In HPMOR, Quirrell turns the Pioneer plaque in a Horcrux, and (ignoring the fridge horror that he needed to murder someone next to the Pioneer plaque) this somehow gives him the power to project an image of the probe's surroundings.
Don't read HPMOR until some brave soul puts out an abridged version, or just read a summary. This is coming from someone who has read it several times.
that's how the fic sucks you in, it pretends it follows the basic contours of the Harry Potter story and then goes off into various tangents about wizarding law, *Ender's Game*, and breaking Bellatrix Black out of Azkaban.
Fanfic of HPMOR tends to be better than HPMOR itself. I'm... reserving judgment on this one.
If Voldemort is super rational he is smart enough to make his horcruxes way harder to track down than “all of them are in hogwarts”, in fact he’d be like “one of them should be in space! So no one can go get it and destroy it, ever!!!”
The reason he should consider listening to other people's opinions is that it's 122 chapters long and (under non-pandemic circumstances) most adults have a limited amount of spare time to read a mediocre, oft-criticized fanfiction. And the criticism, more often than not, comes from *fans* of HPMOR.
Also, the fact that your disqualifying gripe of HPMOR is 'present tense' suggests that either you're not familiar with the concept of the literary present, or that you don't critically think about the media you consume.
I'll start by asking: do you understand what subreddit you're in?
Also, you appear to be unironically defending HPMOR. That's... well, that's it. That's the entirety of my reasoning. That the reason you think people are turned off by HPMOR is that it's written in present tense at first.
I'm going to try to make this easy for you: no one in this sub has any real interest in sitting down and powering through something written by Eliezer Yudkowsky. You would know this, if you knew what this subreddit was. You would also know, if you had spent the slightest second examining this subreddit, that 'starts in present tense' *does not remotely touch upon the main reasons people in this subreddit would not read HPMOR*.
And, if you read the sidebar of this subreddit, you would've realized that you've come to defend HPMOR in one of the two places on the internet dedicated to hating it.
If you're a rationalist and you think we're obsessive weirdos then why have you been lurking here for the past *three years* again?
You do also know... that people have lives outside of the internet, right?
Finally, you seem to be implying that posting that racists are bad is bad for some reason. Please clarify.
Given that your entire posting history on this account is about Harry Potter fanfiction, I'm not sure why you feel you have any right to feel superior.
Lol. Your problem is that both *Gravity's Rainbow* and *Infinite Jest* are actual well-written prose, and you clearly don't have the range. Start with something less stressful but still actual literature. Or even well-written genre fiction. (Try Iain Banks' *Culture* series, perhaps?) Anything other than the terrible masturbatory work that is HPMOR.
I ask for other people to summarize because I know it is really long and I can do other things than read an long fanfic. (Like I should go finish reading *Dune* rn)
I mean, I liked it when I read it but "I liked it" in the sense that I like power fantasy trash manga time to time. The other thing is that it has a lot of chapters of "this is actually blogpost disguised as plot progression".
So if you literally have anything else to do or read (like Dune), don't bother.
(And if you end up reading it, try not to take it seriously or you are gonna be like our friend here, flexing with "I own physical copies of Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest.")
EDIT: New flair.
\> has strong opinions on a grammatical tense
\> has written at least two walls of text defending HPMOR
\> uses jerk-store level comebacks
conclusion: look at this extremely offended dork
Because the more I get you to comment, the more you reinforce the picture of HPMOR superfans as petulant, literal-minded people who can't take a joke and accuse their debate opponents of flaws that they themselves possess.
Better idea, have them fight it out rationally... now ait wait, have them fightbit out rationally and then ... fall in love. Yes i just shipped (is that the right term?) Quirrelmort with Rick.
(Which is fine if you are into that btw, i just think the idea would be funny).
The thing is it starts of with a good premise “Harry is an insufferable wanker who uses various scientific methods to point out inconsistencies in the Harry Potter universe”. That is a fun premise I can get behind.
However the problem then comes when this degenerates into “Big Yud preaching to the masses through a Harry which he clearly identifies strongly with”.
oh I meant the thing I took the screenshot of.
I read through HPMOR. several times. unfortunately.
The 'big yud preaching' shows up in like chapter 3 when he whines about how his parents don't respect his intellect. so I wouldn't say it so much 'degenerates' as starts off at that level.
I dunno. I enjoyed Harry Potter but it’s complete refusal to keep its world at all internally consistent and it’s rather odd quasi Calvinist system of morality always grated on me so honestly I’m not too upset at Yud tearing it a new one, especially at the start where he hadn’t yet decided that he was going to identify himself with Harry.
However I agree he does make up some of the in universe rules and then spends a bit too much time criticising the specifics of the rules he just made up at the start. However I think that’s just part of the charm of Harry the absolute asshole who exists at the start of the book.
