It is bridge dropping, and I love it. We are being given a taste of a dark rationalist, who does not give his enemies dramatic deaths where they get to die like heroes, perhaps accomplishing something through it. When a dark rationalist takes control of the story (or rather, starts to use the control over the story he's always had), the story becomes contrived, cruel and uncaring, as it should. It's realism.
We are being given a taste of a dark rationalist, who does not give his enemies dramatic deaths where they get to die like heroes, perhaps accomplishing something through it.
See also Fate/zero & Kuritsugu. And note that it's not just Hermione's death that is fast and cruel, it's the troll's too: Harry steps forward with the stone, stuffs it in, releases it to explode the head, and acidifies the brains in less time than it takes to type that.
Actually, there's a great rationality quote for here:
...Getting caught up in style and throwing away victory is
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 88-89. The previous thread has passed 500 comments.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
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: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18.
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: