distracting and briefly wonders if he can pay anyone to invent an anti-purity potion]].

* AristicLicensePhysics: Harry's rant about shape shifting that appears as the page quote is correct in that it violates conservation of energy (which strangely didn't bother him when the levitation did it), but the details are nonsense suggesting the author knows the terms but not the underlying concepts (you actually can have unitarity without the Hamiltonian or conservation of energy and none of that has anything much to do with FTL signaling). Especially since he focuses on the relatively minor quantum effects instead of the reality-shattering and much more obvious implications in thermodynamics.

* SpinOff: Another writer on the "Less Wrong" community blog has done something similar to the ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' series with her story ''Fanfic/{{Luminosity}}''.

** Almost all of ch. 64's {{omake}}, but ones for ''Literature/TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe'' and ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' in particular. The one for ''{{WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic}}'' has a jab at mainstream academia: "Everyone knew that no matter how honest, investigating, skeptical, creative, analytic, or curious you were, what really made your work Science was when you published your results in a prestigious journal. Everyone knew that..."

** In the final confrontation [[spolier:with Voldemort, Harry]] finally realizes that there is no way to save everyone, and this makes him finally go so far to not only theorise or plan, but to actually kill people.

* DoubleReverseQuadrupleAgent: [[spoiler:Blaise Zabini]] becomes a quintuple agent during the period when traitors are allowed in the armies. He pretends to be loyal to each of the three armies, is supposedly working for Professor Quirrell above that, and is ultimately working for a mysterious fifth figure.

* CowTools: Even Dumbledore doesn't know what most of the magic nick-knacks in his office do, they were created by his predecessors. The ones he does understand do completely pointless things like count the, er, 'sneezes' of French witches. He is personally rather proud of his own contribution, which he doesn't think Minerva will ever figure out.

* WeAllLiveInAmerica: An amazingly comprehensive selection of American idioms to come from the mouth of a child brought up in Oxford by academics; minor Americanisms have been corrected, however - originally Lupin spoke of "diapers"...
** It is still evident that the author is American even from the very first chapter, "math" replacing "maths" and the term "college" used where a Brit would say "university" or "uni".
** Although the story is set a decade before the 2005 revival, for Harry to NOT think of ''Doctor Who'' when learning of Time-Turners seems a conspicuous omission.
** Britpicking is currently in progress to rewrite the story in British English.

%% * FiveManBand: It looks like Harry's making one.
%% ** The Hero: Harry.
%% ** The Lancer: Draco.
%% ** The Smart Guy: Hermione.
%% ** The Big Guy: Neville.
%% ** The Chick: Quirrell/Dumbledore.
%% *** Harry doesn't help the case for Hermione being the Smart Guy [[spoiler:by virtue of the fact that he has a high enough IQ to be able to understand the blueprints of a solid fuel rocket well enough to transfigure one from everyday household objects.]]

* DanBrowned: The author has a tendency to grossly simplify points that are actually under debate, and to simply state his preferred interpretation as unquestioned scientific truth. The most blatant is that his specific interpretation of Bayes' Theorum is not only treated as the only one, but as ''the same thing as the scientific method''. It can also sneak up on you just how much the setting has been altered; Harry overcomes an astonishing number of magical limitations that don't exist in the books and deconstructs ideas from the original based on details invented for this fanfic. One of the most glaring is that his explanation of magical inheritance relies on magic being attached to a single semi-dominant gene; an explanation incompatible with nearly everything canon has shown about the subject. [[note]]Wizard/Muggle marriages in canon produce wizards exclusively; under the [=MoR=] model they should produce only Squibs. Muggleborns in canon seem to crop up out of nowhere, though WordOfGod is that they have a forgotten magical ancestor; the [=MoR=] model suggests that they should be born exclusively to pairs of Squibs, which is not entirely contradictory (Muggle/Squib relationships would produce Muggle or Squib children at random, so the magic gene ''could'' lie forgotten for many generations) but makes it far less likely than canon suggests. Squibs in canon seem to come out of nowhere; this ''can'' happen under the [=MoR=] model if the magic gene can mutate, but Squibs from wizard/Muggle relationships would be by far more common. And so on... The main point in Yudkowsky's defence is that the canon model is very hard to explain in real-world terms without resorting to "well, the gene is literally magic, this must let it do things genes don't normally do". [[/note]]

* AuthorFilibuster: Many examples, though special mention must be given to Harry's lengthy internal monologue at the end of Taboo Tradeoffs.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Hermione seems very socially inept in her first appearance. She thinks that reading a book is inviting people to talk to her.

* DramaticIrony: Many of the things that Quirrell and Dumbledore say, largely concerning horcruxes, the prophesy, and Deathly Hallows, have hidden meanings that Harry misses because he lacks backstory to make alternative hypotheses plausible.

* ComicallySmallBribe: It's apparently common knowledge that for the right price, the aurors guarding Azkaban will ignore people sneaking in to give the prisoners time with a patronus, or a supply of chocolate. For Auror Li, that price is "two Knuts and a silver Sickle", because he ''hates'' Azkaban.

Complete as of Pi Day, 2015. Yudkowsky stated he might post an epilogue, after he gives fans time to write fan fiction (which they did, by the way; see [[FanficRecs/HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality the Fanfic Recommendations page]]) -- this was originally scheduled for Pi Day 2016, but writing troubles have delayed it for an unknown period of time.

Complete as of Pi Day, 2015. Yudkowsky stated he might post an epilogue, after he gives fans time to write fan fiction (which they did, by the way; see [[FanWorks/HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality the Fan Works page]]) -- this was originally scheduled for Pi Day 2016, but writing troubles have delayed it for an unknown period of time.

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

* CourtroomAntic: Despite Dumbledore's severe warning that doing anything fancy will just make things worse, Harry eventually succumbs to this trope when it becomes clear they're going to lose [[spoiler:Hermione's trial]]. He then escalates his antics, and then escalates a little more... then once more at the end just to impress everyone.

--->Moody had once seen an addicted Dark Wizard go to ridiculous lengths to get a victim to lay hands on a certain exact Portkey, instead of just having someone toss the target a trapped Knut on their next visit to town; and after going to all that work, the addict had gone to the ''further'' effort to lay a ''second Portus'', on the ''same Portkey'', which had, on a second touch, transported the victim back to safety. To this day, even taking the drug into account, Moody could not imagine [[WhatAnIdiot what could have possibly been going through the man's mind]] at the time he had cast the second Portus.