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 93. The previous thread has passed 300 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, 17,18,19,20.
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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.
Reax to Chapter 93:
1) I loved the letters to Harry from his parents. Genuinely moving, and also surprising, because generally speaking people who Harry "puts in their place" in this fic tend to stay meekly chastened. (McGonagall is a glaring example, but Dumbledore and Snape have been treated the same way.) I was very happy that Harry's parents got a chance to respond, after all, and that they acquitted themselves so well.
1a) The difference in [s]James'[/s] Michael's and Petunia's letters didn't do anything to help HPMOR's overall treatment of gender difference, although I would be happy to stipulate that the fic has rescued the character of Petunia every bit as far as she can be rescued.
2) Moving on to the author's self-described "rant" on anti-feminism: I do think it's a bit odd that he holds criticism of the work at this point to be categorically unfair, since he seems perfectly happy to accept praise.
3) EY seems to believe that Chapter 93 is going to be some kind of slam-dunk answer to critics--especially since he goes so far to demonstrate/insist that nothing was changed as a response to those critics. I actually suspect that the events of this chapter -- in which, Minerva McGonagall, having submissively accepted her character assassination at the hands of Harry Potter, now submits herself for public humiliation and complete self-abnegation -- will be largely taken as something less than a triumph of enlightened feminism.
3a) I think the fic's treatment of McGonagall has been one of its weakest elements throughout. This isn't even the first time we've been treated to a scene where Harry delivers a righteous dressing-down of McGonagall, and she's meekly accepted it. At this point it's a recurring theme. (I recall first complaining about the mischaracterisation of McGonagall in early 2011.)
4) I do wonder if there's a numerical cutoff, relating to feedback from female readers, at which EY would stop to reconsider whether -- despite his egalitarian principles and best conscious intentions -- his fic might not have become skewed by gender bias. Would it take a hundred discrete pieces of feedback? A thousand? Is there any such number that would actually give him pause? The Author's Note as it stands reads as a piece of knee-jerk defensiveness -- it doesn't seem that he's really spent any time asking himself whether the female readers might be seeing something he doesn't.
5) Again, I thought the letter from Harry's parents (well, from his dad) was really great, and I was truly moved by it.
Edit: 6) Also, the last line of the author's "rant" was very funny, and I laughed.
In an early author's note that has since been removed (the one that pbasvezrq Dhveeryy vf gur ningne bs Ibyqrzbeg), EY mentioned having to be meak about accepting praise prior to revealing that there is a certain spell on the Pioneer Plaque, which seems somewhat similar to (if weaker than) what he said in the rant, about the criticism not being wholely warranted until people see where the story winds up.... (read more)