Honestly I agree with everything except that the world is "about as consistent as most other fantasy books". Plenty of fantasy books spend far less time outright contradicting themselves.
The other thing is that the Harry Potter series is by far one of the most successful fantasy books series's, it is completely reasonable to hold it to a higher standard than the average fantasy book.
I mean it's a children's book (and I don't mean it in a bad way) it never was designed for the more "hard magic system" fan of fantasy books.
Sure, there's a lot of plotholes and Rowling tends to make some... bad decisions (goblings, slaves that like being slaves, the school names, etc) but many times the critiques of HP amount to "Why didn't the Little Red Cap bring a Kalashnikov to gran's house?"
YES
but
HPMOR's way of being mean to Harry Potter is closer to 'haha ur a doodoo head' than 'Deplatform JKR for being a transphobe'
HPMOR reads like... bullying, in a word, written by a person who is powerfully reinforced by getting in what feels like good hits on Designated Targets, in the company of others doing the same and congratulating himself on it.
> That's literally this sub in a nutshell.
You saying this suggests that you've either never comprehended the sidebar of this sub, or don't understand the concept of irony.
Two or three dozen chapters is *literally a fifth to the third of the fanfic*.
Oh, I know a dig at canon that appears near the end of the book. The whole Peter Pettigrew/Sirius Black subplot in HPMOR. What is that, if not a dig at canon, other than Yudkowsky going 'look how clever my subversion is?'
And... let's see. Maybe Eliezer Yudkowsky's entire rejection of JKR's central thesis of the books? That death should be accepted? That counts as a dig towards canon, right?
You are fair to assume whatever you'd like about however much of HPMOR I've read, because frankly I wish I had the time I spent reading it back. But I've noticed that the only defense against su3u2s1 people seem to have is that he either lied about his credentials or was drunk when he read HPMOR -- never that he was *actually wrong*, per se.
But where has anyone debunked *one* of his false claims? You say that I'm not looking all too hard outside of this echo chamber, but you're still relying on attacking su3u2s1's credentials and calling him a Gish Galloper. Meanwhile I can link you to a hilarious reddit thread where multiple physicists tell Yudkowsky he was wrong about that passage about FTL signaling and he goes silent on the topic after saying that he's emailed Scott Aaronson for clarification.
1) It's called a figure of speech
2) the exact quote is: (It's looking like I may have misunderstood the route by which energy violation leads to solving NP-hard problems and that the route isn't via VIOLE. I'm investigating further.)
Where are the results of the further investigation? Seems like going silent to me. Regardless, this will come down to a matter of interpretation, depending on how much one likes Eliezer Yudkowsky personally, but the fact is that something Yudkowsky claimed was a false critique in su3u2s1's 'sneer' was in fact correct.
> you coming back here and responding again while calling me desperate for coming back here and responding again.
Literally never did that. You've got me confused with the other guy.
Here's something that I did say: *Because the more I get you to comment, the more you reinforce the picture of HPMOR superfans as... people who... and accuse their debate opponents of flaws that they themselves possess.*
Have a great day.
I'm going to guess that someone who thinks an effective way to get people to read HPMOR is to go on /r/sneerclub and unironically proselytize doesn't have time for trivial activities like reading usernames.
Actually, this fanfic sneers really hard at canon HJPEV’s behavior.
Still a good fit for this sub, just as something to sneer with rather
than sneer at.
Now that I take a closer look... lines like this:
> But Quirrell had taken out his wand and said something in a language Harry didn't understand. Now they were in space.
> ...
> It was so beautiful. Tears came to Harry's eyes. The words of a Carl Sagan documentary or a NDT tweet came into his mind.
There's no way a devoted HPMOR fan would phrase it like that, right?
I might've been premature, but it still belongs here for being a sneer then?
...honestly, I didn't hate it myself.
It's kind of weird because the premise seems like the sort of thing that would led itself to science-wank and annoying pseudo-intellectualism, which is why I posted it here. But then some lines are just... kind of on the nose. For example:
> "Because SPACE. You like space, right, you technocratic cocksucker? I'm going to show you space, and then you'll forgive me completely and we'll go on adventures."
This honestly almost sounds like a sneer.
edit: oh, yeah: Also, the goddamn copypasta at the end.
And then the wizard turned into a pickle, funniest shit I’ve ever seen
The really horrible thing is that Rick is genuinely a better idea of what a “Dark Rationalist” character should be than Quirrellmort.
It would probably make some of the longer and more boring plot arcs more interesting honestly. Humour is important.
It would also explain the almost complete lack of character development they both have in the fanfic.
Actually, this fanfic sneers really hard at canon HJPEV’s behavior. Still a good fit for this sub, just as something to sneer with rather than sneer at.
I’d read it.