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Velorien comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 112 - Less Wrong
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I disagree that the writing has deteriorated.
People complain a lot about the lack of foreshadowing of the mirror and the "Riddle can't kill Riddle" curse. But I don't think the lack of foreshadowing matters, because both of these things are minor details in the overall story line. Let's start with the "Riddle can't kill Riddle" curse. Voldemort wasn't just not killing Harry because of this curse. After all now that the curse is lifted he still isn't killing Harry. The curse is entirely unneeded to explain his earlier before, or his current behavior. Nor was the curse needed to resolve the current plot. Voldemort was in complete control of the situation all along.
So there's no deus ex machina. It's a sudden unexpected development, yes, but one that doesn't really affect the story. It's purpose was to drive home how utterly defeated Harry is. How he is now completely at the mercy of Voldemort, having no clever tricks or last minute saves. Also it gave us a nice cliffhanger. But you can take out the final lines from 111 and the first few lines from 112 and the story continues exactly as it does now.
The same with the mirror scene were Dumbledore gets defeated. Take it out, have Dumbledore never show up,and the story still continues exactly the same as it does now. Dumbledore is a side character. He needed to be got rid of, so neither Harry nor the reader would expect or hope for Dumbledore to show up at the last minute and save the day, but ultimate he's not important to the story. And Voldie getting rid of Dumbledore with relativele ease is entirely expected anyway. He is established as being much stronger.
Anyway, bottomline: I really like the story so far. Elizier is doing a terrific job of driving home just how utterly screwed Harry is. How completely outplayed and outgunned he is.
I'm really looking forward to the resolution. I have no idea what it is going to be, but I fully expect it to be glorious. I do know it won't be Harry casting "Problemsolvius" or someone showing up casting "Savethedayius". I know this because Elizier went to great length to crush that expectation at every possible avenue.
Of course, my disappointment if I am mistaken and the final solution does some completely unexpected deus ex machina, shall be big indeed.
And for the record: My prediction is still that Voldemort shall not be dead by the end of the story. I give that 80%. Up to a few chapters ago my theory was that Voldemort wanted to team up with Harry to permanently get rid of death, but that seems increasingly less likely.
I would interpret "you could take the following things out and it would make no difference" as criticism of the writing, not as praise. If a piece of information adds complexity without adding proportional value, it shouldn't be in there to begin with.
(this is a comment on your critique rather than on the quality of recent HPMOR chapters, which I am still undecided on)
Looking back, I think I could have written that more clearly.
People were complaining about the mirror, and the Riddle-curse, being deus ex machina. I'm saying they weren't, because they weren't moving the plot forward. Take them out and the overall plot remains the same. That doesn't mean those scenes served no purpose in the story.
The Riddle-curse scene in particular I thought was very good. When I was reading chapter 111, when Harry got his wand back, I got all excited. I kept thinking perhaps Harry had a chance after all. I did of course wonder why Voldemort let him keep his wand, and figured there might be a deeper reason, but seeing Harry with a wand still makes you hope. And then suddenly Harry is given an opening ... and it turns out to have been all Voldemort's plan all along, and Harry is even more thoroughly beaten then he already was before.
That serves an important function in the story. It drives home how bad Harry's situation is. It drives home that there will be no easy outs, that Voldemort really is very, very smart, and isn't going to make any easily exploitable errors. Basically, the scene is setting the background, and building up suspense, for the final confrontation.
It's perfectly fine for a scene like that to have no foreshadowing. It doesn't need foreshadowing. Nobody sane will think: "Harry totally would have won without that plot twist!".
I'd also like to point out that unexpected things were kind of expected to happen. We already knew Voldemort was playing a vastly more complex game than just "I want to grab power" or "I want to kill Harry". And we also already knew that there were unknown traps guardian the stone.