MarkusRamikin comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 112 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Gondolinian 25 February 2015 09:00PM

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Comment author: dxu 26 February 2015 06:15:03AM *  18 points [-]

Some discussion has popped up on /r/hpmor about the an apparent decline in the quality of HPMoR's recent chapters. Now, I personally don't think there's been any drop in terms of quality, but the commenters there make some compelling arguments. In particular, I feel that /u/alexanderwales articulates those arguments nicely:

I am hesitant to make any remarks prior to the story being completed, as I'm fairly confident that there are things which will only make sense after the fact. And I'm also hesitant to make remarks in a public forum that I know the author reads. But to put on my writing hat anyway ...

In terms of prose and mechanics, I think the chapters have been great. In terms of characterization, I think that Eliezer's Dumbledore has always been a little bit shaky, though almost always when he's being serious or emotional - this is in contrast to the aloof and enigmatic Dumbledore, which reads wonderfully. In chapter 110, he's mean, and gives weak arguments in favor of his side of things, and then he dies. Perhaps that's EY's conception of the character, but it's not mine. Harry and Quirrell are written the same as ever, and I had no problem there (save for the two times Quirrell leans so heavily on the fourth wall that it seems like it's about to break).

And then we get to plot, and that's where I start having some real problems. I wish that we'd gotten to see the Mirror of Erised prior to the chapter where it became really important. I wish we'd been introduced to the spell that Dumbledore uses prior to the chapter where he kills himself with it. There are a number of things that happen first and are explained after the fact, or that are explained only moments before they've happened. (And unfortunately, in a serial you can't go back and change these things if you realize that you needed to foreshadow them a few chapters back.) So yes, I agree that there are some issues with how information is given out to the audience. Most of it must be transparency illusion, which can be difficult for an author to deal with - it's clear in your mind what's happening, but when you put it to the page you don't realize that you're not describing it in such a way that the reader will get that too.

I do somewhat wonder whether this is the result of the author reading/writing these chapters all at once, which I would think would enhance the transparency illusion. I think we'd probably have had fewer problems with these chapters if they'd been released all at once.

Any thoughts on this?

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 26 February 2015 07:29:16AM *  7 points [-]

There are a number of things that happen first and are explained after the fact, or that are explained only moments before they've happened

Yeah, I thought that too. Makes it a bit harder to maintain illusion and forget that this is all really happening on the author's say-so.

Also I disagree about not being able to go back and improve, if there happens to be room for it. Who gives a damn if it's a serial. There will be new readers in the future.

Fourth wall stuff always annoyed me, not just in recent chapters, all the pointless inserts and references, all the winking at the audience. "Akemi Homura and her lost love", really? For some reason lots of readers seem to love this stuff, however, so I don't know what to say. Except that the best works of literature tend to not do that.

Comment author: William_Quixote 26 February 2015 01:18:54PM *  19 points [-]

Your last statement is not correct. Many of the works of literature regarded as the best do that very heavily. Dante does that like crazy in the inferno. Joyce does it non stop in Ulyesses. Most of the works of Vladimir Nabokov do it very heavily. As does Pynchon. It may be that you just don't notice it in literature and do notice it here because you are more familiar the the animie canon than the literary canon.

Comment author: Nornagest 26 February 2015 10:00:32PM *  6 points [-]

And then there's all the callbacks to those. Here's a few lines of Keats I read recently:

...but to that second circle of sad Hell

Where in the gust, the whirl-wind, and the flaw

Of hail-stones, lovers need not tell

Their sorrows; pale were the lips I saw

Pale were the lips I kissed, and fair the form

I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

For those keeping score at home, that's Keats alluding to Dante alluding to a famous and semi-legendary Italian love affair. And the Bible, of course. Earlier in the same poem, Keats throws in a lot of references to Greek myth too.

Comment author: alienist 27 February 2015 04:22:38AM 0 points [-]

Of course Keats isn't alluding to contemporary literature, but to works that have lasted long enough that one can be confident their popularity isn't limited to a particular moment.

Comment author: Nornagest 27 February 2015 04:29:59AM *  6 points [-]

In that instance, yes; but these are the Romantics we're talking about. They referenced each other all the time.

Pop culture references are not a new thing. They just stop being pop after a certain amount of time passes.

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 28 February 2015 09:29:03AM *  4 points [-]

I know very little anime, actually. I could be missing something, I haven't read Joyce, but all the best novels I'm familiar with - whether it's something like the Great Gatsby or Dune - don't seem to do this.

Are we talking about the same thing? I am not talking about meaningful allusions and indirect references, or borrowing from myth and exotic cultures, or re-tellings of the same story for a different effect. I am talking about this kind of blunt, literal, fourth-wall-breaking namedropping of things that have no business being in your story.

Let me give examples of what I do and do not find problematic. For instance, HPMoR's references to Tolkien are fine. They make sense. What is really being mentioned are the works of Tolkien, we're not asked to believe that Legolas was part of magical Britain's history. Of course the works of Tolkien would exist in HPMoR's reality, and Muggleborn children could cause Dumbledore to be familiar with them. I loved that bit where Dumbledore speaks about all the copies of LotR he'd been gifted, and part of the reason I loved it was how much sense it made in retrospect.

On the other hand, we have Mornelithe Falconsbane - a fantasy character - mentioned next to Hitler as an important historical figure. This is a pointless, throwaway insert in its purest form, an author being 'clever'. It exists only for the sake of itself, it adds nothing to the story - take it out and nothing is missing, it's never mentioned again nor did it affect anything. All it does is break the fourth wall.

Seems to me that it's a lose-lose thing to do. To those who aren't familiar with the Valdemar books, it means nothing, so it's useless. To those who are, it's immersion-breaking. Even in the depths of my happy death spiral back when I first discovered HPMoR and blazed through it in near-pure joy, I found that stuff jarring.

Comment author: TobyBartels 26 February 2015 09:40:51PM *  4 points [-]

Your last name alludes to another excellent example … so much so that I had to check that you didn't just create it for the sake of this comment!

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