Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.
The load more comments links are getting annoying (at least if you're not logged in), so it's time for a new Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread. We're also approaching the traditional 500-comment mark, but I think that hidden comments provide more appropriate joints to carve these threads at. So as of chapter 67, this is the place to share your thoughts about Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic.
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: one, two, three, four, five, six. The fanfiction.net author page is the central author-controlled HPMOR clearinghouse with links to the RSS feed, pdf version, TV Tropes pages, fan art, and more, and AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes.
As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:
You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).
If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it's fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that "Eliezer said X is true" unless you use rot13.
I think that in your case it might be because you as a writer have outgrown that story. I couldn't stomach reading beyond the first chapter of the original Elcenia (I'll certainly give the rewrite a chance though) and while HTHT had some nice touches from the beginning it's rather bland and sometimes cringe-worthy. Once Luminosity gets going there is a night and day difference in quality. At first I thought it was because world building and characters are your weak point, but now I'm pretty sure it's because you have just become that much better.
You introduced a somewhat interesting moral dilemma in HTHT recently, but the world still doesn't feel alive and the mages still don't feel like a credible threat or in any way interesting as antagonists. I'm not sure if that's just because you are limited by what you did earlier (it seems like the setup necessitates that the mages continue to be idiots collectively or it's game over, and the room for the protagonists to lose in important ways without ending the story seems very limited), but there is simply no comparison to your take on the Volturi as far as villain quality goes.
Another problem might be the genre: HTHT seems to be somewhere between a straight take on mahou shoujo and a deconstruction. I think the protagonists are too old, and the world, simplistic as it is, too constrained by logic for a straight take to work, and it's too much of a straight take to work as a deconstruction.
If you could find a way to break out of the story you were originally writing and turn it into a story actually worth your time you would probably find the experience more enjoyable. You already seem to be doing that to some extent. If you are holding back because you don't want to change the tone too much please feel encouraged to stop worrying about that ;)
Note that both Elcenia and HTHT have their origins in a collaboration, although Elcenia's was longer-lived. HTHT's co-creator (who is very invested, in general, in straight-up mahou shoujo tropes) was no longer on board by the time I started publishing, but I didn't feel like I was free to arbitrarily discard bits of the original concept. But I think it's mostly a matter of my having improved as a storyteller, as you say - that, and I'm a lazy, amateur artist, which makes webcomicking an awkward juggling act between leaning on the writing and failing at ... (read more)