DanielVarga comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Unnamed 27 May 2010 12:10AM

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Comment author: DanielVarga 04 July 2010 06:37:52PM 1 point [-]

My interpretation was that he gets a kick out of giving students love potions, reading their minds for kinky thoughts, and then refusing them in a humiliating way. It's a sort of safe sex. Obviously, this is not what you had in mind, as this has nothing to do with changing.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 04 July 2010 08:16:47PM *  4 points [-]

It seems like both you and Gabriel (below) have constructed hypotheses which make sense in isolation from certain relevant facts. In particular, there's a large fraction of the HP fanfic world consisting of females who write things with BDSM aspects and a dominant professor Snape. For example a dominant Snape with submissive Hermione pairing is not uncommon. Presumably whatever is going on here is in part making fun of that segment of fandom.

(I dated a girl at one point who's very much involved in the HP fanfic community and might not have picked up on this point otherwise. )

If not for Eliezer's remarks that there was something serious in this section I'd think that that was all that was going on this section- just a Take-That! to the fanbase. Given Eliezer's remarks I think he intended it to be both a Take That and also something else possibly along the lines of Alicorn's hypothesis.

Comment author: CronoDAS 04 July 2010 11:16:31PM 2 points [-]

Yes, I too thought it was just a cheap joke at the expense of Snape/student fanfiction...