Beware (but not too much)

[karenhealey]

I am reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which is a very long, very interesting and totally hilarious fic, which begins with the premise that Petunia Evans married an Oxford professor and the orphaned Harry James Potter-Evans was duly adopted and brought up Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres.

Surrounded by books, very bright, encouraged to follow whatever intellectual pathways he found most interesting, and brought up as a rationalist.

Who then discovers, after the arrival of a certain letter from a certain school, that magic is real and that despite everything he knows about neurochemistry and the Conservation of Energy a woman with a prim Scottish accent can in fact turn herself into a cat.

And trips off to magic school armed with the scientific method.

I LOVE it.

I should mention though, that I have a few quibbles with the style, which leaps from overblown prose to contemporary speech patterns without a pause, includes a ton of too-clever-by-half cameo references, and uses "the young girl" and "the young boy" far too often for anyone who flinches at the casual use of descriptors instead of names; i.e., me. Also some of the anguished philosophising tends to drown the plot.

Also, a lot of usage of "insane" as "deplorable and wrong!"

Oh, and much of the plot and dialogue and character musings comprise outright preaching at the reader, but since it's preaching things I mostly agree with I don't care. If you are allergic to didacticism in your entertainment, do not read this fic.

But it's very gripping, and poses a number of questions about the original 'verse that I have chewed on myself, and there are three things that are the most awesome ever (SPOILERS APPROACHETH):

1) At the beginning of the story, Hermione Granger is untutored in the methods of rationality, and I narrowed my eyes and waited with a sense of despair, because if the story was making Harry the smart one, then what was Hermione going to be…?

The EVEN SMARTER one, that's what, who is still the most brilliant magician of her generation.

2) Oh yeah, and she decides to be a hero in her own right, not a sidekick, not even to a boy she likes and respects.

3) And asks other girls if they would like to do same.



So YES, I like this fic a lot, and recommend it to all Potter fans, or, you know, other nerds.

However, in checking links for this post, I have realised that it's a freaking work in progress (HOW, at nearly 500k words, I do not know) and it was last updated in APRIL. So, you know. Enter at your peril.

Comments

[fadeaccompli]

Oh, hm. People kept recommending this fic, and I kept avoiding it because it sounded like it was a whole long story on "This setting is silly and wrong, let me explain how I would have done it better than the original author, by being so much smarter!" This is the first explanation I've heard that makes me actually want to go try reading it myself.

[recessional]

Enh. MMV as always, but I tried starting it back in 2010 and got aggravated out of it by precisely that feel very quickly.

[dracunculus]

The author IS under the impression that he is a better writer than JK Rowling, that his fic is the most popular HP fic ever written, and that it will win the Hugo for Best Novel once completed. To which I mostly take a "whatever keeps you writing" stance -- but it *is* annoying when that blatantly delusional sense of superiority seeps through into the text.

Despite all that, the fic is reliably entertaining, even excellent in flashes. There was a lovely, quietly tragic Snape interlude, and the author's take on quidditch has become headcanon for me. And I do like his Hermione.

[recessional]

It's reliably entertaining for you. :) as I said, for me, that sense of superiority permeated it to a point that I could not enjoy.

MMV, naturally.

[dracunculus]

Yes, of course, sorry if that sounded imperative! I'm speaking only for myself.

[karenhealey]

Ahahaha NO, he is not a better writer than Rowling, and this is exceedingly unlikely to win a Hugo.

[karenhealey]

Actually, I take that back - given the way Hugo voting works and the popularity of this fic, it's less unlikely.

[dracunculus]

The Worldcon Committee has the right "to relocate a story into a more appropriate category if it feels that it is necessary," and in this case, even if HPMOR fans flooded the convention in order to tilt the popular vote, I'm pretty sure that the committee would move HPMOR to the Best Fan Writer category. Ordinarily they like to leave eligibility determinations to the voters, but the copyright issues here would be just too much. If a Harry Potter fic won a Hugo, JK Rowling (and her publishers) would be almost forced to take legal action in order to protect her copyright, and nobody wants to be faced with that kind of legal artillery.

[karenhealey]

Heh, I said a Hugo, not one for Best Novel - I entirely agree with your assessment.

[dracunculus]

Oh, sorry, I didn't fill you into the whole backstory!

When EY announced his intention to seek the (Best Novel) Hugo for HPMOR, a few people tried to gently steer him toward the Best Fan Writer category, for which I do believe he could be competitive.

He replied that "I'm honestly a bit nonplussed at the idea that reader reception of HPMOR has been insufficiently enthusiastic to try for a Hugo" [meaning Best Novel]. "It's fairly routine for a review to say that HPMOR is the best thing they've ever read out of all of fiction."

I think he's just not really acquainted with the kind of praise inflation that routinely happens with fanfic? I mean, fan authors work only for praise, so the praise is generally heaped on quite heavily in order to encourage the work to continue. I think this is really nice and a great aspect of fandom, but it can be misleading when fan authors try to self-calibrate the level of their craft based on what their reviewers are saying.

[karenhealey]

Oh my god, that's adorable.

[recessional]

.....goodness gracious.

[escritoireazul]

Wow, that coupled with all the freaking ableism in the first few chapters means I'm giving this one a pass.

[karenhealey]

Oh yeah, his usage of "insane" is freaking deplorable.

(I had actually managed to successfully block that, so I'll add a trigger warning - thanks for the reminder, though I'm sorry it got you first!)

[fadeaccompli]

Ahhh. Hm. Well, I suppose I might as well give it a try; that way I can know for sure if it's to my taste or not, instead of feeling vaguely annoyed when it's brought up as the Best Thing Ever in other conversations. (Other things which were brought up that way and annoyed me similarly: Avatar The Last Airbender, which I loved once I gave it a shot, and Battlestar Galactica, which I loathed once I gave it a shot. So who knows!)

[birke]

Needs pruning, but is laugh-out-loud funny and much more intellectually stimulating than the books themselves (although not as well written, etc.)

Thanks for the rec.

[shiyiya]

Frequently infuriating, but I do really enjoy it! I've read it all through a couple times, because my memory is crap and I needed to refresh it when it updated (in wow that was back in april?) with a few new chapters.

(Though there are some bits that are just... cheap, like the line about not understanding why Ron exists.)

And I'm clearly not the target audience, as I basically hate skepticism as a movement and half of everything apparently goes over my head (I only know one major plot element because of fanart because I didn't pick up on it myself at ALL).

BUT I STILL LIKE IT. I don't read much fic, so it's not a wide pool of selection, but it and A Necessary Deception (which is this really awesome Labyrinth fic with a now-adult Sarah with a brain tumour and there are fae politics and IT'S SO COOL *flails* I'm so glad my friend linked it at me) are my two favourite fanfics.