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Blueberry comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread - Less Wrong
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From Ch. 7:
Is this a reference to some poorly-written slash fanfic? I'm assuming Eliezer knows that boys of any age can get erections, so it must be making fun of something, but I'm missing a reference.
Similarly with:
(Ch. 5)
Is this just making fun of Harry/Draco slash in general, or is there a specific reference?
The newspaper headlines are, I assure you, making fun in general (at the very least).
Yes, I found that sentence really jarring too. Even assuming that Draco was for some reason unable to get an erection, he'd hardly admit it.
That sentence actually sent me on a quick Google mission to confirm that the author was a woman.
It would have to be; a male would know that boys of any age can get an erection. Did you find the original author of that line? I couldn't find it through Google
It seems plausible that Malfoy wouldn't know that. Some boys never get erections before puberty. Getting erections reliably (as opposed to accidentally) before puberty might not happen either.
At this rate, Draco will be a master Bayesian before he figures out masturbation...
(sorry, sorry)
Actually, that was something about the original books that really bugged me: their sexlessness. Rowling captures the frustration and rage of being an adolescent boy very well, but not the lust - and that's probably deliberate. Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole books are much better in this regard.
Wow, I haven't thought of Adrian Mole in years. I enjoyed those books when I read them -- I should read them again and see how they stand up. Thanks for the reminder.
Source for this? I would be very surprised if this was true, except possibly in cases of extreme sexual dysfunction caused by a severe injury.
If you don't believe me, do a google search. Lots of people on "ask the community" websites like Yahoo answers have asked whether prepubescent boys could get erections. Some of these people are adult men. In any case, obviously Eliezer didn't know that or he probably wouldn't have included that tidbit!
A google search didn't turn up anything saying that some boys don't get erections before puberty. Why do you think this?
Yahoo answers isn't an especially reliable source, and it looked like most of the people asking were women, but I guess it's possible that some adult men forgot what it was like to be a kid.
As I said above, my theory is that Eliezer wrote that line to make fun of fanfiction.
Alternatively, male sexual development might be more varied than is commonly believed.
Or the Malfoys might put a lock on their kids' early sexuality to make them easier to control. Something like that might make arranged marriages less prone to drama.
I think this might actually be feasible. Malfoys are probably not likely to have intimate enough conversations with children from other families that something odd is going on, and could write off what other children imply as just big talk.
Or the children could find out the truth relatively early, and buy into a family belief that this is the sensible way to do things rather than an imposition.
Given how much emphasis a Malfoy education places on preserving your status and appearance of power, it's fairly silly that Draco would so openly and freely reveal such an important (at least symbolically) deficiency.
BTW. Eliezer removed these words. Now they are " As soon as I'm old enough".
Alternatively, Eliezer forgot what it was like to be a kid. That seems simpler.
Or we've just learned something about Eliezer's sexual development that I, for one, would rather not have known.
That is possible but it seems less likely. He's young and sex-positive, and there are other fanfiction references in the story as well, so it wouldn't be too surprising if he included another.
Uh, that's Eliezer's, from one of the early chapters of MoR. Unless he's making a reference I didn't get?
I assumed it was a reference to the way young kids sometimes write slash fanfic when they don't know anything about sex, and they make all kinds of mistakes. There are other fanfic references, like Harry's line to Draco, "It makes my heart swoon". I don't know if it's a reference to anything specific, but NihilCredo seemed to suggest that e found it.
Actually, what I meant is that I cannot possibly conceive an eleven-year-old kid openly admitting that he cannot yet have an erection - he'd rather jump into a fire. It makes me wonder what kind of kids Eliezer hung out with.
In most Western societies, boys' relation with sex moves straight from "knowing nothing" to "pretending to know everything". (Wizarding Britain could be different, but there is nothing in Rowling's or Eliezer's writings to explain that.)
And Eliezer has just fixed the sentence (along with a few other small tweaks to Chapter 7). Glad to see improvements!
Can we maybe get a list of these changes somewhere?
Don't think so, sorry (unless archive.org or similar sites are especially zealous with ff.net). But you can do what I did and add the various chapters to the Update Scanner extension for Firefox, which will do the job for you.
The new sentence is a bit lacking in the original's shock value. I would have left the "that bitch" part in.
I'm not sure the Draco I've been writing for the last few chapters would use the term "bitch" in front of Harry Potter, it doesn't sound dignified enough for the heir of Malfoy.
(But yes I did explicitly consider that alternative. If I get enough votes for keeping the shock value I'll put it back in, or figure out something, I guess.)